The Industrial Revolution, sometimes called the First Industrial Revolution in contrast to the subsequent Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succeeding the Second Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840. Economic historians agree that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history, comparable only to the adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and rise of the mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and population growth. Many technological and architectural innovations were British. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the leading commercial nation, with GDP per capita considerably over the world average. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Rapid adoption of mechanized textiles spinning occurred in Britain in the 1780s, and high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurred after 1800. Mechanised textile production spread from Britain to continental Europe and the US in the early 19th century. A recession occurred from the late 1830s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanised spinning and weaving, slowed as markets matured despite increased adoption of locomotives, steamships, and hot blast iron smelting. New technologies such as the electrical telegraph, widely introduced in the 1840s in the UK and US, were not sufficient to drive high rates of growth. Rapid growth reoccurred after 1870, springing from new innovations in the Second Industrial Revolution. These included steel-making processes, mass production, assembly lines, electrical grid systems, large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and use of advanced machinery in steam-powered factories. The Industrial Revolution influenced almost every aspect of life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth, with the standard of living improving for most in the Western world, though others have said it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the 20th century. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing occurred in China and India; after the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing took place in North America and Western Europe.
Etymology The earliest recorded use of "Industrial Revolution" was in 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto, announcing that France had entered the race to industrialise. Raymond Williams states: "The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen, between 1811–18, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the [19th] century." The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change became more common by the 1830s, as in Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui's description in 1837 of la révolution industrielle. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which...changed the whole of civil society". His book was not translated into English until the late 19th century, and the expression did not enter everyday language till then. Credit for its popularisation is given to Arnold Toynbee, whose 1881 lectures gave a detailed account of the term.
Economic historians such as Mendels, Pomeranz, and Kridte argue proto-industrialisation in parts of Europe, the Islamic world, Mughal India, and China created the social and economic conditions that led to the Industrial Revolution, thus causing the Great Divergence. Some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and that revolution is a misnomer.
Requirements
Several key factors enabled industrialisation. High agricultural productivity—exemplified by the British Agricultural Revolution—freed up labor and ensured food surpluses. The presence of skilled managers and entrepreneurs, an extensive network of ports, rivers, canals, and roads for efficient transport, and abundant natural resources such as coal, iron, and water power further supported industrial growth. Political stability, a legal system favorable to business, and access to financial capital also played crucial roles. Once industrialisation began in Britain in the 18th century, its spread was facilitated by the eagerness of British entrepreneurs to export industrial methods and the willingness of other nations to adopt them. By the early 19th century, industrialisation had reached Western Europe and the United States, and by the late 19th century, Japan.
Important technological developments The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s, the following gains had been made in important technologies:
Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by water, and later steam, increased output per worker by a factor of around 500. The power loom increased output by a factor of 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50. Large gains in productivity occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but were not as great as in cotton. Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. The adaptation 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. Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The steam engine began being used to power blast air in the 1750s, enabling a large increase in iron production by overcoming the limitation of water power. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760. It was improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher blast furnace temperatures. The puddling process produced structural grade iron at lower cost than the finery forge. The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than hammering wrought iron. Developed in 1828, hot blast greatly increased fuel efficiency in iron production. Invention of machine tools – the first machine tools were the screw-cutting lathe, the cylinder boring machine, and the milling machine. Machine tools made the economical manufacture of precision metal parts possible, although it took decades to develop effective techniques for making interchangeable parts.
Textile manufacture
British textile industry
In 1750, Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton, most of which was spun and woven by the cottage industry in Lancashire. The work was done by hand in workers' homes or master weavers' shops. Wages were six times those in India in 1770 when productivity in Britain was three times higher. In 1787, raw cotton consumption was 22 million pounds, most of which was cleaned, carded, and spun on machines. The British textile industry used 52 million pounds of cotton in 1800, and 588 million pounds in 1850. The share of value added by the cotton industry in Britain was 2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801, and 22% in 1831. Value added by the woollen industry was 14% in 1801. Cotton factories numbered about 900 in 1797. In 1760, approximately one-third of cotton cloth manufactured was exported, rising to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781, cotton spun amounted to 5 million pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800, less than 0.1% of world cotton cloth was produced on machinery invented in Britain. In 1788, there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising to 7 million over the next 30 years.
Wool The earliest European attempts at mechanised spinning were with wool; however, wool spinning proved more difficult to mechanise than cotton. Productivity improvement in wool spinning during the Industrial Revolution was significant, but less than cotton.
Silk
Arguably the first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, because the Italian silk industry guarded its secrets, the state of the industry at that time is unknown. Although Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk from Italy was cut off to eliminate competition. To promote manufacturing, the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which were exhibited in the Tower of London.
Cotton Parts of India, China, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have a history of hand-manufacturing cotton textiles, which became a major industry after 1000 AD. Most cotton was grown by small farmers alongside food and spun in households for domestic consumption. In the 1400s, China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth. By the 17th century, almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing, and it could be used as a medium of exchange. In India, cotton textiles were manufactured for distant markets, often produced by professional weavers. Cotton was a difficult raw material for Europe to obtain before it was grown on colonial plantations. Spanish explorers found Native Americans growing sea island (Gossypium barbadense) and upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum). Sea island cotton was exported from Barbados from the 1650s. Upland cotton was uneconomical because of the difficulty of removing seed, a problem solved by the cotton gin. A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1806 became the parent genetic material for 90% of world production today; it produced bolls three to four times faster to pick.
Trade and textiles
The Age of Discovery was followed by colonialism beginning around the 16th century. Following the discovery of a trade route to India around southern Africa by the Portuguese, the British founded the East India Company, and other countries founded companies, which established trading posts throughout the Indian Ocean region. A large segment of this trade was in cotton textiles, which were purchased in India and sold in Southeast Asia, including the Indonesian archipelago where spices were purchased for sale to Southeast Asia and Europe. By the 1760s, cloth was over three-quarters of the East India Company's exports. Indian textiles were in demand in Europe, where previously only wool and linen were available; however, cotton goods consumed in Europe was minor until the early 19th century.
Pre-mechanized European textile production
By 1600, Flemish refugees began weaving cotton in English towns where cottage spinning and weaving of wool and linen was established. They were left alone by the guilds who did not consider cotton a threat. Earlier European attempts at cotton spinning and weaving were in 12th-century Italy and 15th-century southern Germany, but these ended when the supply of cotton was cut off. British cloth could not compete with Indian cloth because India's labour cost was approximately one-fifth that of Britain's. In 1700 and 1721, the British government passed Calico Acts to protect domestic woollen and linen industries from cotton fabric imported from India. The demand for heavier fabric was met by a domestic industry based around Lancashire that produced fustian, a cloth with flax warp and cotton weft. Flax was used for the warp because wheel-spun cotton had insufficient strength, the resulting blend was not as soft as 100% cotton and more difficult to sew. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving were done in households, for domestic consumption, and as a cottage industry under the putting-out system. 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 4–8 spinners to supply one handloom weaver.
Invention of textile machinery
The flying shuttle, patented in 1733 by John Kay, doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving. It became widely used around Lancashire after 1760 when John's son, Robert, invented the dropbox, which facilitated changing thread colors. Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning frame and the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing wool to a more even thickness. The technology was developed with John Wyatt of Birmingham. In 1743, a factory opened in Northampton with 50 spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn. Paul and Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Based on two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it was later used in the first cotton spinning mill. In 1764, in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny. It was the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles. The jenny worked similarly to the spinning wheel, by first clamping down on the fibres, then drawing them out, followed by twisting. It was a simple, wooden-framed machine that only cost £6 for a 40-spindle model in 1792 and was used mainly by home spinners. The water frame, was developed by Richard Arkwright, who patented it in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built by Kay, hired by Arkwright. The water frame could produce a hard, medium-count thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be made in Britain. Arkwright used water power at a factory in Cromford, Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name. Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves's spinning jenny. Crompton's mule could produce finer thread than hand spinning, at lower cost. Mule-spun thread was of suitable strength to be used as a warp and allowed Britain to produce highly competitive yarn in large quantities. Realising 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. Samuel Horrocks patented a loom in 1813, which was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822, and these were produced in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co. Roberts was a maker of high-quality machine tools and pioneer in the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement. The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the US, who thought upland cotton would be profitable if a better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli Whitney responded by inventing the inexpensive cotton gin. A man using a cotton gin could remove seed in one day, which previously took two months. These advances were capitalised on by entrepreneurs, of whom the best known is Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were developed by such people as Kay and Thomas Highs. 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 developed the use of power, which made cotton manufacture a mechanised industry. Other inventors increased the efficiency of spinning, so the supply of yarn increased greatly. Steam power was then applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories. Though mechanisation dramatically decreased the cost of cotton cloth, by the mid-19th century machine-woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand-woven Indian cloth. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand-spun and woven fabric in low-wage India, destroying the Indian industry.
Metallurgy
British iron production In the UK in 1720, there were 20,500 tons of charcoal iron and 400 tons with coke. In 1806, charcoal iron production had dropped to 7,800 tons and coke cast iron was 250,000 tons. In 1750, the UK imported 31,000 tons of bar iron and either refined from cast iron or directly produced 18,800 tons of bar iron, using charcoal and 100 tons using coke. In 1796, the UK was making 125,000 tons of bar iron with coke and 6,400 tons with charcoal; imports were 38,000 tons and exports were 24,600 tons. In 1806 the UK did not import bar iron but exported 31,500 tons.
Iron process innovations
A major change in the iron industries, during the Industrial Revolution, was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal. For a given amount of heat, mining coal required much less labour than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal, and coal was more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before the enormous increase in iron production that took place in the late 18th century. In 1709, Abraham Darby made progress using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale. However, the coke pig iron made was not suitable for making wrought iron and was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper. In 1750, coke had replaced charcoal in the smelting of copper and lead and was in widespread use in glass production. In the smelting and refining of iron, coal and coke produced inferior iron to that made with charcoal because of the coal's sulfur content. Low sulfur coals were known, but they still contained harmful amounts. Another factor limiting the iron industry was the scarcity of water power to power blast bellows. This limitation was overcome by the steam engine. Use of coal in iron smelting started before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by 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 in the coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead in 1678, copper in 1687, and iron foundries in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce wrought iron until 1755, when Darby's son Abraham Darby II built furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley where low sulfur coal was available, and not far from Coalbrookdale. These furnaces were equipped with water-powered bellows, the water being pumped by Newcomen atmospheric engines. Abraham Darby III installed similar steam-pumped, water-powered blowing cylinders at the Dale Company when he took control in 1768. The Dale Company used Newcomen engines to drain its mines and made parts for engines which it sold throughout the country. Steam engines made the use of higher-pressure and volume blast practical; however, the leather used in bellows was expensive to replace. In 1757, ironmaster John Wilkinson patented a hydraulic powered blowing engine for blast furnaces. The blowing cylinder for blast furnaces was introduced in 1760 and the first blowing cylinder made of cast iron is believed to be the one used at Carrington in 1768, designed by John Smeaton. Cast iron cylinders for use with a piston were difficult to manufacture. James Watt had difficulty trying to have a cylinder made for his first steam engine. In 1774 Wilkinson invented a machine for boring cylinders. After Wilkinson bored the first successful cylinder for a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1776, he was given an exclusive contract for providing cylinders. Watt developed a rotary steam engine in 1782, they were widely applied to blowing, hammering, rolling and slitting. In addition to lower cost and greater availability, coke had other advantages over charcoal in that it was harder and made the column of materials flowing down the blast furnace more porous and did not crush in the much taller furnaces of the late 19th century. As cast iron became cheaper and widely available, it began being a structural material for bridges and buildings. A famous early example is The Iron Bridge built in 1778 with cast iron produced by Abraham Darby III. However, most cast iron was converted to wrought iron. Conversion of cast iron had long been done in a finery forge. An improved refining process known as potting and stamping was developed, but this was superseded by Henry Cort's puddling process. Cort developed significant iron manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784. Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost. Puddling was backbreaking and extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40. Puddling became widely used after 1800. British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of iron imported from Sweden and Russia to supplement domestic supplies. Because of the increased British production, by the 1790s Britain eliminated imports and became a net exporter of bar iron. Hot blast, patented by the Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, was the most important development of the 19th century for saving energy in making pig iron. The amount of fuel to make a unit of pig iron was reduced at first by between one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal; the efficiency gains continued as the technology improved. Hot blast raised the operating temperature of furnaces, increasing their capacity. Using less coal or coke meant introducing fewer impurities into the pig iron. This meant that lower quality coal could be used in areas where coking coal was unavailable or too expensive; however, by the end of the 19th century transportation costs fell considerably. Shortly 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 springs. Benjamin Huntsman developed his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. 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.
Copper smelting Smelting of copper in reverberatory furnaces using coal was pioneered in Bristol in the 1680s. Swansea in Britain developed in the 19th century into the World's prime hub of copper smelting importing ore from places like Chile, Cuba and Australia. Reverberatory furnaces were introduced to Chile around 1830 by Charles Saint Lambert. This revolutionized Chilean copper mining to such degree that the country came to supply 19% of the copper produced worldwide in the 19th century. The use of mineral coal instead charcoal in reverberatory furnaces introduced by Saint Lambert also meant a decrease in the dependency on the scarce firewood to be found on Atacama Desert and its surrounding semi-arid areas as was the case with earlier smelting technology.
Steam power
The development of the stationary steam engine was important in the Industrial Revolution; however, during its early period, most 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. The first commercially successful industrial use of steam power was patented by Thomas Savery in 1698. He constructed in London a low-lift combined vacuum and pressure water pump that generated about one horsepower (hp) and was used in waterworks and a few mines. The first successful piston steam engine was introduced by Thomas Newcomen before 1712. Newcomen engines were installed for draining hitherto unworkable deep mines, with the engine on the surface; these were large machines, requiring a significant amount of capital, and produced upwards of 3.5 kW (5 hp). They were extremely inefficient by modern standards, but when located where coal was cheap at pit heads, they opened up a great expansion in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. The engines spread to Hungary in 1722, then Germany and Sweden; 110 were built by 1733. In the 1770s John Smeaton built large examples and introduced improvements. 1,454 engines had been built by 1800. Despite their disadvantages, Newcomen engines were reliable and easy to maintain and continued to be used in coalfields until the early 19th century. A fundamental change in working principles was brought about by James Watt, a Scotsman. With financial support from his business partner, the Englishman Matthew Boulton, he had succeeded by 1778 in perfecting his steam engine, which incorporated radical improvements, notably closing the upper part of the cylinder making the low-pressure steam drive the top of the piston instead of the atmosphere 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. These improvements increased engine efficiency so Boulton and Watt's 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. In 1783, the Watt steam engine had been fully developed into a double-acting rotative type, which meant it could be used to directly drive the rotary machinery of a factory or mill. Both of Watt's basic engine types were commercially successful, and by 1800 the firm Boulton and 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 3.5 to 7.5 kW (5 to 10 hp). 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 self-contained rotative engines were developed, such as the table engine. Around the start of the 19th century, at which time the Boulton and Watt patent expired, the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick and the American Oliver Evans began to construct higher-pressure non-condensing steam engines, exhausting against the atmosphere. Watt himself had refrained from building any such engine for fear of its dangers, holding back the development of self-propelled machines. High pressure yielded an engine and boiler compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steamboats. Small industrial power requirements continued to be provided by animal and human muscle until widespread electrification in the 20th century. These included crank-powered, treadle-powered, and horse-powered machinery in workshops and small plants.
Machine tools
Over time it was shown that wooden components had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the joints tended to work loose. As the Industrial Revolution progressed machines with metal parts and frames, making them more common. Other uses of metal parts were in firearms and threaded fasteners, such as machine screws, bolts, and nuts. There was need for precision in making parts, to allow better working machinery, interchangeability of parts, and standardization of threaded fasteners. The demand for metal parts led to the development of several machine tools. They have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by clock and scientific instrument makers, to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. Before machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools: hammers, files, scrapers, saws, and chisels. Consequently, use of metal machine parts was kept to a minimum. Hand methods of production were laborious and costly, and precision was difficult to achieve. The first large precision machine tool was the cylinder boring machine invented by John Wilkinson in 1774. It was designed to bore the large cylinders on steam engines. Wilkinson's machine was the first to use the principle of line-boring, where the tool is supported on both ends. The planing machine, the milling machine and the shaping machine were developed. Though the milling machine was invented at this time, it was not developed as a serious workshop tool until later. James Fox and Matthew Murray were manufacturers of machine tools who found success in exports and developed the planer around the same time as Richard Roberts. Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers, was a mechanic who had been employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. He worked as an apprentice under Jan Verbruggen, who, in 1774, installed a horizontal boring machine which was the first industrial size lathe in the UK. Maudslay was hired by Joseph Bramah for the production of high-security metal locks that required precision craftsmanship. Bramah patented a lathe with similarities to the slide rest lathe, Maudslay perfected this lathe, which cut machine screws of different thread pitches. Before its invention, screws could not be cut with precision. The slide rest lathe was called one of history's most important inventions. Although it was not Maudslay's idea, he was the first to build a functional lathe using innovations of the lead screw, slide rest, and change gears. Maudslay set up a shop, and built the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These machines were all-metal and the first for mass production and making components with interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools, and he trained men to build on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth. The techniques to make mass-produced metal parts of sufficient precision to be interchangeable is attributed to the U.S. Department of War which perfected interchangeable parts for firearms. In the half-century following the invention of the fundamental machine tools, the machine industry became the largest industrial sector of the U.S. economy.
Chemicals Large-scale production of chemicals was an important development. The first of these was the production of sulphuric acid by the lead chamber process, invented by John Roebuck in 1746. He was able to increase the scale of the manufacture by replacing expensive glass vessels with larger, cheaper chambers made of riveted sheets of lead. Instead of a small amount, he was able to make around 50 kilograms (100 pounds) in each chamber, a tenfold increase. The production of an alkali on a large scale became an important goal, and Nicolas Leblanc succeeded in 1791 in introducing a method for the production of sodium carbonate (soda ash). The Leblanc process was a reaction of sulfuric acid with sodium chloride to give sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium sulfate was heated with calcium carbonate and coal to give a mixture of sodium carbonate and calcium sulfide. Adding water separated the soluble sodium carbonate from the calcium sulfide. The process produced significant pollution, nonetheless, this synthetic soda ash proved economical compared to that from burning plants, and to potash (potassium carbonate) produced from hardwood ashes. Soda ash and sulphuric acid were important because they enabled the introduction of other inventions, replacing small-scale operations with more cost-effective and controllable processes. Sodium carbonate had uses in the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries. Early uses for sulfuric acid included pickling (removing rust from) iron and steel, and for bleaching cloth. The development of bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) by chemist Charles Tennant in 1800, based on the discoveries of Claude Louis Berthollet, revolutionised the bleaching processes in the textile industry by reducing the time required for the traditional process then in use: repeated exposure to the sun in fields after soaking the textiles with alkali or sour milk. Tennant's St Rollox Chemical Works, Glasgow, became the world's largest chemical plant. After 1860 the focus on chemical innovation was in dyestuffs, and Germany took leadership, building a strong chemical industry. Aspiring chemists flocked to German universities in 1860–1914 to learn the latest techniques. British scientists lacked research universities and did not train advanced students; instead, the practice was to hire German-trained chemists.
Concrete
In 1824 Joseph Aspdin, a British bricklayer turned builder, patented a chemical process for making portland cement, an important advance in the building trades. This process involves sintering clay and limestone to about 1,400 °C (2,552 °F), then grinding it into a fine powder which is mixed with water, sand and gravel to produce concrete. In the 1840s, Joseph's son William Aspdin developed his father's invention. Portland cement concrete was used by English engineer Marc Isambard Brunel when constructing the Thames Tunnel, the world's first underwater tunnel. Portland cement concrete was used on a large scale in the construction of the London sewer system a generation later.
Gas lighting Though others made a similar innovation, the large-scale introduction of gas lighting was the work of William Murdoch, an employee of Boulton & Watt. The process consisted of the large-scale gasification of coal in furnaces, purification of the gas, and its storage and distribution. The first gas lighting utilities were established in London between 1812 and 1820. They became one of the major consumers of coal in the UK. Gas lighting affected social and industrial organisation because it allowed factories and stores to remain open longer. Its introduction allowed nightlife to flourish in cities and towns as interiors and streets could be lighted on a larger scale than before.
Glass making
Glass was made in ancient Greece and Rome. A new method of glass production, known as the cylinder process, was developed in Europe during the 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 a significant example of the use of sheet glass in a new and innovative structure.
Paper machine A machine for making a continuous sheet of paper, on a loop of wire fabric, was patented in 1798 by Louis-Nicolas Robert in France. The paper machine is known as a Fourdrinier after the financiers, brothers Sealy and Henry Fourdrinier, who were stationers in London. The Fourdrinier machine is the predominant means of production today. The method of continuous production demonstrated by the paper machine influenced the development of continuous rolling of iron, steel and other continuous production processes.
Agriculture The British Agricultural Revolution raised crop yields and released labour for industrial employment, although per-capita food supply in much of Europe remained stagnant until the late 18th century. Key innovations included Jethro Tull's early 18th-century mechanical seed drill (1701), which ensured more even sowing and depth control, Joseph Foljambe's iron Rotherham plough (c. 1730) and Andrew Meikle's threshing machine (1784), which reduced manual labour requirements. Hand threshing with a flail, was a laborious job that had taken about one-quarter of agricultural labour, lower labour requirements resulted in lower wages and fewer labourers, who faced near starvation, leading to the 1830 Swing Riots.
Mining Coal mining in Britain 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. 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 up the shaft or to a sough (a tunnel driven into a hill to drain a mine). The water had to be discharged into a stream or ditch at a level where it could flow away. Introduction of the steam pump by Thomas Savery in 1698 and the Newcomen steam engine in 1712 facilitated removal of water and enabled deeper shafts, enabling more coal to be extracted. These developments had begun before the Industrial Revolution, but the adoption of Smeaton's improvements to the Newcomen engine, followed by Watt's steam engines from the 1770s, reduced the fuel costs, making mines more profitable. The Cornish engine, developed in the 1810s, was more efficient than the Watt engine. Coal mining was dangerous owing to the presence of firedamp in coal seams. A degree of safety was provided by the safety lamp invented in 1816 by Sir Humphry Davy, and independently by George Stephenson. However, the lamps proved a false dawn because they became unsafe quickly and provided weak light. Firedamp explosions continued, often setting off coal dust explosions, so casualties grew during the 19th century. Conditions were very poor, with a high casualty rate from rock falls.
Transportation
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed to move heavy goods. Wagonways were used for conveying coal to rivers for further shipment, but canals had not yet been widely constructed. Animals supplied all motive power on land, with sails providing motive power on the sea. The first horse railways were introduced toward the end of the 18th century, with steam locomotives introduced in the early 19th century. Improving sailing technologies boosted speed by 50% between 1750 and 1830. The Industrial Revolution improved Britain's transport infrastructure with turnpike road, waterway and rail networks. Raw materials and finished products could be moved quicker and cheaper than before. Improved transport allowed ideas to spread quickly.
Canals and improved waterways
Before and during the Industrial Revolution navigation on British rivers was improved by removing obstructions, straightening curves, widening and deepening, and building navigation locks. Britain had over 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) of navigable rivers and streams by 1750. Canals and waterways allowed bulk materials to be economically transported long distances inland. This was because a horse could pull a barge with a tens of times larger than could be drawn in a cart. Canals began to be built in the UK in the late 18th century to link major manufacturing centres. Known for its huge commercial success, the Bridgewater Canal in North West England, was opened in 1761 and mostly funded by The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. From Worsley to the rapidly growing town of Manchester its construction cost £168,000 (£22,103,210 as of 2013), b