Curated playlist
Industrial Revolution
- UrbanizationIn 2007, more than half the world's people lived in cities for the first time. A century earlier, just 15% did.
- Industrial RevolutionThe earliest recorded use of the phrase Industrial Revolution came from a French envoy in 1799.
- Blast furnaceIn 1709, Abraham Darby began fueling a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal. Coke cost less to produce.
- Factory systemIn 1721, John Lombe opened a water-powered silk mill in Derby, England. It is counted among the earliest true factories.
- Watt steam engineRepairing a model engine led James Watt to a better steam engine. It burned about half the coal of earlier engines.
- Cotton-spinning machinerySamuel Crompton named his 1779 spinning mule after a hybrid animal. It combined two earlier machines.
- Newcomen atmospheric engineThe Newcomen engine was built by an ironmonger, not a scientist. His steam engine drained flooded coal mines in 1712.
- Great DivergenceWhy did Western Europe pull ahead of China and India by the 19th century?
- Textile manufacture during the British Industrial RevolutionTextile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution can be measured in hours. In the 18th century, a worker at a hand-powered spinning wheel needed more than 50,000 hours to spin 100 pounds of cotton. By the 1790s, a spinning mule…
- History of coal miningPeople were burning coal roughly 25,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating points to a settlement in what is now Ostrava.
- Soho FoundryOne economist concluded Ford and Taylor devised nothing that Soho Foundry lacked before 1805.
- Second Industrial RevolutionIn 1881, London's Savoy Theatre became the first public building lit entirely by electricity.
- CromfordCromford is a Derbyshire village that had 1,433 residents at the 2011 Census. Historic England has described its mill complex as "one of the country's 100 irreplaceable sites". That is a heavy label for a place so small. It sits in a…
- Slater MillIn 1824, young women at Slater Mill in Rhode Island led the first factory strike in the United States.
- Bridgewater CanalCoal in Manchester cost roughly half as much within a year of the Bridgewater Canal opening in 1761.
- Leblanc processThe inventor of the Leblanc process died in 1806 without the prize that inspired it. Nicolas Leblanc took his own life.
- British industrial architectureA Leeds flax mill once built its offices to look like an Egyptian temple.
- CottonopolisIn 1781, Richard Arkwright opened the world's first steam-driven textile mill in Manchester.
- Pre-industrial societyPicture a pre-industrial village where roughly 98 out of every 100 people were peasants.
- CoalbrookdaleAbove the Old Furnace at Coalbrookdale, a cast-iron lintel carries a date that nobody can settle. Today it is painted as 1638. An archive photograph shows the same inscription as 1658. Coalbrookdale is a settlement in the Ironbridge Gorge,…
- Uxbridge, MassachusettsIn 1756, Lydia Taft voted at a town meeting in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. It is recorded as a first for colonial women.