Industrial Revolution: An New Era in The Industrial World

The industrial revolution was a reform in the industrial world that started in the later part of the 18th century. The revolution involved many new inventions that significantly changed the way and speed many important items were produced, and led into major changes in mining, manufacturing, agriculture and transport. All the inventions were made to make the life of people easier. The whole revolution lead in to most people transferring from agriculture life to town and cities were payments were higher and working was maybe a bit easier.

One of the biggest reforms was the improvement of the textiles industry. The cotton spinning was patented in 1769 and involved the use of the water frame (invented by Richard Arkwright), the Spinning Jenny (invented by James Hargreaves) and the Spinning mule (invented by Samuel Crompton). The water frame was the name that was given to a spinning frame when water was used to power it. The Spinning Jenny was a new kind of spinning wheel which made producing yarn easier and faster, and enabled a worker to work eight or more spools at one time.  The spinning mule was pretty close to what the Spinning Jenny was. These inventions were a huge advancement in the industry and producing yarn was made so much faster allowing more items to be produced and exchanged.

The other biggest invention was James Watts’ new, improved version of the steam engine which was invented to make the use of coal in to steam power more effective. His steam engine used 75% less coal than the earlier versions and was therefore a lot better to use for steam engines in factory machines and in railways. Steamships began to also replace the normal sailing ships since they were able to travel effectively all the time since they didn’t depend on the weather. The engine replaced all the other sources of power and became the main source, replacing the human labour and horses. Because of the increase in the use of steam engines, more coal was needed to be dug up which led into more work and more workers themselves in coal mines. Many people were killed in the mines due to some unfortunate accidents, and you could think that it was thanks to James Watts that these deaths had to occur. In the end, I think that the steam engine was a brilliant invention and it’s still used a lot these days.