Explain the Industrial Revolution?

Question: Explain the Industrial Revolution!?
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The Industrial Revolution may be defined as the application of power-driven machinery to manufacturing!. It had its beginning in remote times, and is still continuing in some places!. In the eighteenth century all of western Europe began to industrialize rapidly, but in England the process was most highly accelerated!. England's head start may be attributed to the emergence of a number of simultaneous factors!.

Britain had burned up her magnificent oak forests in its fireplaces, but large deposits of coal were still available for industrial fuel!. There was an abundant labor supply to mine coal and iron, and to man the factories!. From the old commercial empire there remained a fleet, and England still possessed colonies to furnish raw materials and act as captive markets for manufactured goods!. Tobacco merchants of Glasgow and tea merchants of London and Bristol had capital to invest and the technical know-how derived from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century!. Last, but not least important, the insularity of England saved industrial development from being interrupted by war!. Soon all western Europe was more or less industrialized, and the coming of electricity and cheap steel after 1850 further speeded the process!.
I!. The Agricultural Revolution

The English countryside was transformed between 1760 and 1830 as the open-field system of cultivation gave way to compact farms and enclosed fields!. The rotation of nitrogen-fixing and cereal crops obviated the necessity of leaving a third or half the land fallow each planting!. Another feature of the new farming was the cultivation of turnips and potatoes!. Jethro Tull (1674-1741) and Lord Townshend popularized the importance of root crops!. Tull's most original contributions were the seed drill and horse hoe!. The seed drill allowed a much greater proportion of the seed to germinate by planting it below the surface of the ground out of reach of the birds and wind!. ''Turnip'' Townshend was famous for his cultivation of turnips and clover on his estate of Raynham in Norfolk!.

He introduced the four-course rotation of crops:
wheat
turnips
oats or barley
clover!.

Robert Bakewell (1725-1795) pioneered in the field of systematic stock breeding!. Prior to this, sheep had been valued for wool and cattle for strength; Bakewell showed how to breed for food quality!. Bakewell selected his animals, inbred them, kept elaborate genealogical records, and maintained his stock carefully!. He was especially successful with sheep, and before the century's end his principle of inbreeding was well established!. Under Bakewell's influence, Coke of Holkham in Norfolk not only improved his own farms, but every year held ''sheep shearings'' to which farmers from all over Europe came for instruction and the exchange of knowledge!.

Propaganda for the new agriculture was largely the work of Arthur Young!. In 1793 the Board of Agriculture was established, and Arthur Young was its secretary!. Although a failure as a practical farmer, he was a great success as a publicist for scientific agriculture!. Even George III ploughed some land at Buckingham Palace and asked his friends to call him ''Farmer George!.''
II!. Technological Change since 1700

The technological changes of the eighteenth century did not appear suddenly!. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the methods of making glass, clocks, and chemicals advanced markedly!. By 1700 in England, and by 1750 in France, the tendency of the state and the guilds to resist industrialization was weakening!. In fact, popular interest in industrialization resembled the wave of enthusiasm elicited by experimental agriculture!.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century in England, the use of machines in manufacturing was already widespread!. In 1762 Matthew Boulton built a factory which employed more than six hundred workers, and installed a steam engine to supplement power from two large waterwheels which ran a variety of lathes and polishing and grinding machines!. In Staffordshire an industry developed which gave the world good cheap pottery; chinaware brought in by the East India Company often furnished a model!. Josiah Wedgewood (1730-1795) was one of those who revolutionized the production and sale of pottery!. From 1700 on, the Staffordshire potters used waterwheels or windmills to turn machines which ground and mixed their materials!. After 1850 machinery was used extensively in the pottery-making process!. The price of crockery fell, and eating and drinking consequently became more hygienic!.

The textile industry had some special problems!. It took four spinners to keep up with one cotton loom, and ten persons to prepare yarn for one woolen weaver!. Spinners were busy, but weavers often had to be idle for lack of yarn!. In 1733 John Kay, a Lancashire mechanic, patented his flying shuttle!. Weaving could then be done more quickly, but it still was delayed until yarn was available in more abundance!. In 1771 Richard Arkwright's ''water frame'' was producing yarn!. About the same time, James Hargreaves (d!. 1778) patented a spinning jenny on which one operator could spin many threads simultaneously!. Then in 1779 Samuel Crompton combined the jenny and the water frame in a machine known as ''Crompton's mule,'' which produced quantities of fine, strong yarn!. The yarn famine had come to an end!.

Between 1780 and 1860 other textile processes were mechanized!. In 1784 a machine was patented which printed patterns on the surface of cotton or linen by means of rollers!. In 1894 Northrup produced an automatic loom, and when the power loom became efficient, women replaced men as weavers, although there were still hand weavers in the paisley shawl trade as late as 1850!. By 1812 the cost of making cotton yarn had dropped nine-tenths, and by 1800 the number of workers needed to turn wool into yarn had been reduced by four-fifths!. And by 1840 the labor cost of making the best woolen cloth had fallen by at least half!.
A!. The Steam Engine

The steam engine provided a landmark in the industrial development of Europe!. The first modern steam engine was built by an engineer, Thomas Newcomen, in 1705 to improve the pumping equipment used to eliminate seepage in tin and copper mines!. Newcomen's idea was to put a vertical piston and cylinder at the end of a pump handle!. He put steam in the cylinder and then condensed it with a spray of cold water; the vacuum created allowed atmospheric pressure to push the piston down!. In 1763 James watt, an instrument-maker for Glasgow University, began to make improvements on Newcomen's engine!. He made it a reciprocating engine, thus changing it from an atmospheric to a true "steam engine!." He also added a crank and flywheel to provide rotary motion!.

In 1774 the industrialist Michael Boulton took Watt into partnership, and their firm produced nearly five hundred engines before Watt's patent expired in 1800!. Water power continued in use, but the factory was now liberated from the streamside!. A Watt engine drove Robert Fulton's experimental steam vessel Clermont up the Hudson in 1807!.
B!. Electric Power

It was not until 1873 that a dynamo capable of prolonged operation was developed, but as early as 1831 Michael Faraday demonstrated how electricity could be mechanically produced!. Through the nineteenth century the use of electric power was limited by small productive capacity, short transmission lines, and high cost!. Up to 1900 the only cheap electricity was that produced by generators making use of falling water in the mountains of southeastern France and northern Italy!. Italy, without coal resources, soon had electricity in every village north of Rome!. Electric current ran Italian textile looms and, eventually, automobile factories!. As early as 1890 Florence boasted the world's first electric streetcar!.

The electrification of Europe proceeded apace in the twentieth century!. Russia harnessed the Dneiper River and the Irish Free State built power plants on the River Shannon!. Germany was supplied with electricity in the 1920's, and by 1936 Great Britain had built an ''electric grid'' completely covering the country!. Electricity was a major factor in the phenomenally rapid industrialization of Russia in the 1930's!.
C!. Railroads

The coming of the railroads greatly facilitated the industrialization of Europe!. At mid!.eighteenth century the plate or rail track had been in common use for moving coal from the pithead to the colliery or furnace!. After 1800 flat tracks were in use outside London, Sheffield, and Munich!. With the expansion of commerce, facilities for the movement of goods from the factory to the ports or cities came into pressing demand!. In 1801 Richard Trevithick had an engine pulling trucks around the mine where he worked in Cornwall!. By 1830 a railway was opened from Liverpool to Manchester; and on this line George Stephenson's ''Rocket'' pulled a train of cars at fourteen miles an hour!.

The big railway boom in Britain came in the years 1844 to 1847!. The railway builders had to fight vested interests-for example, canal stockholders, turnpike trusts, and horse breeders-but by 1850, aided by cheap iron and better machine tools, a network of railways had been built!. By midcentury railroad trains travelling at thirty to fifty miles an hour were not uncommon, and freight steadily became more important than passengers!. After 1850 in England the state had to intervene to regulate what amounted to a monopoly of inland transport!. But as time went on the British railways developed problems!. The First World War (1914-1918) found them suffering from overcapitalization, rising costs, and state regulation!.

British success with steam locomotion, however, was enough to encourage the building of railroads in most European couWww@QuestionHome@Com

This occured towards the end of the 19th century!. This is the time when huge factories were built and the railroad and steel companies were flourishing!.Www@QuestionHome@Com