Western Civilization

        Life in eighteenth and ninetieth century Britain was a period that changed our society forever but it is one place in time that I would not want to return to. This affected everything from industrial manufacturing to the life of all social classes. This time period made Great Britain the wealthiest country in the world.  The Industrial Revolution forever changed the way we live our lives on a daily basis.

The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain for a few reasons such as natural resources, which were iron and coal, a large labor force, and technological innovations. Britain used wood for heat instead of coal, which left Britain with a large deposit of coal remaining. Social elements also left Britain ahead from everyone else which were education, modern work attitudes and a modern government. The number of educated individuals was greater in Britain, which in the long run help with running the machines and build more factories.

        Britain’s economy before the industrial revolution was based on the cottage industry. Most of the goods were produced out of family home or small factories run by a hand full of people.  Farming was also the primary livelihood in England. That means the products took a great amount of skill and time. These goods were usually in high demand which means the price was higher and only wealthy people could afford them. Cities have not begun to develop yet, people were still living in small towns where agriculture was a very common source of income and also the source for their food. British civilians realized they needed this slow, exhausting process to change. The time it took to transport any goods the price of the product would be way to expensive for any lower or working class to afford. They needed easier ways to transport materials and a way to mass-produce goods. These ideas created the Industrial Revolution.

        The Industrial revolution was a time of dramatic change not only for Britain but also for the whole world. The revolution brought many changes to the way we produced products but some our the invention of machines to do the work of hand tools, the use of steam for power instead of the use of animals or human muscles, and factories to mass produce goods. These changes helped the way they lived their daily lives at the time and for centuries to come but drastically harmed it as well.

        Around the 1760’s the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain. The first inventions were targeted toward the cotton industry. Some of the first inventions were the spinning jenny, which were helped spinners to produce yarn in greater quantities. Another invention was the water-powered frame, which was powered by water or horse to increase the yarn production also. At this point factories officially took over the cottage industries.

         With the invention of many machines that replaced hand tools you no longer needed skilled workers all you needed was someone capable of knowing how the machine works, which helped, make labor cheaper. In a normal factory setting the worker would only have to know how to complete one task in the manufacturing line, which allowed for a team of workers to complete the product in a cheap mass production efficient way. The assembly line drastically altered the way production works.

        In the 19th century was the age of steam, which changed the path of the Industrial Revolution. Steam changed the way Britain ran, everything from factories, mines, powered locomotives and steamships. In this century you also see the railway systems getting built all over Britain, which changed the way people and goods were moved around the country. Steam changed the country from mostly all rural to an industrial country.