Industrial Revolution Research Paper

Words: 1472
Pages: 6

A new era for Britain. Industrial Revolution first began in Great Britain between 1780 & 1850. It refers to the burst of major inventions, technical changes as well as a rapid increase of industrial growth.. With the revolution, it had led Britain to change rapidly in many ways in terms of their work pattern, social class structure, international balance of political power, the population size as well as the standard of living in which majority of poverty had been greatly reduced.

The transformation in industries was not common in history and was also unplanned for Britain. Without any knowledge on industrialization, Britain had to pioneer in industrial technology, social relations and urban living.In addition, tasks were complicated
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With the pressure of doing so for a growing market, it had paved the way in the creation of the world’s first large factory for the cotton and textile industry during the 1770s to 80s. Despite the expansion of the putting - out system of merchant capitalism all across Europe,this industry was most fully developed in Britain. However, there was always the problem of shortage of thread in the textile industry. As cotton textiles was first imported to Britain from the East India Company as a rare and delicate luxury for the upper classes, this led Britain to focus on ways to improve spinning. After years of experimentation, a carpenter, James Hargreaves, invented the spinning jenny in the year 1765.The spinning jenny had greatly improved the textile industry of Britain. At almost the same time, a barber turned manufacturer, Richard Arkwright invented another kind of spinning machine called the water frame. A water frame is a spinning frame that uses water power to operate. Both these inventions had caused an explosion in the cotton textile industry during the 1780s and by 1790, the new machines were producing ten times as much cotton yarn that it had ever produced in …show more content…
By the eighteenth century, shortages of energy as well as wood had become severe in Britain but still remained important as it was a primary source of heat for all in Britain.

With the shortage crisis worsening, Britain turned towards its abundant sources of coal in hopes of replacing wood as an energy source. However, in order to achieve those coal, mines had to dug deeper which led to water constantly filling in the mines.This prompted mechanical pumps to be in use, which were powered by animals. This method was in fact of high price and troublesome.

With the help of both Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705, steam engines were built to replace old methods of mechanical pumps. Though the steam engines were operating successfully in mines, it seemed to cause inefficiency. In early 1760s, a young man by the name of James Watt was studying the steam engines and saw that by adding a separate condenser could reduce the waste of energy, and in 1769, Watt’s discovery had improved the efficiency of the steam engines. This did not stop Watt from continuing his experiments, by doing so, he found a team of skilled workers as well as capital to help with his creations. After twenty years of continuous effort, Watt had made miraculous improvements for steam