Industrial revolution intro

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Industrial revolution

England 1700

England 1800

                                    

                     Changes in agriculture

AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION (England 18th century)

- new techniques (crop rotation, new products)

- new tools (mechanisation)

result: greater agricultural yields

large landowners profit

small farmers/tenant farmers find it difficult

New implements: seeder from Jetro Tull

Demographic Revolution

• Consequence of greater agricultural yields: population grows.
• 1750-1850 England: from 6 to 18 million inhabitants.                                                 
• More clothing needed => favourable for textile industry.

Cottage industry

Population growth meant more clothing was needed. An opportunity for the small farmers to supplement their income. Work consisted mainly of weaving and spinning.  

Producing goods at home is called cottage industry. It rose sharply in the 18th century

The industrial revolution put an end to this growth

Weavers and spinners

Traditionally, more spinners were needed than weavers        

With the invention of the shuttle, weaving went even faster. This put even more pressure on innovations within the spinning process                                                                                                

Success followed after some 30 years: the spinning jenny.                   

Both the shuttle and the spinning jenny could be used within cottage industries.

Shooting spool

1733

To make clothes faster, you need to be able to weave faster.

Englishman John Kay invented the shuttle. It allows you to weave much faster than by hand.

The shuttle was not yet a real machine: it was operated by hand.

Spinning Jenny

1764

If you can weave faster, you also need more thread.

With James Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny, you could spin 8 and later 16 threads at a time

Shooting spool and Spinning Jenny: example of looking crrtically at improvements

Shooting spool

Spinning Jenny

From muscle power to hydropower

The Spinning Jenny was a real improvement but even so, fabric production was still very slow. More and more inventions were made to increase textile production.

For example, Richard Arkwright invented a loom that you could connect to a waterwheel: the waterframe (1767).

The water frame was large ánd because it needed running water, it was placed in buildings suitable for it > the first factories.

Hydropower

The water frame required water, of course. So this could no longer be done in cottage industries.

Entrepreneurs built large buildings near water in which they put these machines et voilá, the birth of factories

Drawback?

From Hydropower to steam power

To make the Water Frame (water wheel) turn, you need running water, otherwise the wheel will not turn, after all. Especially in summer, there is not always enough running water available. 

So inventors worked on another solution. This solution was steam power. James Watt's improvement of the steam engine in 1776 enabled steam power to be used for spinning and later for weaving.

From Hydropower to steam power

Soon, more and more factories were built with steam engines. 

The knowledge of the steam engine also applied to transport: steamboats, trains. so there was a huge acceleration within the transport of raw materials as well as finished products

Factories could now be built anywhere. So no longer necessarily on a river or by the sea or close to the raw material needed.  

Factories were increasingly built in areas where enough workers were available. 

Unemployed farm workers flocked to the factories 

from small-scale manual production in the cottage industry ...

... to large-scale machine production in factories