Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is the name that historians have given to the period in history when there was a large and rapid change in the way things were made.

It began in England in the middle of the 1700s and spread to Europe and North America by the early 1800s. It meant that instead of most things being made by hand in small workshops they began to be made more cheaply in large quantities by powered machines in factories.

New ideas and inventions were also taken up in mining, the working of metals and in the transportation of goods. The most important new invention of the industrial revolution was the steam engine, which was used to power the factories, pump out the deeper mines and in railway engines. The heat from burning Coal became the main the source of power, where before it had been the muscles of humans and animals.

People who study history still disagree on why it happened when it did , and why it happened in England first. It built on a new spirit of studying things through science in the 1600s called by historians the Enlightenment. England also was a politically stable country throughout the 1700s with no wars at home (although it had many abroad). It was also fortunate in that it had many of the raw materials needed to make and power the new machines close by within its borders. It also had an overseas empire that would buy the goods it made.

Some historians see the industrial revolution as finishing about 1820, but they agree this was only the start of change in the way we make things which continues right up to the present time.