Science,Technology, and the Industrial Revolution

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Industrialization is the process in which a society or country (or world) transforms itself from a primarily agricultural society into one based on the manufacturing of goods and services. Individual manual labor is often replaced by mechanized mass production and craftsmen are replaced by assembly lines. Characteristics of industrialization include the use of technological innovation to solve problems as opposed to superstition or dependency upon conditions outside human control such as the weather, as well as more efficient division of labor and economic growth.

The Continuing Industrial Revolution The experience of some of the world's oldest and largest industrial economies demonstrates the stages of industrialization. In the pre-industrial economies of the United Kingdom and the countries of Northern Europe, most activity was directed towards commerce, concentrating on trading with countries in their empires. Some people still lived at a subsistence level, concentrating on the production of food. Technology was comparatively primitive, and any crafting of wood and metal goods was generally done to support farming, trade, or to provide hardware for everyday use. Long-distance transportation of goods was rare. Market towns acted as trading centres for the exchange of foodstuffs and other local products. Natural events, such as crop failures induced by weather or disease, could easily upset the pattern of economic activity. The opportunity to accumulate capital to fund economic growth and generate more wealth was limited.

By the middle of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution was under way. This began in the United Kingdom, but followed soon after in other countries of northern Europe and, from the 1790s, in the United States. The process of industrialization gathered pace with every decade that passed. Although a significant amount of manufacturing took place in rural areas, many industries located in the emerging cities. People were attracted to these centres by the lure of work, and the processes of urbanization and industrialization became intimately linked. In 1800, only 25 per cent of Britain's population lived in cities or towns; by 1881 it was 80 per cent. The production of cotton goods destined for markets in India and South America led the way in the UK. This was followed on a larger scale by coal and iron and steel at the end of the century. One industry supported another. Coal was needed to make iron and steel to build ships and railways, which in turn required coal as fuel. As heavy industry thrived and manufacturing and transport technologies improved, industrial regions developed in the north of England; the Ruhr Valley in Germany, northeast France, and the Meuse Valley of Belgium.

Large-scale industrialization in the US was based largely on the European model. By the end of the 19th century, the United States had surpassed the UK in the production of iron and steel. The abundance of raw materials, a rapidly growing population, and the adoption of innovations such as the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, and the refrigerator, along with petroleum products, provided the basis for a boom in manufacturing. Industry spread from its original centre in the northeast of the country towards the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley creating a powerful and prosperous manufacturing belt stretching from the East Coast to the Midwest.

The main contribution to world manufacturing made by the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the increase in the scale of production. Beginning in 1913, Henry Ford pioneered mass-production methods in his vehicle plants. The analysis of production into its component tasks, which were then performed in order on a production line, allowed higher wages to be paid while reducing operating costs. From this time until the 1960s, the US excelled in the techniques of mass production and led the world in productivity. In recent years, however, the "Fordist" approach has become discredited for its lack of flexibility and for diminishing the skills of the labour force. It has been replaced by more flexible and responsive systems of production, especially within Japanese companies.

Changes That Led to the Revolution

The most important of the changes that brought about the Industrial Revolution were (1) the invention of machines to do the work of hand tools; (2) the use of steam, and later of other kinds of power, in place of the muscles of human beings and of animals; and (3) the adoption of the factory system.
It is almost impossible to imagine what the world would be like if the effects of the Industrial Revolution were swept away. Electric lights would go out. Automobiles and airplanes would vanish. Telephones, radios, and television would disappear Most of the abundant stocks on the shelves of department stores would be gone. The children of the poor would have little or no schooling and would work from dawn to dark on the farm or in the home. Before machines were invented, work by children as well as by adults was needed in order to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter for all.
The Industrial Revolution came gradually. It happened in a short span of time, however, when measured against the centuries people had worked entirely by hand. Until John Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733 and James Hargreaves the spinning jenny 31 years later, the making of yarn and the weaving of cloth had been much the same for thousands of years. By 1800 a host of new and faster processes were in use in both manufacture and transportation.
This relatively sudden change in the way people live deserves to be called a revolution. It differs from a political revolution in its greater effects on the lives of people and in not coming to an end, as, for example, did the French Revolution.
Instead, the Industrial Revolution grew more powerful each year as new inventions and manufacturing processes added to the efficiency of machines and increased productivity. Indeed, since World War I the mechanization of industry has increased so enormously that another revolution in production is taking place.
Causes of the British Industrial Revolution:

• expansion of trade, mercantile economic policy (see previous lecture)
• decline of:
• feudalism--farmers were no longer bound to the land
• guild system--the guild for a particular trade could no longer control who set up a new business
• the system of customary prices--the market is more free, instead of the old system where changing the price because of a shortage was seen as profiteering
• agricultural changes
• enclosure =the abolishment of the old system of communal farming and its replacement with family farms.  Supposedly everyone had the same share of land as before, but the smallest farmers didn't have enough to survive as an independent farm and they went out of business and went looking for work.  Took place 16th century to about 1820.
• four field crop rotation--wheat, turnips, barley, clover or alfalfa (turnips and hay crops make it possible to keep more livestock)
• new scientific approaches to farming (one of the pioneer scientific investigators of agriculture was an Englishman named Jethro Tull )
• average agricultural surplus per worker doubled from about 25% to about 50%
• workers no longer needed in agriculture were available for industrial jobs

 Narrative/ Things I learned


The group presented their report with their motivational activities such as games. They used words that has a connection to their report.They also let us categorize those important information and tools to it's specific are or century in the industrial revolution.
History of Industrialization touches the development of our industry nowadays. The advancement of our industry is the effect of the proper usage of machines in the past era or ages. These machines widely affect the progression of our industry in this era.

Source:Nature Gallery (Global Trends [Population Growth])

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

SEE ALSO, Europe Transformed

Author:   Lewis Hackett  Date: 1992

Industrialization: The First Phase