Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a time of drastic change and transformation from hand tools and hand made items to machine manufactured and mass produced goods. This change generally helped life but also hindered it as well. Pollution, such as CO2 levels in the atmosphere rose, working conditions declined and the number of women and children working increased. The government, the arts, literature, music and architecture and man's way of looking at life all changed during the period. The Industrial Revolution was mainly based upon the cotton industry, subsequently, most of the inventions made during the hundred years after 1780 were mainly for manufacturing and producing cotton. The year was 1733, the demand for cotton cloth was high, but production was low. This crisis had to be solved or England's economy would be hindered. The answer came from a British weaver, John Kay, who invented and fashioned the flying shuttle, which cut weaving time in half. John Kay was a pioneer and his invention paved the way for numerous inventors. In 1764 James Hargreaves, a carpenter and hand-loom weaver invented the spinning jenny. This invention was capable of producing sixteen threads at once, these threads however, were not strong e
The wife was often thought of as a superior servant. Because the Industrial Revolution increased the scale of production, the factory system came about. Capitalists, people who have their own materials, money and space, bought many machines and stored them in a factory, where hired people worked the whole day manufacturing goods. Medical advances of the Industrial Revolution, such as Edward Jenner's technique of vaccination, contributed to the decline in the virulence of certain fatal diseases. Workplaces were unventilated and machines were not safely fenced off. Cleaning cotton, a tedious and time consuming job was simplified in 1793 by Eli Whitney with the cotton gin, which could clean cotton 50 times as fast. Conditions in factories and mines were dirty and dangerous. Before the 1750's life was very primitive but simple, which might have been better than sophisticated and complicated. Housing was generally poorly built, water was not clean and crowding was not uncommon for the working class families. This eventually lead to overpopulation, and then lead to underemployment and poverty. First-generation urban workers had to learn how to discipline themselves to the factory whistle and survive in a slum. Richard Arkwright solved this problem in 1769 by inventing the water frame. Most workers could not tell time nor did they even own clocks, yet they were still expected to begin and end work at the same time everyday. The factory system had replaced the cottage industry. Houses of middle class families were no where near as depressing as those of the working class.
Common topics in this essay:
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Edward Jenner's,
Eli Whitney,
Pollution CO2,
John Kay,
Matthew Boulton,
Samual Crompton,
James Hargreaves,
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Richard Arkwright,
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women children,
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