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The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations,[17] beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the following gains had been made in important technologies: Textiles – Mechanized cotton spinning powered by steam or water increased the output of a worker by a factor of about 1000. The power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40.[18] The cotton gin increased productivity or removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50.[12] Large gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton.[19] Steam power – The efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. The adaption of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure engine had a high power to weight ratio, making it suitable for transportation. Steam power underwent a rapid expansion after 1800. Iron making – The substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost of pig iron and wrought iron production.[20] Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces,[21][22] resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760. It was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures. The puddling process produced a structural grade iron at a lower cost than the finery forge.[23] The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than hammering wrought iron.[23] Hot blast (1829) greatly increased fuel efficiency in iron production in the following decades. Textile manufacture Main article: Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution In the late 17th and early 18th centuries the British government passed a series of Calico Acts in order to protect the domestic woolen industry from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric that were being imported from East India.[24][25] There was also a demand for heavier fabric, which was met by a domestic industry around Lancashire that produced fustian, a cloth with flax warp and cotton weft. Flax was used for the warp because wheel spun cotton did not have sufficient strength, but the resulting blend was not as soft as 100% cotton and was more difficult to sew.[25] Spinning and weaving were done in households, for domestic consumption and as a cottage industry under the putting-out system. Occasionally the work was done in the workshop of a master weaver. Under the putting-out system, home based workers produced under contract to merchant sellers, who often supplied the raw materials. In the off season the women, typically farmers' wives, did the spinning and the men did the weaving. Using the spinning wheel it took anywhere from four to eight spinners to supply one hand loom weaver.[19][25][26] The flying shuttle patented in 1733 by John Kay, with a number of subsequent improvements including an important one in 1747, doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving. It became widely used around Lancashire after 1760 when Robert Kay, John's son, invented the drop box.[27] Watch video: Demonstration of fly shuttle on YouTube Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing wool to a more even thickness, developed with the help of John Wyatt in Birmingham. Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory was opened in Northampton with fifty spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn in Leominster, but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it was later used in the first cotton spinning mill. Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright in his water frame and Samuel Crompton in his spinning mule. Model of the spinning jenny in a museum in Wuppertal. Invented by James Hargreaves in 1764, the spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the revolution In 1764 in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which he patented in 1770. It was the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles.[28] The jenny worked in a similar manner to the spinning wheel, by first clamping down on the fibers, then by drawing them out, followed by twisting.[29] It was a simple, wooden framed machine that only cost about £6 for a 40 spindle model in 1792,[30] and was used mainly by home spinners. The jenny produced a lightly twisted yarn only suitable for weft, not warp.[31] The spinning frame or water frame was developed by Richard Arkwright who, along with two partners, patented it in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built for Thomas High by clock maker John Kay, who was hired by Arkwright.[32] For each spindle, the water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fiber, which was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly longer than the fiber length. Too close a spacing caused the fibers to break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top rollers were leather covered and loading on the rollers was applied by a weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with fluting along the length. The water frame was able to produce a hard, medium count thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be made in Britain. A horse powered the first factory to use the spinning frame. Water power was used by Arkwright and partners at a factory in Cromford, Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name. Watch video: Demonstration of water frame on YouTube The only surviving example of a spinning mule built by the inventor Samuel Crompton Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule, introduced in 1779, was a combination of the spinning jenny and the water frame in which the spindles were placed on a carriage, which went through an operational sequence during which the rollers stopped while the carriage moved away from the drawing roller to finish drawing out the fibers as the spindles started rotating.[33] Crompton's mule was able to produce finer thread than hand spinning and at a lower cost. Mule spun thread was of suitable strength to be used as warp, and finally allowed Britain to produce good quality calico cloth.[33] Watch video: Demonstration of spinning mule on YouTube Interior of Marshall's Temple Works Realizing that the expiration of the Arkwright patent would greatly increase the supply of spun cotton and lead to a shortage of weavers, Edmund Cartwright developed a vertical power loom which he patented in 1785. In 1776 he patented a two man operated loom, that was more conventional.[34] Cartwright built two factories; the first burned down and the second was sabotaged by his workers. Cartwright's loom design had several flaws, the most serious being thread breakage. Samuel Horrocks patented a fairly successful loom in 1813. Horock's loom was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822 and these were produced in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co.[35] The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the Southern United States, who thought upland cotton would be a profitable crop if a better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli Whitney responded to the challenge by inventing the cotton gin, an inexpensive device. With a cotton gin a man could remove seed from as much upland cotton in one day as would have previously taken a woman working two months to process at one pound per day.[12] Other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of yarn increased greatly, which fed a weaving industry that was advancing with improvements to shuttles and the loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased dramatically, with the effect that the new machines were seen as a threat to employment, and early innovators were attacked and their inventions destroyed. To capitalise upon these advances, it took a class of entrepreneurs, of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by people such as Thomas Highs and John Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power—first horse power and then water power—which made cotton manufacture a mechanised industry. Before long steam power was applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories.[36] Metallurgy The Reverberatory Furnace could produce wrought iron using mined coal. The burning coal remained separate from the iron ore and so did not contaminate the iron with impurities like sulphur and ash. This opened the way to increased iron production. The Iron Bridge, Shropshire, England Coalbrookdale by Night by Philip James de Loutherbourg, painted 1801. This shows Madeley Wood (or Bedlam) Furnaces, which belonged to the Coalbrookdale Company from 1776 to 1796. A major change in the metal industries during the era of the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal. For a given amount of heat, coal required much less labor to mine than cutting wood,[37] and coal was more abundant than wood.[38] Use of coal in smelting started somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Sir Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames playing on the ore and charcoal or coke mixture, reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulfur ash) in the coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. The foundry cupola is a different (and later) innovation. This was followed by Abraham Darby, who made great strides using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale in 1709. However, the coke pig iron he made was used mostly for the production of cast-iron goods such as pots and kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce bar iron in forges until the mid-1750s, when his son Abraham Darby II built Horsehay and Ketley furnaces (not far from Coalbrookdale). By then, coke pig iron was cheaper than charcoal pig iron. Since cast iron was becoming cheaper and more plentiful, it began being a structural material following the building of the innovative Iron Bridge in 1778 by Abraham Darby III. Bar iron for smiths to forge into consumer goods was still made in finery forges, as it long had been. However, new processes were adopted in the ensuing years. The first is referred to today as potting and stamping, but this was superseded by Henry Cort's puddling process. Henry Cort developed two significant iron manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784.[39] Rolling replaced hammering for consolidating wrought iron and expelling some of the dross. Rolling was 15 times faster than hammering with a trip hammer. Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost. Puddling was a means of decarburizing pig iron by slow oxidation, with iron ore as the oxygen source, as the iron was manually stirred using a long rod. The decarburized iron, having a higher melting point than cast iron, was raked into globs by the puddler. When the glob was large enough the puddler would remove it. Puddling was backbreaking and extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40. Puddling was done in a reverberatory furnace, allowing coal or coke to be used as fuel. The puddling process continued to be used until the late 19th century when iron was being displaced by steel. Because puddling required human skill in sensing the iron globs, it was never successfully mechanized. Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of imported iron to supplement native supplies. This came principally from Sweden from the mid-17th century and later also from Russia from the end of the 1720s. However, from 1785, imports decreased because of the new iron making technology, and Britain became an exporter of bar iron as well as manufactured wrought iron consumer goods. Two decades before the Industrial Revolution an improvement was made in the production of steel, which was an expensive commodity and used only where iron would not do, such as for cutting edge tools and for springs. Benjamin Huntsman developed his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. The raw material for this was blister steel, made by the cementation process. The supply of cheaper iron and steel aided a number of industries such as those making nails, hinges, wire and other hardware items. The development of machine tools allowed better working of iron, causing it to be increasingly used in the rapidly growing machinery and engine industries. Steam power Main article: Steam power during the Industrial Revolution The 1698 Savery Engine – the world's first commercially useful steam engine: built by Thomas Savery The development of the stationary steam engine was an important element of the Industrial Revolution; however, for most of the period of the Industrial Revolution, the majority of industrial power was supplied by water and wind. In Britain by 1800 an estimated 10,000 horsepower was being supplied by steam. By 1815 steam power had grown to 210,000 hp.[40] Small power requirements continued to be provided by animal and human muscle until the late 19th century.[41] The first real attempt at industrial use of steam power was due to Thomas Savery in 1698. He constructed and patented in London a low-lift combined vacuum and pressure water pump, that generated about one horsepower (hp) and was used in numerous water works and tried in a few mines (hence its "brand name", The Miner's Friend). Savery's pump was economical in small horspower ranges, but was prone to boiler explosions in larger sizes. Savery pumps continued to be produced until the late 18th century. Newcomen's steam powered atmospheric engine was the first practical engine. Subsequent steam engines were to power the Industrial Revolution The first safe and successful steam power plant was introduced by Thomas Newcomen before 1712. A number of Newcomen engines were successfully put to use in Britain for draining hitherto unworkable deep mines, with the engine on the surface; these were large machines, requiring a lot of capital to build, and produced about 5 hp (3.7 kW). They were extremely inefficient by modern standards, but when located where coal was cheap at pit heads, opened up a great expansion in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite their disadvantages, Newcomen engines were reliable and easy to maintain and continued to be used in the coalfields until the early decades of the 19th century. By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread (first) to Hungary in 1722, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. A total of 110 are known to have been built by 1733 when the joint patent expired, of which 14 were abroad. In the 1770s, the engineer John Smeaton built some very large examples and introduced a number of improvements. A total of 1,454 engines had been built by 1800.[42] Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor James Watt A fundamental change in working principles was brought about by Scotsman James Watt. In close collaboration with Englishman Matthew Boulton, he had succeeded by 1778 in perfecting his steam engine, which incorporated a series of radical improvements, notably the closing off of the upper part of the cylinder thereby making the low pressure steam drive the top of the piston instead of the atmosphere, use of a steam jacket and the celebrated separate steam condenser chamber. The separate condenser did away with the cooling water that had been injected directly into the cylinder, which cooled the cylinder and wasted steam. Likewise, the steam jacket kept steam from condensing in the cylinder, also improving efficiency. These improvements increased engine efficiency so that Boulton & Watts engines used only 20-25% as much coal per horsepower-hour as Newcomen's. Boulton and Watt opened the Soho Foundry, for the manufacture of such engines, in 1795. By 1783 the Watt steam engine had been fully developed into a double-acting rotative type, which meant that it could be used to directly drive the rotary machinery of a factory or mill. Both of Watt's basic engine types were commercially very successful, and by 1800, the firm Boulton & Watt had constructed 496 engines, with 164 driving reciprocating pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces, and 308 powering mill machinery; most of the engines generated from 5 to 10 hp (7.5 kW). The development of machine tools, such as the lathe, planing and shaping machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut and in turn made it possible to build larger and more powerful engines. Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam engine, built as an integral part of a stone or brick engine-house, but soon various patterns of self-contained portative engines (readily removable, but not on wheels) were developed, such as the table engine. Around the start of the 19th century, the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick, and the American, Oliver Evans began to construct higher pressure non-condensing steam engines, exhausting against the atmosphere. This allowed an engine and boiler to be combined into a single unit compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats. In the early 19th century after the expiration of Watt's patent, the steam engine underwent many improvements by a host of inventors and engineers. Machine tools Main article: Machine tool See also: Interchangeable parts Maudslay's famous early screw-cutting lathes of circa 1797 and 1800. The Middletown milling machine of circa 1818, associated with Robert Johnson and Simeon North. The milling machine built by James Nasmyth between 1829 and 1831 for milling the six sides of a hex nut using an indexing fixture. Sir Joseph Whitworth, a leading machine tool maker and namesake of the British Standard Whitworth thread for machine screws. The Industrial Revolution created a demand for metal parts used in machinery. This led to the development of several machine tools for cutting metal parts. They have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of clocks and watches and scientific instrument makers to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels. Consequently, the use of metal was kept to a minimum. Wooden components had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal parts and frames became more common. Hand methods of production were very laborious and costly and precision was difficult to achieve. Pre-industrial machinery was built by various craftsmen—millwrights built water and wind mills, carpenters made wooden framing, and smiths and turners made metal parts. The first large machine tool was the cylinder boring machine used for boring the large-diameter cylinders on early steam engines. The planing machine, the milling machine and the shaping machine were developed in the early decades of the 19th century. Although the milling machine was invented at this time, it was not developed as a serious workshop tool until somewhat later in the 19th century. Watch video: Demonstration of industrial lathe on YouTube Watch video: Demonstration of milling machine on YouTube Watch video: Demonstration of metal planer on YouTube Military production, as well, had a hand in the development of machine tools. Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early in the 19th century, was employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, as a young man where he would have seen the large horse-driven wooden machines for cannon boring made and worked by the Verbruggans. He later worked for Joseph Bramah on the production of metal locks. Bramah patented a lathe that had similarities to the slide rest lathe. Maudslay perfected the slide rest lathe, which could cut machine screws of variable pitches using changeable gears between the spindle and the lead screw. Before its invention screws could not be cut to any precision using various earlier lathe designs, some of which copied from a template.[43] Maudslay's lathe was called one history's most important inventions. Maudslay left Bramah's employment and set up his own shop. He was engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These machines were all metal and were the first machines for mass production and making components with a degree of interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools, and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth. James Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for the first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of Leeds. Roberts was a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer of the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement. In half century following the invention of the fundamental machine tools the machinery industry would become the largest segment of the economy, by value added, in the U.S. Chemicals The Thames Tunnel (opened 1843). Cement was used in the world's first underwater tunnel The large scale production of chemicals was an important development during the Industrial Revolution. The first of these was the production of sulphuric acid by the lead chamber process invented by the Englishman John Roebuck (James Watt's first partner) in 1746. He was able to greatly increase the scale of the manufacture by replacing the relatively expensive glass vessels formerly used with larger, less expensive chambers made of riveted sheets of lead. Instead of making a small amount each time, he was able to make around 100 pounds (50 kg) in each of the chambers, at least a tenfold increase. The production of an alkali on a large scale became an important goal as well, and Nicolas Leblanc succeeded in 1791 in introducing a method for the production of sodium carbonate. The Leblanc process was a reaction of sulphuric acid with sodium chloride to give sodium sulphate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium sulphate was heated with limestone (calcium carbonate) and coal to give a mixture of sodium carbonate and calcium sulphide. Adding water separated the soluble sodium carbonate from the calcium sulphide. The process produced a large amount of pollution (the hydrochloric acid was initially vented to the air, and calcium sulphide was a useless waste product). Nonetheless, this synthetic soda ash proved economical compared to that from burning specific plants (barilla) or from kelp, which were the previously dominant sources of soda ash,[44] and also to potash (potassium carbonate) derived from hardwood ashes. These two chemicals were very important because they enabled the introduction of a host of other inventions, replacing many small-scale operations with more cost-effective and controllable processes. Sodium carbonate had many uses in the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries. Early uses for sulphuric acid included pickling (removing rust) iron and steel, and for bleaching cloth. The development of bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) by Scottish chemist Charles Tennant in about 1800, based on the discoveries of French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, revolutionised the bleaching processes in the textile industry by dramatically reducing the time required (from months to days) for the traditional process then in use, which required repeated exposure to the sun in bleach fields after soaking the textiles with alkali or sour milk. Tennant's factory at St Rollox, North Glasgow, became the largest chemical plant in the world. After 1860 the focus on chemical innovation was in dyestuffs, and Germany took world leadership, building a strong chemical industry.[45] Aspring chemists flocked to German universities in the 1860–1914 era to learn the latest techniques. British scientists by contrast, lacked research universities and did not train advanced students; instead the practice was to hire German-trained chemists.[46] Cement In 1824 Joseph Aspdin, a British bricklayer turned builder, patented a chemical process for making portland cement which was an important advance in the building trades. This process involves sintering a mixture of clay and limestone to about 1,400 °C (2,552 °F), then grinding it into a fine powder which is then mixed with water, sand and gravel to produce concrete. Portland cement was used by the famous English engineer Marc Isambard Brunel several years later when constructing the Thames Tunnel.[47] Cement was used on a large scale in the construction of the London sewerage system a generation later. Gas lighting Main article: Gas lighting Another major industry of the later Industrial Revolution was gas lighting. Though others made a similar innovation elsewhere, the large scale introduction of this was the work of William Murdoch, an employee of Boulton and Watt, the Birmingham steam engine pioneers. The process consisted of the large scale gasification of coal in furnaces, the purification of the gas (removal of sulphur, ammonia, and heavy hydrocarbons), and its storage and distribution. The first gas lighting utilities were established in London between 1812 and 1820. They soon became one of the major consumers of coal in the UK. Gas lighting had an impact on social and industrial organisation because it allowed factories and stores to remain open longer than with tallow candles or oil. Its introduction allowed night life to flourish in cities and towns as interiors and streets could be lighted on a larger scale than before. Glass making Main article: Glass production The Crystal Palace held the Great Exhibition of 1851 A new method of producing glass, known as the cylinder process, was developed in Europe during the early 19th century. In 1832, this process was used by the Chance Brothers to create sheet glass. They became the leading producers of window and plate glass. This advancement allowed for larger panes of glass to be created without interruption, thus freeing up the space planning in interiors as well as the fenestration of buildings. The Crystal Palace is the supreme example of the use of sheet glass in a new and innovative structure.. Paper machine Main article: Paper machine A machine for making a continuous sheet of paper on a loop of wire fabric was patented in 1798 by Nicholas Louis Robert who worked for Saint-Léger Didot family in France. The paper machine is known as a Fourdrinier after the financiers, brothers Sealy and Henry Fourdrinier, who were stationers in London. Although greatly improved and with many variations, the Fourdriner machine is the predominant means of paper production today. The method of continuous production demonstrated by the paper machine influenced the development of continuous rolling of iron and later steel and other continuous production processes.[48] Agriculture Main article: British Agricultural Revolution The British Agricultural Revolution is considered one of the causes of the Industrial Revolution because improved agricultural productivity freed up workers to work in other sectors of the economy.[49] Industrial technologies that affected farming included the seed drill, the Dutch plow, which contained iron parts, and the threshing machine. Jethro Tull's invented an improved seed drill in 1701. It was a mechanical seeder which distributed seeds evenly across a plot of land and planted them at the correct depth. This was important because the yield of seeds harvested to seeds planted at that time was around four or five. Tull's seed drill was very expensive and not very reliable and therefore did not have much of an impact. Good quality seed drills were not produced until the mid 18th century.[50] Joseph Foljambe's Rotherham plough of 1730, was the first commercially successful iron plough.[51] The threshing machine, invented by Andrew Meikle in 1784, displaced hand threshing with a flail, a laborious job that took about one-quarter of agricultural labor.[52] It took several decades to diffuse[53] and was the final straw for many farm labourers, who faced near starvation, leading to the 1830 agricultural rebellion of the Swing Riots. Machine tools and metalworking techniques developed during the Industrial Revolution eventually resulted in precision manufacturing techniques in the late 19th century for mass-producing agricultural equipment such as reapers, binders and combine harvesters.[54] Mining Coal mining in Britain, particularly in South Wales started early. Before the steam engine, pits were often shallow bell pits following a seam of coal along the surface, which were abandoned as the coal was extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable, the coal was mined by means of an adit or drift mine driven into the side of a hill. Shaft mining was done in some areas, but the limiting factor was the problem of removing water. It could be done by hauling buckets of water up the shaft or to a sough (a tunnel driven into a hill to drain a mine). In either case, the water had to be discharged into a stream or ditch at a level where it could flow away by gravity. The introduction of the steam pump by Savery in 1698 and the Newcomen steam engine in 1712 greatly facilitated the removal of water and enabled shafts to be made deeper, enabling more coal to be extracted. These were developments that had begun before the Industrial Revolution, but the adoption of John Smeaton's improvements to the Newcomen engine followed by James Watt's more efficient steam engines from the 1770s reduced the fuel costs of engines, making mines more profitable. Coal mining was very dangerous owing to the presence of firedamp in many coal seams. Some degree of safety was provided by the safety lamp which was invented in 1816 by Sir Humphry Davy and independently by George Stephenson. However, the lamps proved a false dawn because they became unsafe very quickly and provided a weak light. Firedamp explosions continued, often setting off coal dust explosions, so casualties grew during the entire 19th century. Conditions of work were very poor, with a high casualty rate from rock falls. Other developments Other developments included more efficient water wheels, based on experiments conducted by the British engineer John Smeaton[55] the beginnings of a machinery industry [56][12] and the rediscovery of concrete (based on hydraulic lime mortar) by John Smeaton, which had been lost for 1300 years.[57] Transportation Main article: Transport during the British Industrial Revolution See also: Productivity improving technologies (historical)#Infrastructures At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed to move heavy goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for conveying coal to rivers for further shipment, but canals had not yet been constructed. Animals supplied all of the motive power on land, with sails providing the motive power on the sea. The Industrial Revolution improved Britain's transport infrastructure with a turnpike road network, a canal and waterway network, and a railway network. Raw materials and finished products could be moved more quickly and cheaply than before. Improved transportation also allowed new ideas to spread quickly. Canals Main article: History of the British canal system The Bridgewater Canal, famous because of its commercial success, crossing the Manchester Ship Canal, one of the last canals to be built. Building of canals dates to ancient times. The Grand Canal in China, "the world's largest artificial waterway and oldest canal still in existence," parts of which were started between the 6th and 4th centuries BC, is 1,121 miles (1,804 km) long and links Hangzhou with Beijing.[58] Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials to be easily transported across the country, coal being a common commodity. A single canal horse could pull a load dozens of times larger than a cart at a faster pace.[59][60] Canals began to be built in the late 18th century to link the major manufacturing centres across the country. Known for its huge commercial success, the Bridgewater Canal in North West England, which opened in 1761 and was mostly funded by The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. From Worsley to the rapidly growing town of Manchester its construction cost £168,000 (£21,920,770 as of 2013),[61][62] but its advantages over land and river transport meant that within a year of its opening in 1761, the price of coal in Manchester fell by about half.[63] This success helped inspire a period of intense canal building, known as Canal Mania.[64] New canals were hastily built in the aim of replicating the commercial success of the Bridgewater Canal, the most notable being the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Thames and Severn Canal which opened in 1774 and 1789 respectively. By the 1820s, a national network was in existence. Canal construction served as a model for the organisation and methods later used to construct the railways. They were eventually largely superseded as profitable commercial enterprises by the spread of the railways from the 1840s on. The last major canal to be built in the United Kingdom was the Manchester Ship Canal, which upon opening in 1894 was the largest ship canal in the world,[65] and opened Manchester as a port. However it never achieved the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for and signalled canals as an dying mode of transport in an age dominated by railways, which were quicker and often cheaper. Britain's canal network, together with its surviving mill buildings, is one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial Revolution to be seen in Britain. Roads Construction of the first macadamized road in the United States (1823). In the foreground, workers are breaking stones "so as not to exceed 6 ounces in weight or to pass a two-inch ring".[66] Much of the original British road system was poorly maintained by thousands of local parishes, but from the 1720s (and occasionally earlier) turnpike trusts were set up to charge tolls and maintain some roads. Increasing numbers of main roads were turnpiked from the 1750s to the extent that almost every main road in England and Wales was the responsibility of a turnpike trust. New engineered roads were built by John Metcalf, Thomas Telford and most notably John McAdam, with the first 'macadamised' stretch of road being Marsh Road at Ashton Gate, Bristol in 1816.[67] The major turnpikes radiated from London and were the means by which the Royal Mail was able to reach the rest of the country. Heavy goods transport on these roads was by means of slow, broad wheeled, carts hauled by teams of horses. Lighter goods were conveyed by smaller carts or by teams of pack horse. Stage coaches carried the rich, and the less wealthy could pay to ride on carriers carts. Railways Main article: History of rail transport in Great Britain Painting depicting the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, the first inter-city railway in the world and which spawned Railway Mania due to its success. Wagonways for moving coal in the mining areas had started in the 17th century and were often associated with canal or river systems for the further movement of coal. These were all horse drawn or relied on gravity, with a stationary steam engine to haul the wagons back to the top of the incline. The first applications of the steam locomotive were on wagon or plate ways (as they were then often called from the cast-iron plates used). Horse-drawn public railways did not begin until the early years of the 19th century when improvements to pig and wrought iron production were lowering costs. See: Metallurgy Reducing friction was one of the major reasons for the success of railroads compared to wagons. This was demonstrated on an iron plate covered wooden tramway in 1805 at Croydon, U.K. “ A good horse on an ordinary turnpike road can draw two thousand pounds, or one ton. A party of gentlemen were invited to witness the experiment, that the superiority of the new road might be established by ocular demonstration. Twelve wagons were loaded with stones, till each wagon weighed three tons, and the wagons were fastened together. A horse was then attached, which drew the wagons with ease, six miles in two hours, having stopped four times, in order to show he had the power of starting, as well as drawing his great load.”[68] Steam locomotives began being built after the introduction of high pressure steam engines around 1800. These engines exhausted used steam to the atmosphere, doing away with the condenser and cooling water. They were also much lighter weight and smaller in size for a given horsepower than the stationary condensing engines. A few of these early locomotives were used in mines. Steam-hauled public railways began with the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. On 15 September 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened, the first inter-city railway in the world and was attended by Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington.[69] The railway was engineered by Joseph Locke and George Stephenson, linked the rapidly expanding industrial town of Manchester with the port town of Liverpool. The opening was marred by problems, due to the primitive nature of the technology being employed, however problems were gradually ironed out and the railway became highly successful, transporting passengers and freight. The success of the inter-city railway, particularly in the transport of freight and commodities, led to Railway Mania. Construction of major railways connecting the larger cities and towns began in the 1830s but only gained momentum at the very end of the first Industrial Revolution. After many of the workers had completed the railways, they did not return to their rural lifestyles but instead remained in the cities, providing additional workers for the factories. |
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