Industrialization In Great Britain

The shift between a rural to an urban society or from an agrarian to an industrial society can be significantly marked with the age of the Industrial Revolution. Taking place between 1760-1860, this revolution was a time which gave rise to the power of machinery, factories and mass production, which would lead to the development of numerous inventions which would change their respective industries for the better. However, it is important to note how this significant shift from an agrarian to an urban society essentially had its roots in Great Britain, and exactly what inventions were prominent in leading Britain and the rest of the world to commercial industrialization. When it comes to understanding how the Industrial Revolution came about

One of the most prominent industries that was transformed by industrialization, in particular, was the textile industry. Before the revolution, textiles were created mostly in people’s homes with equipment and materials provided by merchants under what was known as the cottage system. However, being that most workers “set their own schedules,” a large number of “inefficiencies” in production would often result, urging the need for new innovations to increase productivity (“Industrial Revolution” para. 5). To solve this issue, what was known as the spinning jenny was invented by Englishman James Hargreaves around 1764; it was a machine that “enabled an individual” to produce “multiple spools of threads simultaneously,” helping to further increase production and require less human energy (“Industrial Revolution” para. 5). Much later in 1785, Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom which became more widely used after 1800; this machine was a huge improvement compared to earlier machines like the aforementioned spinning jenny in that it had greater “weaving speed and efficiency,” and essentially ushered in the need for factories that could house huge machines like these powered by steam (Cleary

The steam engine, essentially, came to be the “energy” that later powered the most “advanced textile inventions” like the spinning mule and the power loom (Cleary 33). Additionally, it “revolutionized” transportation for the rest of Britain when it was “applied” to later inventions such as the steam locomotive invented by British engineer Richard Trevithick and the steamship invented by American Robert Fulton in the early 1800s (Cleary 33). All of these new inventions came to harness the steam engine in one way or another and were able to become more efficient and a lot more powerful, which would inevitably change the way technology, machinery and mass production would work in the years to