WE
BUY AND SELL INDUSTRIAL ANTIQUES
and
we will soon be listing a selection of factory, warehouse and industrial
accessories, collected from throughout over Europe.
Many
of the vintage industrial units can be adapted for use in today's
homes, adapated into coffee tables, decorative usage, mirrors and
storage.
A
HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL ANTIQUES
Industrial
archaeology, like other branches of archaeology, is the study of
the past, but with a focus on industry or industrial heritage. Industrial
archaeology concerns itself with the physical remains of industry.
It is born out of the need to record and preserve the remains of
industrialisation before they disappear. The study is a multi-disciplinary
one encompassing engineering, architecture, economics and social
aspects of manufacturing/extractive industry as well as the transport
and utilities sector. However, not all aspects of a particular industry
would fall under the definition of industrial archaeology.
The term was coined in the 1950s in Birmingham by Michael Rix although
its meaning and interpretation has changed with use and time. Palmer
and Neaverson (Industrial Archaeology Principles and Practice, 1998)
defined industrial archaeology as: "the systematic study of
structures and artifacts as a means of enlarging our understanding
of the industrial past."
As an interest initially practiced largely by amateurs, it has in
the past been looked down upon by professional archaeologists. However,
with growing awareness of the usefulness of archaeological study
of the recent past, elements of what were formerly 'industrial archaeology'
have been welcomed into the broader framework of mainstream archaeology.
Since the timeframe of study is relatively recent, industrial archaeology
is well placed to develop on the basis of more reliable and absolute
recording of its past, present and future than other areas of archaeological
interest.
Those interested may make field trips to abandoned or mostly forgotten
industrial sites, or may examine annual reports, engineering and
building drawings and documentation, government documents and surveys,
and other historical materials to try to determine and document
what sorts of activities went on, and why, at a particular site,
and construct a history or timeline that shows how a site developed
and changed (and potentially when and why it was abandoned) over
time.
One example of such a site is the Saugus Iron Works National Historic
Site, site of the first integrated iron works in North America.
Since the site dates to the 1600s, developing a clear understanding
of what was done, and how it was carried out, as well as the facility
arrangement, was a painstaking and difficult process.
One of the first areas in the UK to be the subject of a systematic
study of 'industrial archaeology' was the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire,
UK. This landscape developed from the seventeenth century as one
of the first industrial landscapes, and by the 18th century had
a range of extractive industries as well as extensive iron making,
ceramic manufacturing (including porcelain and decorative tiles)
and a series of early railways. The significance of the Ironbridge
Gorge was recognised in 1986 with its designation as a World Heritage
Site, and work by the Ironbridge Archaeology unit over recent years
has revealed a great deal about both technological and social developments
during the post-medieval period.
Following the pioneering lead of Ironbridge, other areas have been
subject to often innovative studies. Recent work in Manchester,
UK, by the university field unit have led to new approaches. Sheffield,
UK, is one of the most intently studied locality of industrial archaeology
in the world. Over the last decade a concerted effort by ARCUS and
the University of Sheffield has led to Sheffield's 18th and 19th
century history as a steel producer being revealed. This has been
enabled by a massive series of redevelopments allowing access to
the archaeology.
Academic programs
Many university archaeology departments include the industrial period
in their degree courses. Dedicated industrial archaeology and industrial
heritage courses are usually at post-graduate level, and are offered
by two universities in North America and in many countries in Europe,
while the Michigan Technological University also has a doctorate
program. In the UK, the University of Birmingham grants a masters
degree in Industrial Heritage Management.
A typical Masters programme in Industrial History or Archaeology
may draw on historical archaeology, anthropology of industry, history
of technology, and historical preservation fields of study. A doctoral
program in Industrial Heritage and Archeology may expand to include
work in American or European civilization, architectural history,
material culture, and heritage management.
Organizations
There are national industrial archaeology societies in many countries:
the Society for Industrial Archaeology ((SIA) in North America,
the Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA) in Great Britain,
CILAC in France, and the Italian AIPAI are among the largest. They
bring together people interested in researching, recording, preserving
and presenting industrial heritage. Industrial architecture, mineral
extraction, heritage-based tourism, power technology, adaptive re-use
of industrial buildings and transport history are just some of the
themes that could be investigated by society members.
They may also be involved in advising on historic preservation matters,
or advising government units on revision or demolition of significant
sites or buildings.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic
and cultural change in late 18th and early 19th century that began
in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an
economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by
industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation
of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques,
and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved
roads and then railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled
primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing)
underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development
of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th
century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines
for manufacturing in other industries.
The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with
different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in
the 1780s and wasn't fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while
T.S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830
(in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, and George IV)
The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during
the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world. The impact
of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to
the Neolithic revolution, when mankind developed agriculture and
gave up its nomadic lifestyle.
The first Industrial Revolution merged into the Second Industrial
Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress
gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships and
railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal
combustion engine and electrical power generation. At the turn of
the century, innovator Henry Ford, father of the assembly line,
stated, "There is but one rule for the industrialist, and that
is: Make the highest quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible,
paying the highest wages possible."
It has been argued that GDP per capita was much more stable and
progressed at a much slower rate until the industrial revolution
and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, and that it
has since increased rapidly in capitalist countries.
The idea and the name
The term 'Industrial Revolution' applied to technological change
was common in the 1830s. Louis-Auguste Blanqui in 1837 spoke of
la révolution industrielle. Friedrich Engels in The Condition
of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial
revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole
of civil society".
The radical nature of the process had been noted before that, in
his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society Raymond Williams
states in the entry for Industry: The idea of a new social order
based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen,
between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the
early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the century.
Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee,
whose lectures given in 1881 gave a detailed account of the process.
Causes
The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complex and remained
a topic for debate, with some historians seeing the Revolution as
an outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the
end of feudalism in Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th
century. As national border controls became more effective, the
spread of disease was lessened, therefore preventing the epidemics
common in previous times. The percentage of children who lived past
infancy rose significantly, leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure
movement and the British Agricultural Revolution made food production
more efficient and less labour-intensive, encouraging the surplus
population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into
cottage industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into
the cities and the newly-developed factories. The colonial expansion
of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international
trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital
are also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the
17th century.
Technological innovation protected by patents (by the Statute of
Monopolies 1623) was, of course, at the heart of it and the key
enabling technology was the invention and improvement of the steam
engine.
The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered
an important catalyst of the Industrial Revolution, particularly
explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as
France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed
tolls and tariffs on goods traded amongst them.
Causes for occurrence in Europe
One question of active interest to historians is why the Industrial
Revolution started in 18th century Europe and not other times like
in Ancient Greece, which already had developed a primitive steam
engine, and other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly
China and India.
Numerous factors have been suggested, including ecology, government,
and culture. Benjamin Elman argues that China was in a high level
equilibrium trap in which the non-industrial methods were efficient
enough to prevent use of industrial methods with high costs of capital.
Kenneth Pomeranz, in the Great Divergence, argues that Europe and
China were remarkably similar in 1700, and that the crucial differences
which created the Industrial Revolution in Europe were sources of
coal near manufacturing centres, and raw materials such as food
and wood from the New World, which allowed Europe to expand economically
in a way that China could not.
However, modern estimates of per capita income in Western Europe
in the late 18th century are of roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing
power parity (and England had a per capita income of nearly 2,000
dollars) whereas China, by comparison, had only 450 dollars. Also,
the average interest rate was about 5% in England and over 30% in
China, which illustrates how capital was much more abundant in England;
capital that was available for investment.
Some historians credit the different belief systems in China and
Europe with dictating where the revolution occurred. The religion
and beliefs of Europe were largely products of Christianity, Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on
men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism),
and Buddha (Buddhism). The key difference between these belief systems
was that those from Europe focused on the individual, while Chinese
beliefs centered around relationships between people. The family
unit was more important than the individual for the large majority
of Chinese history, and this may have played a role in why the industrial
revolution took much longer to occur in China. There was the additional
difference as to whether people looked backwards to a reputedly
glorious past for answers to their questions or looked hopefully
to the future. Furthermore, Western European peoples had experienced
the Renaissance and Reformation; other parts of the world had not
had a similar intellectual breakout, a condition that holds true
even into the 21st century.
In India, the noted historian Rajni Palme Dutt has been quoted as
saying, "The capital to finance the Industrial Revolution in
India instead went into financing the Industrial Revolution in England."
In direct contrast to China, India was split up into many different
kingdoms all fighting for supremacy, with the three major ones being
the Marathas, Sikhs and the Mughals. In addition, the economy was
highly dependent on two sectors--agriculture of subsistence and
cotton, and technical innovation was non-existent. The vast amounts
of wealth were stored away in palace treasuries, and as such, were
easily moved to England.
The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns
the massive lead that Britain had over other countries. Some have
stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that Britain
received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the
British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel
industrial investment. It has been pointed out however that slavery
provided only 5% of the British national income during the years
of the Industrial Revolution.
Alternatively, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large
merchant base may have allowed Britain to produce and utilise emerging
scientific and technological developments more effectively than
countries with stronger monarchies, particularly China and Russia.
Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation
not ravaged by financial plunder and economic collapse, and possessing
the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European merchant fleets
having been destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy). Britain's
extensive exporting cottage industries also ensured markets were
already available for many early forms of manufactured goods. The
nature of conflict in the period resulted in most British warfare
being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating effects of territorial
conquest that affected much of Europe. This was further aided by
Britain's geographical position- an island separated from the rest
of mainland Europe.
Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the Industrial
Revolution due to the availability of key resources it possessed.
It had a dense population for its small geographical size. Enclosure
of common land and the related Agricultural Revolution made a supply
of this labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence
of natural resources in the North of England, the English Midlands,
South Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron,
lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in excellent
conditions for the development and expansion of industry.
The stable political situation in Britain from around 1688, and
British society's greater receptiveness to change (when compared
with other European countries) can also be said to be factors favouring
the Industrial Revolution.
Protestant work ethic
Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence
of an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology
and hard work. The existence of this class is often linked to the
Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status
of dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers, Baptists and
Presbyterians that had flourished with the English Civil War. Reinforcement
of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of
the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market
there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of
England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private
financial investment in industrial ventures.
Dissenters found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all
public offices, as well as education at England's only two Universities
at the time, Oxford and Cambridge, when the restoration of the monarchy
took place and membership in the official Anglican church became
mandatory due to the Test Act. They thereupon became active in banking,
manufacturing and education. The Unitarians, in particular, were
very involved in education, by running Dissenting Academies, where,
in contrast to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and schools
such as Eton and Harrow, much attention was given to mathematics
and the sciences--areas of scholarship vital to the development
of manufacturing technologies.
Historians sometimes consider this social factor to be extremely
important, along with the nature of the national economies involved.
While members of these sects were excluded from certain circles
of the government, they were considered fellow Protestants, to a
limited extent, by many in the middle class, such as traditional
financiers or other businessmen. Given this relative tolerance and
the supply of capital, the natural outlet for the more enterprising
members of these sects would be to seek new opportunities in the
technologies created in the wake of the Scientific revolution of
the 17th century.
Lunar Society
The work ethic argument has, on the whole, tended to neglect the
fact that several inventors and entrepreneurs were rational free
thinkers or "Philosophers" typical of a certain class
of British intellectuals in the late 18th century, and were by no
means normal church goers or members of religious sects. Examples
of these free thinkers were the Lunar Society of Birmingham which
flourished from 1765 to 1809. Its members were exceptional in that
they were among the very few who were conscious that an industrial
revolution was then taking place in Britain. They actively worked
as a group to encourage it, not least by investing in it and conducting
scientific experiments which led to innovative products.
Innovations
The invention of the steam engine was one of the most important
innovations of the industrial revolution. This was made possible
by earlier improvements in iron smelting and metal working based
on the use of coke rather than charcoal. Earlier in the 18th century
the textile industry had harnessed water power to drive improved
spinning machines and looms. These textile mills became the model
for the organisation of human labour in factories.
Besides the innovation of machinery in factories, the assembly line
greatly improved efficiency too. With a series of men trained to
do a single task on a product, then having it moved along to the
next worker, the number of finished goods also rose significantly.
Transmission of innovation
Knowledge of new innovation was spread by several means. Workers
who were trained in the technique might move to another employer,
or might be poached. A common method was for someone to make a study
tour, gathering information where he could. During the whole of
the Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European
countries and America engaged in study-touring; some nations, like
Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians to
undertake it as a matter of state policy. In other countries, notably
Britain and America, this practice was carried out by individual
manufacturers anxious to improve their own methods. Study tours
were common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries.
Records made by industrialists and technicians of the period are
an incomparable source of information about their methods.
Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of
informal philosophical societies like the Lunar Society of Birmingham,
in which members met to discuss science and often its application
to manufacturing. Some of these societies published volumes of proceedings
and transactions, and the London-based Society for the encouragement
of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce or, more commonly, Society of
Arts published an illustrated volume of new inventions, as well
as papers about them in its annual Transactions.
There were publications describing technology. Encyclopedias such
as Harris's Lexicon technicum (1704) and Dr Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia
(1802-1819) contain much of value. Rees's Cyclopaedia contains an
enormous amount of information about the science and technology
of the first half of the Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated
by fine engravings. Foreign printed sources such as the Descriptions
des Arts et Métiers and Diderot's Encyclopédie explained
foreign methods with fine engraved plates.
Periodical publications about manufacturing and technology began
to appear in the last decade of the 18th century, and a number regularly
included notice of the latest patents. Foreign periodicals, such
as the Annales des Mines, published accounts of travels made by
French engineers who observed British methods on study tours.
Industry
Mining
Coal mining in Britain, particularly in South Wales is of great
age. Before the steam engine, pits were often shallow bell pits
following a seam of coal along the surface and being abandoned as
the coal was extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable,
the coal was mined by means of an adit driven into the side of a
hill. Shaft mining was done in some areas, but the limiting factor
was the problem of removing water. It could be done by hauling buckets
of water up the shaft or to a sough, a tunnel driven into a hill
to drain a mine. In either case, the water had to be discharged
into a stream or ditch at level where it could flow away by gravity.
The introduction of the steam engine greatly facilitated the removal
of water and enabled shafts to be made deeper, enabling more mineral
to be extracted. These were developments that had begun before the
industrial revolution, but the adoption of James Watt's more efficient
steam engine with its separate condenser from the 1770s reduced
the fuel costs of engines, making mines more profitable particularly
in areas (such as Cornwall), where coal does not occur.
Metallurgy
The major change in the metal industries during the era of the Industrial
revolution was the replacement of organic fuels based on wood with
fossil fuel based on coal. Much of this happened somewhat before
the industrial revolution, based on innovations by Sir Clement Clerke
and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as
cupolas. These operated by the flames, which contained carbon monoxide,
playing on the ore and reducing the oxide to metal. This has the
advantage that impurities (such as sulfur) in the coal do not migrate
into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and
to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in
the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known
as an air furnace. The foundry cupola is a different (and later)
innovation.
This was followed by the first Abraham Darby, who made great strides
using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale (1709). However
the coke pig iron he made was largely only used for the production
of cast iron goods such as pots and kettles. In this he had an advantage
over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process,
were thinner and hence cheaper than those of his rivals. Coke pig
iron was hardly used to produce bar iron in forges until the mid
1750s when his son Abraham Darby II built Horsehay and Ketley furnaces
(not far from Coalbrookdale). By this time coke pig iron was cheaper
than charcoal pig iron.
Throughout this period, bar iron for smiths to forge into consumer
goods was still made in finery forges, as it long had been. However,
new processes were adopted in the ensuing years. The first is referred
to today as potting and stamping, but this was superseded by Henry
Cort's puddling process. From 1785, perhaps because the improved
version of potting and stamping was about to come out of patent,
a great expansion in the output of the British iron industry began.
The new processes did not depend on the use of charcoal at all,
and were therefore not limited by the speed at which trees grow.
Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable
amounts of imported iron to supplement native supplies. This came
principally from Sweden from the mid 17th century and later also
from Russia from the end of the 1720s. However, from 1785, imports
decreased, leading to Britain becoming an exporter of bar iron as
well as manufactured wrought iron consumer goods.
As a result of these developments, the reliance on overseas supplies
was diminished. The use of iron and steel in the development of
the railways became possible, and (later) improvements in machine
tools further boosted the industrial growth of Britain. Following
the building of the Iron Bridge in 1778 by Abraham Darby III, iron
also became a major structural material.
An improvement was made in the production of steel, which was an
expensive commodity and used only where iron would not do, such
as for the cutting edge of tools and for springs. Benjamin Huntsman
developed his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. The raw material
for this was blister steel, made by the cementation process, whose
raw material was largely imported Swedish iron.
Chemicals
The large scale production of chemicals was an important development
during the Industrial Revolution. The first of these was the production
of sulfuric acid by the lead chamber process invented by the Englishman
John Roebuck (James Watts first partner) in 1746. He was able to
greatly increase the scale of the manufacture by replacing the relatively
expensive glass vessels formerly used with larger, less expensive
chambers made of riveted sheets of lead. Instead of a few pounds
at a time, he was able to make a hundred pounds or so at a time
in each of the chambers.
The production of an alkali on a large scale became an important
goal as well, and a Frenchman, Nicolas Leblanc, succeeded in 1791
in introducing a method for the production of sodium carbonate.
The Leblanc process was done by reacting sulfuric acid to sodium
chloride to give sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium
sulfate was heated with limestone (calcium carbonate) and coal to
give a mixture of sodium carbonate and calcium sulfide. Addition
of it to water separated the soluble sodium carbonate from the calcium
sulfide. The process produced a large amount of pollution (the hydrochloric
acid was initially vented to the air, and calcium sulfide was a
useless waste product) but proved economical over the previous method
of deriving it from wood ashes, barilla, or kelp.
These two chemicals were very important in that they enabled the
introduction of a host of other inventions, replacing many small-scale
operations with more cost-effective and controllable processes.
Sodium carbonate saw many uses in the glass, textile, soap, and
paper industries. Early uses for sulfuric acid included pickling
(removing rust) iron and steel, and as a bleach for cloth.
The development of bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) by Scottish
chemist Charles Tennant in about 1800, based on the discoveries
of French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, revolutionized the bleaching
processes in the textile industry by dramatically reducing the time
required (from months to days) for the traditional process then
in use, which required repeated exposure to the sun in bleach fields
after soaking the textiles with alkali or sour milk. Tennant's factory
at St. Rollox, North Glasgow became the largest chemical plant in
the world at that time.
Steam Power
The development of the stationary steam engine was an essential
early element of the Industrial Revolution, however it should be
remembered that for most of the period of the Industrial Revolution
the majority of industries still relied on wind and water power
as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.
The industrial use of steam power started with Thomas Savery in
1698. He constructed and patented in London the first engine, which
he called the "Miner's Friend" as he intended it to pump
water from mines. This machine used steam at 8 to 10 atmospheres
and didn't use a piston and cylinder but applied the steam pressure
directly on to the surface of water in a cylinder to force it along
an outlet pipe. It also used condensed steam to produce a partial
vacuum to suck water into the cylinder. It generated about one horsepower
(hp). It was used as a low-lift water pump in a few mines and a
number of water works, but was not a success, being limited in the
height it could raise water and was prone to boiler explosions.
The first successful machine was the atmospheric engine, a low performance
steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen apparently
conceived his machine quite independently of Savery. His engines
used a piston and cylinder, and operated with steam just above atmospheric
pressure which was used to produce a partial vacuum in the cylinder
when condensed by jets of cold water. The vacuum sucked a piston
into the cylinder which moved under pressure from the atmosphere.
The engine produced a succession of power strokes which could work
a pump, but could not drive a rotating wheel. They were successfully
put to use, for pumping out mines in England with the engine on
the surface working a pump at the bottom of the mine by a long connecting
rod. These were large machines, requiring a lot of capital to build,
but produced about 5 hp. They were inefficient but when located
where coal was cheap at pit heads they were usefully employed in
pumping water from mines. They opened up a great expansion in coal
mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite being fuel hungry,
Newcomen engines continued to be used in the coalfields until the
early decades of the nineteenth century as they were reliable and
easy to maintain.
By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread to France, Germany,
Austria, Hungary and Sweden. A total of 110 are known to have been
built by 1733 when the patent expired of which 14 were abroad. According
to Rolt and Allen, p 145, (see below) a grand total of 1454 engines
had been built by 1800.
Its working was fundamentally unchanged until James Watt succeeded
in 1769 in making his Watt steam engine which incorporated a series
of improvements, especially the separate steam condenser chamber.
This improved engine efficiency by about a factor of five saving
75% on coal costs. The Watt steam engine's ability to drive rotary
machinery also meant it could be used to drive a factory or mill
directly. They were commercially very successful and by 1800 the
firm Boulton & Watt had constructed 496 engines, with 164 acting
as pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces, and 308 to power mill machinery.
Most of the engines generated between 5 to 10 horsepower.
The development of machine tools such as the lathe, planing and
shaping machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal
parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut and in turn
made it possible to build larger and more powerful engines.
Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine was the
beam engine, which was built within a stone or brick engine-house
but around that time various patterns of portable (i.e. readily
removable engines, but not on wheels) were developed, such as the
table engine.
Richard Trevithick, a Cornish blacksmith, began to use high pressure
steam with improved boilers in 1799. This allowed engines to be
compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and
steam boats.
The further development of the steam engine in the early 19th century
after the expiration of Watt's patent saw many improvements by a
host of inventors and engineers.
Textiles
In
the early 18th century, British textile manufacture was based on
wool which was processed by individual artisans, doing the spinning
and weaving on their own premises. This system is called a cottage
industry. Flax and cotton were also used for fine materials, but
the processing was difficult because of the pre-processing needed,
and thus goods in these materials made only a small proportion of
the output.
Use of the spinning wheel and hand loom restricted the production
capacity of the industry, but a number of incremental advances increased
productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became
the dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century.
India was displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.
Step by step, individual inventors increased the efficiency of the
individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and
subsequently rolling) so that the supply of yarn fed a weaving industry
that itself was advancing with improvements to shuttles and the
loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased
dramatically, with the effect that these new machines were seen
as a threat to employment, and early innovators were attacked and
their inventions were destroyed. The inventors often failed to exploit
their inventions, and fell on hard times.
To capitalize upon these advances it took a class of entrepreneurs,
of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with
a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by people
such as Thomas Highs and John Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors,
patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the
machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production
processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power
- first horse power, then water power and finally steam power -
which made cotton manufacture a mechanized industry.
Textile Manufacture
In
the early 18th century, British textile manufacture was based on
wool which was processed by individual artisans, doing the spinning
and weaving on their own premises. This system is called a cottage
industry. Flax and cotton were also used for fine materials, but
the processing was difficult because of the pre-processing needed,
and thus goods in these materials made only a small proportion of
the output.
Use of the spinning wheel and hand loom restricted the production
capacity of the industry, but a number of incremental advances increased
productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became
the dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century.
India was displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.
Step by step, individual inventors increased the efficiency of the
individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and
subsequently rolling) so that the supply of yarn fed a weaving industry
that itself was advancing with improvements to shuttles and the
loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased
dramatically, with the effect that these new machines were seen
as a threat to employment, and early innovators were attacked and
their inventions were destroyed. The inventors often failed to exploit
their inventions, and fell on hard times.
To capitalize upon these advances it took a class of entrepreneurs,
of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with
a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by people
such as Thomas Highs and John Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors,
patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the
machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production
processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power
- first horse power, then water power and finally steam power -
which made cotton manufacture a mechanized industry.
Factories
Over
London by Rail Gustave Doré c 1870. Shows the densely populated
and polluted environments created in the new industrial cities
Industrialisation also led to the creation of the factory. John
Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby was operational by 1721.
In 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol.
Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass, and was
turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided
for workers on-site.
Josiah
Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton were other prominent early industrialists.
The factory system was largely responsible for the rise of the modern
city, as workers migrated into the cities in search of employment
in the factories. For much of the 19th century, production was done
in small mills, which were typically powered by water and built
to serve local needs.
The transition to industrialisation was not wholly smooth. For example,
a group of English workers known as Luddites formed to protest against
industrialisation and sometimes sabotaged factories.
One of the earliest reformers of factory conditions was Robert Owen.
Machine tools
The Industrial Revolution could not have developed without machine
tools, for they enabled manufacturing machines to be made. They
have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by
makers of clocks and watches, and scientific instrument makers to
enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. The mechanical parts
of early textile machines were sometimes called 'clock work' due
to the metal spindles and gears they incorporated. The manufacture
of textile machines drew craftsmen from these trades and is the
origin of the modern engineering industry. Machine makers early
developed special purpose machines for making parts.
Machines were built by various craftsmen--carpenters made wooden
framings, and smiths and turners made metal parts. Because of the
difficulty of manipulating metal, and the lack of machine tools,
the use of metal was kept to a minimum. Wood framing had the disadvantage
of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various
joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial
Revolution progressed, machines with metal frames became more common,
but required machine tools to make them economically. Before the
advent of machine tools metal was worked manually using the basic
hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels. Small
metal parts were readily made by this means, but for large machine
parts, such as castings for a lathe bed, where components had to
slide together, the production of flat surfaces by means of the
hammer and chisel followed by filing, scraping and perhaps grinding
with emery paste, was very labourious and costly.
Apart from workshop lathes used by craftsmen, the first large machine
tool was the cylinder boring machine, used for boring the large-diameter
cylinders on early steam engines. They were to be found at all steam-engine
manufacturers. The planing machine, the slotting machine and the
shaping machine were developed in the first decades of the 19th
century. Although the milling machine was invented at this time,
it was not developed as a serious workshop tool until during the
Second Industrial Revolution.
Military production had a hand in the development of machine tools.
Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early
in the 19th century, was employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich,
as a young man where he would have seen the large horse-driven wooden
machines for cannon boring made and worked by the Verbruggans. He
later worked for Joseph Bramah on the production of metal locks,
and soon after he began working on his own he was engaged to build
the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy
in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These were all metal, and the first
machines for mass production and making components with a degree
of interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need
for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine
tools, and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build
on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph
Whitworth.
Maudslay made his name for his lathes and precision measurement.
James Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for
the first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of Leeds.
Roberts made his name as a maker of high-quality machine tools,
and as a pioneer of the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop
measurement.
Transportation
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport
was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed
to move heavy goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for
conveying coal to rivers for further shipment, but canals had not
yet been constructed. Animals supplied all of the motive power on
land, with sails providing the motive power on the sea.
Navigable rivers
All the major rivers were made navigable to a greater or lesser
degree. The Severn in particular 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 Shropshire
such as iron goods from Coalbrookdale. Transport was by way of Trows
- small sailing vessels which could pass the various shallows and
bridges in the river. These could navigate the Bristol Channel to
the South Wales ports and Somerset ports, such as Bridgwater and
even as far as France. Britain's transport was improving which meant
that the raw materials came quicker and cheaper and allowed the
new ideas to spread quickly.
Coastal sail
Sailing vessels had long been used for moving goods round the British
coast. The trade transporting coal to London from Newcastle had
begun in medieval times. The major international seaports such as
London, Bristol and Liverpool were the means by which raw materials
such as cotton might be imported and finished goods exported. Transporting
goods onwards within Britain by sea was common during the whole
of the Industrial Revolution and only fell away with the growth
of the railways at the end of the period.
Canals
Canals began to be built in the late eighteenth century to link
the major manufacturing centres in the Midlands and north with seaports
and with London, at that time the largest manufacturing centre in
the country. Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials
to be easily transported across country. A single canal horse could
pull a load dozens of times larger than a cart at a faster pace.
By the 1820s, a national network was in existence. Canal construction
served as a model for the organisation and methods later used to
construct the railways. They were eventually largely superseded
as profitable commercial enterprises by the spread of the railways
from the 1840s on.
Britain's canal network, together with its surviving mill buildings,
is one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial Revolution
to be seen in Britain.
Roads
Much of the original British road system was poorly maintained by
thousands of local parishes, but from the 1720s (and occasionally
earlier) turnpike trusts were set up to charge tolls and maintain
some roads. Increasing numbers of main roads were turnpiked from
the 1750s to the extent that almost every main road in England and
Wales was the responsibility of some turnpike trust. New engineered
roads were built by John Metcalf, Thomas Telford and John Macadam.
The major turnpikes radiated from London and were the means by which
the Royal Mail was able to reach the rest of the country. Heavy
goods transport on these roads was by means of slow broad wheeled
carts hauled by teams of horses. Lighter goods were conveyed by
smaller carts or by teams of pack horses. Stage coaches transported
rich people. The less wealthy walked or paid to ride on a carriers
cart.
Railways
Wagonways for moving coal in the mining areas had started in the
17th century, and were often associated with canal or river systems
for the further movement of coal. These were all horse drawn or
relied on gravity, with a stationary steam engine to haul the wagons
back to the top of the incline. The first applications of the steam
locomotive were on waggon or plate ways (as they were then often
called from the cast iron plates used). Horse-drawn public railways
did not begin until the early years of the 19th century. Steam-hauled
public railways began with the Liverpool and Manchester and Stockton
and Darlington Railways of the late 1820s. The construction of major
railways connecting the larger cities and towns began in the 1830s
but only gained momentum at the very end of the first Industrial
Revolution.
After many of the workers had completed the railways, they did not
return to their rural lifestyles, but instead remained in the cities,
providing additional workers for the factories.
Railways helped England's trade enormously, as they provided a quick,
easy method of transport.
Social effects
In terms of social structure, the industrial revolution witnessed
the triumph of a middle class of industrialists and businessmen
over a landed class of nobility & gentry.
Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment
in the new mills and factories but these were often under strict
working conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace
set by machines. Harsh working conditions were prevalent long before
the industrial revolution took place as well. Pre-industrial society
was very static and often cruel-child labor, dirty living conditions
and long working hours were just as prevalent before the industrial
revolution.
Child labour
Child labour existed before the Industrial Revolution, and in fact
dates back to prehistoric times. Politicians tried to limit child
labour by law. Factory owners resisted; some felt that they were
aiding the poor by giving their children money to buy food to avoid
starvation, and others simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833,
the first law against child labour, the Factory Act of 1833, was
passed in England: Children younger than nine were not allowed to
work, children were not permitted to work at night and the work
day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory
inspectors supervised the execution of this law. About ten years
later, the employment of children and women in mining was forbidden.
These laws decreased the number of child labourers; however child
labour remained in Europe up to the 20th century.
Luddites
The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft
workers their jobs. The textile industry in particular industrialized
early, and many weavers found themselves suddenly unemployed since
they could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively
limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single
weaver. Many such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned
their animosity towards the machines that had taken their jobs and
began destroying factories and machinery. These attackers became
known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a folklore
figure. The first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811.
The Luddites rapidly gained popularity, and the British government
had to take drastic measures to protect industry.
Organization of Labour
Conditions for the working class had been bad for millennia. The
industrial revolution, however, concentrated labour into mills,
factories and mines and this facilitated the organisation of trade
unions to help advance the interests of working people. The power
of a union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labour and
cause a consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide
between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or
suffer the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard
to replace and these were the first groups to successfully advance
their conditions through this kind of bargaining.
The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action.
Strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the management.
The management was upset because strikes took their precious working
force away for a large period of time, and the unions had to deal
with riot police and various middle class prejudices that striking
workers were the same as criminals, as well as loss of income. The
strikes often led to violent and bloody clashes between police and
workers. Factory managers usually reluctantly gave in to various
demands made by strikers, but the conflict was generally long standing.
In England, the Combination Act forbade workers to form any kind
of trade union from 1799 until its repeal in 1824. Even after this,
unions were still severely restricted.
In 1842, a General Strike involving cotton workers and colliers
and organised through the Chartist movement stopped production across
Great Britain.
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