Chapter 20 The Industrial Revolution Begins

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Chapter 20 The Industrial Revolution Begins

• Section 1
• Dawn of the Industrial Age

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• Setting the Scene
• For thousands of years following the rise of
  civilization, most people lived and worked in
  small farming villages. However, a chain of
  events set in motion in the mid-1700s changed
  that way of life for all time. Today, we call
  this period of change the Industrial Revolution.
• The Industrial Revolution started in Britain. In
  contrast with most political revolutions, it was
  neither sudden nor swift. Instead, it was a long,
  slow, uneven process in which production shifted
  from simple hand tools to complex machines. New
  sources of power replaced human and animal power.
  In the 250 years since it began, the Industrial
  Revolution has spread from Britain to the rest of
  Europe, to North America, and around the globe.

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I. A Turning Point in History

• In 1750, most people worked the land, lived in
  simple cottages, made their own clothes and grew
  their own food

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I. A Turning Point in History

• The rural way of life began to disappear and by
  the 1850s, many country villages had grown into
  industrial towns and cities

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I. A Turning Point in History

• During the 1800s, a series of interrelated
  causes resulted in the Industrial Revolution

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II. A New Agricultural Revolution
Oddly enough, the Industrial Revolution was made
possible in part by a change in the farming
fields of Western Europe. The first agricultural
revolution took place some 11,000 years ago, when
people learned to farm and domesticate animals.
About 300 years ago, a second agricultural
revolution took place. It greatly improved the
quality and quantity of farm products.
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A. Improved Methods of Farming

• The Dutch built dikes to reclaim land from the
  sea and British farmers practiced crop rotation

The Dutch build a dike around an area to be
drained of water. The water was then pumped into
a series of drainage canals by windmills
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A. Improved Methods of Farming
Jethro Tull invented the seed drill that planted
seeds in rows
Tull's most original contribution was the seed
drill. Tull's seed drill made sowing more
economical and yielded greater amount of crops.
In the past, farmers would scatter their seed by
hand which was wasteful because many failed to
take root. The seed drill allowed farmers to sow
seeds in well-spaced rows at specific depths.
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B. Enclosure Movement
Rich landowners practiced enclosure, taking over
and fencing off communal land
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B. Enclosure Movement
Farm output rose but many farmers were put out of
work and migrated to cities, forming a large
labor force for industry
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III. The Population Explosion
The population boom of the 1700s was due more to
declining death rates than to rising birthrates
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IV. New Technology
A third factor that helped trigger the Industrial
Revolution was the development of new technology
Four of the major inventions of the 19th century
the lightning steam press, the electric
telegraph, the locomotive, and the steamboat
Spinning Jenny
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A. An Energy Revolution
One new power source was coal that was used to
power the steam engine, built in 1712 by Thomas
Newcomen
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A. An Energy Revolution
Improvements were made by James Watt, and the
steam engine became a key power source of the
Industrial Revolution
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B. Improved Iron
In 1709, experiments by Abraham Darby led to
higher quality and less expensive iron
Abraham Darby I (1678-1717) lays claim to the
history behind a revolutionary process called
'coke-smelting'. The sulphur in most coal made
the iron too brittle, but in 1709 Darby succeeded
in smelting iron with coke.