An industrial revolution is a change from an agricultural to a manufacturing-based economy
This happened first in England in the period from about 1775-1825.

Economic change:

• mercantile economy, colonial market
• enclosure --traditional village communal farming replaced with family farms, investment in land improvement (drainage), agricultural research (eg. Jethro Tull)

Key technological developments:
 

• 1709 Abraham Darby smelted iron with coal
• 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the first practical steam engine (at least it was practical for pumping water out of coal mines).  Link to more on early steam engines .
• 1765 opening of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal started a boom in canal-building ( pictures , detailed story )

• 1779  Iron Bridge over the Severn Gorge in Shropshire, England (photo )
• 1783 invention of puddling made economical the production of wrought iron

• worked as an instrument-maker in a university town
• 1763 was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine

• he realized that a lot of energy was lost heating and cooling the cylinder and developed an engine with a separate condenser
• it took a lot of development to go from idea to reality, and here Watt depended on his partner Matthew Boulton
• by 1778 he had an engine that used 1/3 as much fuel as a Newcomen engine
• Watt developed several other improvements , such as the double-acting engine and a rotary engine using a sun-and-planet gear.
• Boulton not only handled patent issues and finances he also understood what kinds of engines would have the largest market

• Telford was an architect who became a designer of canals, bridges, and other engineering works
• his training was an apprenticeship to a stonemason (engineering schools didn't exist in England yet)
• the first iron bridge had used the same design as used for wooden bridges (closeup )
• developed suspension bridges and iron arch bridges that took advantage of the properties of iron--he studied structural form by doing his own experiments
• notice that Telford has specialized knowledge but he didn't learn it in school, in fact his bridges led others to develop new mathematical theories of structure.  Civil engineering was just becoming a recognized profession.

  Hargreaves spinning jenny

• a series of inventions makes possible water or steam powered textile factories, particularly cotton
• 1774-1770 Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny
• 1769 Arkwright invents the water frame
• 1774-1779 Crompton invents the mule
• 1786-1788 Cartwright invents the power loom
• factories spread rapidly, using imported cotton and selling much of the product to England's colonies
• by 1845 2/3 of the population of England worked in industry ( statistics )
• an economist named Andrew Ure wrote that: "It is, in fact, the constant aim and tendency of every improvement in machinery to supersede human labour altogether, or to diminish its cost, by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers for trained artisans."
• rapid industrialization meant miserable conditions for textile mill workers , who were in 1835 46% women and 15% children under 13
• factory life