Curated playlist
Industrial Revolution in England
- Roberts LoomPower looms in Britain grew from around 55,500 to 100,000 after the Roberts loom arrived in 1830.
- Lewis PaulLewis Paul died in 1759, and he is credited as the original inventor of roller spinning. That idea later became the basis of the water frame, the machine that spun cotton in a cotton mill. Yet his name is far less familiar than the man…
- Cotton-spinning machinerySamuel Crompton named his 1779 spinning mule after a hybrid animal. It combined two earlier machines.
- Lunar Society of BirminghamThe Lunar Society of Birmingham met at the full moon so moonlight could light the way home.
- John Kay (flying shuttle)John Kay was an English inventor whose weaving device moved so fast that one early description said the shuttle could only be seen "like a tiny cloud which disappears the same instant." That machine became a key contribution to the…
- 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…
- Richard Roberts (engineer)Before Richard Roberts built his planer in 1817, fitters made flat metal surfaces by hand.
- James WattJames Watt did not invent the steam engine. Thomas Newcomen built one in 1712, yet the watt bears Watt's name.
- Richard ArkwrightRichard Arkwright died without spending a single night in his castle. A fire destroyed it when it was nearly complete.
- Boulton and WattA London banker named Charlotte Matthews lent enormous sums to fund Boulton and Watt's steam engines.
- Matthew BoultonBy 1786, two-thirds of the coins in Britain were counterfeit. Matthew Boulton's steam-powered mint helped fix it.
- Calico ActsA ban on printed cotton cloth in 1721 accidentally helped start British factories. Raw cotton was exempt, so mills grew.
- The Condition of the Working Class in EnglandFriedrich Engels wrote a famous book on England's workers at age twenty-four.
- The Iron BridgeThe Iron Bridge survived a flood that damaged every other Severn crossing.