What Was the Industrial Revolution?

What Was the Industrial Revolution?

One day in 1830, two groups of train passengers gathered in Baltimore, Maryland, to witness an unusual race.

One group climbed into a train car on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad rail line. On a track right next to it, several people climbed into another car. Those train cars were not at all like they are today. Train cars in the early nineteenth century were not enclosed spaces with comfortable seats and nice windows to look out of. They were more like wagons. They often moved coal from place to place. And they were pulled by horses!

That’s what made this race so different. The first train car was to be pulled by a horse, as usual. But the second train car—-well, this was something new. It was to be pulled by a machine: a steam locomotive. The locomotive was designed and built by the American inventor Peter Cooper. It was fueled by coal.

Cooper’s machine was not very big. It was only thirteen feet long and weighed about ten thousand pounds. Compare that to a modern locomotive, which often is about seventy-six feet long and weighs more than four hundred thousand pounds. Cooper’s machine was so small that it soon was nicknamed the Tom Thumb, after the boy in a seventeenth-century fairy tale who was the size of a thumb.

The two tracks on the Baltimore and Ohio line were side by side for about thirteen miles to Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland. That’s how far the race would be. The horse started off at a trot and took the lead. But Cooper furiously fed the furnace of the Tom Thumb shovelfuls of coal, and the machine picked up speed. (The coal burned to create steam, which powered the engine.) The Tom Thumb passed the horse and soon was moving at almost fifteen miles per hour. No horse could keep up with that while pulling a train car filled with people.

It looked like the Tom Thumb was sure to win. The locomotive pulled farther and farther away from the horse-drawn train. Suddenly a belt on the Tom Thumb broke loose from a pulley! The locomotive slowed to a stop. The horse trotted past.

Because of the mechanical trouble, the horse won the race that day in Maryland. Still, it was obvious that it was just a matter of time until steam-powered locomotives took the place of horses.

Indeed, when this race took place, the age of machines had already begun. This was a time known as the Industrial Revolution, the period when machine power began to replace human, and animal, power throughout much of the world. It was a time of great change that affected people’s way of life. During the Industrial Revolution, products were mass-produced for the first time. Factories were built. Cities grew. People began working at jobs that had never existed before.

The Industrial Revolution made just about everything in modern life possible. Without it, there would be no automobiles or airplanes. No electricity or electronics. No telegraph or telephones. No computers or the internet. No cell phones or social media.

Historians all agree that the success of the Industrial Revolution came at a cost.

Because of the Industrial Revolution, weapons are now deadlier. Cities are much more crowded. And the environment has suffered greatly.

Historians also agree that the Industrial Revolution began near the middle of the eighteenth century. After that, they don’t agree on much. Some believe that it lasted through the early 1900s. Some believe the Industrial Revolution went on for about a hundred years or so, paused for a while, then picked up again in the early twentieth century. Others believe that there have been several industrial revolutions. (They say we are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution right now.) And still others believe that the Industrial Revolution never really ended. They say the “revolution” really has just been one long “evolution.”

Everyone agrees, though, that the Industrial Revolution changed the world forever.

Chapter 1
Before the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the mid-1700s. But its roots go back even farther than that.

Before then, people in Britain mostly stayed close to home. More than three out of every four workers farmed the land. Others worked in small workshops, making items such as shoes, furniture, and especially, clothing. Most of the food that people ate they grew themselves. The things they used they made themselves. If not, they were grown or made by someone close by in their own community.

But Britain’s population was increasing rapidly in the eighteenth century. In 1700, about 6.5 million people lived in England, Wales, and Scotland. That figure grew to 7.9 million in 1750. By 1800, it was almost 11 million! Those people had to be fed and clothed. Old ways of doing things needed to be improved to meet new needs.