Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule: The First Industrial Revolution
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The two main industrial revolutions occurred roughly from 1760 to 1830 and from 1840 to around the start of the First World War. The first Industrial revolution began in Great Britain and spread throughout Western Europe and North America. This revolution introduced major technological advancements in the areas of textile production, iron production, and steam power, and well as inventions such as the industrial lathe, milling machine, and metal planer. The Second Industrial Revolution built upon the advancements and institutions of the first industrial revolution, and saw rapid industrial development primarily in Germany. It was characterized by the construction of railroads, immense scale iron and steel production, increased use of machinery…show more content… Typically the women did the spinning and the men did the weaving. This was a long process, and using a spinning wheel it would take anywhere from four to eight spinners to supply one weaver. Inventions such as the flying shuttle, patented in 1733 by John Kay, served to increase the production of cloth drastically. According to the “Letter from Leeds Cloth Merchants; 1791”, “In the Manufacture of Woollens, the Scribbling Mill, the Spinning Frame, and the Fly Shuttle have reduced manual labour nearly One third.” That alone is a significant increase in production, and those were not the only inventions. Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule, introduced in 1779, was a combination of the spinning jenny and the water frame that further increased the rate of production of textiles. Richard Arkwright took many of the ideas of inventors of the time and stuck them together in order to create the cotton mill, which brought the production processes together in a factory, and ran off of water power and later steam…show more content… Materials and products could be moved quickly and more cheaply than before. This transportation also allowed ideas to spread far and wide. Canals were a much more economic method than roads of transporting materials long distances, because a horse could pull a barge with much more weight on it than he could a cart. Canals began being built in the late 18th century, notably the Bridgewater Canal that opened in 1761 in Northwest England. By 1820 an immense national network of Canals existed in Great Britain, which is one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial Revolution to be seen in Britain. This system of canals later served as the model for the organization and methods used to create the railway systems. Construction of railways connecting the largest cities of England began in the 1830s, but gained momentum at the very end of the FIR. After many workers completed the railways, they did not return to their agricultural lifestyles, but remained in the cities providing the factories with additional