Curated category
Industrial Revolution
- UrbanizationUrbanization is the slow tilt of humanity toward its cities, and in 2007 that tilt crossed a line never crossed before. According to the UN, that year marked…
- Industrial RevolutionIn 1799, a French envoy named Louis-Guillaume Otto wrote that France had entered the race to industrialise, and in doing so he left behind the earliest…
- Blast furnaceThe blast furnace is responsible for more than 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions recorded between 1900 and 2015. That single figure places one industrial…
- Factory systemThe factory system reshaped how nearly everything in the modern world gets made. At its core is a deceptively simple idea: bring workers and machines…
- Watt steam engineThe Watt steam engine holds a distinction that few machines can claim: the Encyclopaedia Britannica described it as "the first truly efficient steam engine."…
- Cotton-spinning machineryThe spinning wheel appeared in the Islamic world by 1030. It traveled to China by 1090 and reached Europe and India during the 13th century.
- Newcomen atmospheric engineIn 1712, Thomas Newcomen built a machine that had never existed before: a device that turned steam into useful mechanical work.
- Great DivergenceThe Great Divergence is the name historians give to one of the most consequential shifts in human history: the moment when the Western world broke free from…
- Textile manufacture during the British Industrial RevolutionIn 1734, John Kay stood in a workshop in Bury, Lancashire, and invented the flying shuttle. This device allowed a single weaver to produce cloth twice as…
- History of coal miningThe history of coal mining stretches back roughly 25,000 years, to a settlement on Landek Hill in what is now Ostrava, Petřkovice, where radiocarbon dating…
- Soho FoundryMatthew Boulton and James Watt established the Soho Foundry in 1795 at Smethwick, West Midlands. They built the factory on land purchased that same year near…
- Second Industrial RevolutionThe Second Industrial Revolution reshaped the world so thoroughly that by 1900, Britain was producing nearly a quarter of all industrial output on earth.
- CromfordThe River Derwent flows southward from its sources on Bleaklow in the Dark Peak. This fast-moving water has cut a deep valley through limestone geology in…
- Slater MillSamuel Slater stood in Belper, England, as a young apprentice under industrialist Jedediah Strutt. He memorized the design of cotton spinning machines…
- Bridgewater CanalThe Bridgewater Canal was built to move coal. That was the whole idea. Francis Egerton, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, owned mines at Worsley in north-west…
- Leblanc processIn 1783, King Louis XVI and the French Academy of Sciences offered a prize of 2400 livres for a method to produce alkali from sea salt.
- British industrial architectureAbraham Darby I made Coalbrookdale the focus of the Industrial Revolution from around 1700. His company produced goods made of cast iron, ranging from…
- CottonopolisRichard Arkwright opened the world's first steam-driven textile mill on Miller Street in Manchester in 1781. This single building marked a turning point from…
- Pre-industrial societyPre-industrial society shaped how nearly every human being on earth lived, worked, and understood the world for centuries before 1750.
- CoalbrookdaleThe valley of Coalbrookdale held a bloomsmithy called Caldebroke Smithy before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This early ironworks belonged to Much…
- Uxbridge, MassachusettsUxbridge, Massachusetts sits at the midpoint of the Blackstone Valley, 36 miles southwest of Boston, and it has been quietly collecting firsts for nearly…