1. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the late 1700s and saw a shift from manual labor and production to mechanized factory systems powered by steam engines.
2. Great Britain had several advantages that contributed to it being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, including natural resources like coal and iron, navigable rivers for transportation, colonies that provided raw materials and markets for finished goods, and inventors who developed new technologies like the steam engine.
3. The textile industry was one of the first to industrialize, with inventions like the spinning jenny, water frame, and steam-powered loom automating textile production and allowing factories to employ hundreds of workers.
1. B LU E 1 ST YEA R - 201 3
GREEN 1ST YEAR - 2013
Industrial Revolution
2. What’s in a name?
The name “Industrial Revolution” is used to describe
one of the biggest changes in history.
It describes the time when people went from making
goods by hand to making them with machines.
3. WHY IN B RIT A IN ?
Why did the Industrial
Revolution happen?
4. The IR began in Great Britain for a
number of reasons.
The most dramatic
changes in industry
began in Great Britain in
about 1750.
Scientists had been
inventing things during
earlier years. But most of
their work centered
around theories and
ideas.
Now science and
invention took a more
practical turn.
Inventors developed
machines especially
designed to increase
production of goods and
to help people make a
profit.
5. Great Britain had the natural
resources needed for industry…
Great Britain had a good
supply of coal and iron
and it had the
transportation that
industry needed.
7. 1. Navigable rivers
All the major rivers of
Great Britain were
navigable during the
Industrial Revolution.
8. The Severn was used for
the movement of goods
to the Midlands which
had been imported into
Bristol from abroad and
the export of goods from
centres of production in
the Black Country, e.g.
iron goods from
Coalbrookdale.
12. 3. Colonies supplied with abundant
raw material
Britain colonies supplied
raw materials to the
factories in London and
other cities. And the
British government was
eager to support growing
industry.
The colonies were
regarded as a source of
necessary raw materials
for England and were
granted monopolies for
their products, such as
tobacco and sugar, in the
British market.
13. 4. Colonies demanded goods from
the textile and iron industries
The Navigation Act of
1651 stated that all
colonial exports had to
be shipped on English
ships to the British
market, and all colonial
imports had to come by
way of England.
English factories
converted raw goods to
products which were
then shipped back to the
colonies. This provided
the British with a
profitable market, free
from competition.
15. 5. Abundant deposits of coal which
are easily mined and transported.
Coal provides three times
more energy than wood.
Coal kick-started a
revolution in XIII century
Britain, a revolution which
transformed not only the
country but the world
itself.
Coal could produce the
energy to keep the new
steam engines running
and coal was needed to
produce iron. Iron could
be used to improve
machines and tools and it
could be used to build
railroad tracks, bridges
and ships.
16. 6. In Britain the mines were near the
sea, so ships could carry coal cheaply
to the most important market, London.
18. 7. The demand for coal became larger,
but the deeper the miners went the
more water there was underground, so
it was necessary to pump water out of
the mine.
19. 8. Initially people used horse-driven
pumps, but they needed a more
effective way to draw water from much
deeper.
20. 9. In 1712 Thomas Newcomen
invented the atmospheric engine
The first commercially
successful steam engine
was the atmospheric
engine, invented
by Thomas
Newcomen in 1712.
The new engine did the
work of 20 horses and
pumped water from
hundreds of feet below
the ground - making
deeper mines
economically viable.
21. 10. James Watt developed (1763–75) an
improved version of Newcomen's
engine, with a separate condenser.
Boulton and Watt’s early
machines used less coal
than Newcomen’s
23. The Textile Industry before the IR
In the earliest days, British merchants imported
cloth from other lands. Because of the costs of
shipping finished goods, cloth was very expensive.
In the 1600s, Britain began importing raw cotton.
The British spun their own threads and then wove
their own cloth.
Farm families did the work. They set up spinning
wheels and looms in their cottages. Both spinning
wheel and loom were operated by hand: they were
called the “cottage weavers”.
25. The textile industry during the IR
In the 1700s some new machines were invented
which changed the textile industry. Spinners and
weavers left their cottages and went to work in new
factories.
The textile industry moved out of the English
cottages. Mills and factores were built. Workers were
no longer their own bosses. They became factory
hands. They worked in large mills that often
employed up to 600 people.
27. 12. Spinning Jenny
The Spinning Jenny
was invented the first
machine to produce
yarn.
Created in the s. XVIII,
it represented one of the
most important
technical innovations in
the textile industry and
therefore can be
considered one of the
leaders of the industrial
revolution.
29. 14. The mule
In 1779 Samuel
Crompton combined the
spinning jenny and the
water frame into one
machine. He called it the
“mule”. It could spin
much finer threads very
rapidly.
30. Steam-powered loom
With so much thread
being produced, the
textile industry needed a
better loom. In 1785
Edmund Cartwright
invented a steam-
powered loom.