Search results
Just a few years after the War, in the early 1870s, Ohio mines produced roughly five million tons of coal per year. In a decade, the number doubled to ten million tons and shot to 20 million tons by the end of the century. Despite the rise of oil and natural gas, which were both more efficient, coal remained a constant in manufacturing.
- Thomas Humphrey
- 2018
- Overview
- Characteristics of the Industrial Revolution
Historians conventionally divide the Industrial Revolution into two approximately consecutive parts. What is called the first Industrial Revolution lasted from the mid-18th century to about 1830 and was mostly confined to Britain. The second Industrial Revolution lasted from the mid-19th century until the early 20th century and took place in Britain, continental Europe, North America, and Japan. Later in the 20th century, the second Industrial Revolution spread to other parts of the world.
Read more below: None
history of Europe: The Industrial Revolution
Read more about the Industrial Revolution in the History of Europe article.
How did the Industrial Revolution change economies?
The Industrial Revolution transformed economies that had been based on agriculture and handicrafts into economies based on large-scale industry, mechanized manufacturing, and the factory system. New machines, new power sources, and new ways of organizing work made existing industries more productive and efficient. New industries also arose, including, in the late 19th century, the automobile industry.
The main features involved in the Industrial Revolution were technological, socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following: (1) the use of new basic materials, chiefly iron and steel, (2) the use of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine, (3) the invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy, (4) a new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of labour and specialization of function, (5) important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, and (6) the increasing application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 15 Things to Know About the Industrial Revolution
There were also many new developments in nonindustrial spheres, including the following: (1) agricultural improvements that made possible the provision of food for a larger nonagricultural population, (2) economic changes that resulted in a wider distribution of wealth, the decline of land as a source of wealth in the face of rising industrial production, and increased international trade, (3) political changes reflecting the shift in economic power, as well as new state policies corresponding to the needs of an industrialized society, (4) sweeping social changes, including the growth of cities, the development of working-class movements, and the emergence of new patterns of authority, and (5) cultural transformations of a broad order. Workers acquired new and distinctive skills, and their relation to their tasks shifted; instead of being craftsmen working with hand tools, they became machine operators, subject to factory discipline. Finally, there was a psychological change: confidence in the ability to use resources and to master nature was heightened.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
People also ask
How did the Industrial Revolution change society?
What was the Industrial Revolution?
What was the Industrial Revolution like in 1760 to 1830?
How did industrialisation contribute to the growth of urban areas?
Oct 29, 2009 · The Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, a time of great growth in technologies and inventions, transformed rural societies into industrialized, urban ones. ... In the decades to come, ...
The transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy took more than a century in the United States, but that long development entered its first phase from the 1790s through the 1830s. The Industrial Revolution had begun in Britain during the mid-18th century, but the American colonies lagged far behind the mother country in part because ...
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain, the Industrial Revolution spread ...
One of the reasons that later industrialization progressed at such a greater pace than before was the improvement in power sources. The early industrial revolution depended upon steam engines and waterpower. The earliest engines were large and prohibitively expensive for all but the largest firms.
Industrialism was to have a profound effect on the way people lived in the United States, dramatically changing the nation's economy and way of life and transforming the United States from a rural (country) farming society into an urban (city) industrial society. Most historians agree that the Industrial Revolution took place over more than a ...
