Innovations

Major Achievements and Innovations

“Besides textile manufacturing, two other industries were particularly important in the Industrial Revolution in Britain… coal mining and the manufacture of metals” and the expansion of all industries were interrelated (2 p. 155). Steam engines were improved upon as were railroads and both served to increase textile production as well as extracting and utilizing raw materials.

Textiles

James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny and Richard Arkwright’s water frame were two different types of inventions that reshaped the clothing industry. By 1790 they increased cotton yarn production ten times over the rate in 1770 (1 p. 688).

Hargreaves and Arkwright’s spinning machines. (1 p. 689) (6 p. 152, 158)

Steam Power

Steam engines had been invented long before the first Industrial Revolution but it wasn’t until James Watt’s steam engine, which added a separate condenser, coal-burning steam engines became a viable product. He teamed up with other entrepreneurs and savvy businessmen to make steam engines a “practical and commercial success in Britain” and is it considered one of the period’s most important advancements (1 p. 690)

There were a plethora of steam powered machines that developed and they were put to work in all manners of industries. James Nasmyth’s invention, the steam hammer, “epitomized the rapid development of steam power technology” (1 p. 691)

Further Reading: Trevithick’s Steam Circus in 1808

Coal Mining and Metallurgy

More steam powered machines were created to pull up coal which in turn was needed more than ever to power the very same machines. With the help of Henry Cort’s inventions the iron industry went from producing 260,000 tons in 1806 to 3 million tons of iron in 1844 in Britain alone (1 p. 693). He invented steam-powered rolling mills that produced iron in multiple forms as well at the puddling furnace “which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke”, as waterless by product of heated coal (1 p. 691). 

Read more: 1829 Steam Locomotive the Rocket

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1. McKay, John P., et al., et al. A History of World Societies: since 1450. Boston : Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Vol. 2.

2. Breunig, Charles. The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789-1850. Second. New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 1977.

6. Baines, Edward. History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain. London : H. Fisher, R. Fisher, and P. Jackson, 1835. http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7188799M/History_of_the_cotton_manufacture_in_Great_Britain