Student Handout 1-Background Information on the Industrial ...
Student Handout 1-Background Information on the Industrial Revolution
“Revolution” means change. So “industrial revolution” is a rapid change from an agricultural society to an industrial society. Products that were once made by hand or at home were now made at factories by machine. In this lesson, we will focus on three basic societal characteristics of an industrial revolution:
1) Expansion of transportation: This allows raw materials to arrive at factories and final products to travel to markets more efficiently and in larger quantity.
2) Innovation or discovery of better power sources: This increases the production rate of machines at factories.
3) Improvements made to industrial process: This decreases the amount of time needed to make the product in the factory.
The first Industrial Revolution was said to occur in Britain around 1750 (starting date varies according to historian) when new innovations and available man-power made it possible to produce cloth in factories. America’s own Eli Whitney contributed to this textile mass production process when he invented the cotton gin (patented in 1794), which made it possible to separate cotton seeds quickly from the cotton.
The first industrial revolution in the United States occurred decades later. Ignoring British emigration laws designed to keep factory production a national secret, Samuel Slater moved to America in 1789. Having worked in a textile factory, he had memorized the design of a spinning frame, and in 1793 replicated it in America. He created the first successful textile factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and has been popularly named “the father of the American Industrial Revolution” as a result. Now raw cotton from the south could be sent north instead of exported to England in order to produce clothing. After Slater’s initial success in Rhode Island, Francis Cabot Lowell created a textile industry in America setting up his textile mills and factories in Massachusetts. His Waltham factory integrated the latest mechanization and incorporated a chain of tasks within one factory (a process which could be labeled “the American Factory System.”)
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