Industrial Revolution: How Machines and New Technology Reshaped Society

The Industrial Revolution refers to the period when economies based on farming and handmade goods gave way to ones built on machine manufacturing and large-scale industry. Historians generally date its start to around 1760 in Great Britain, with the shift spreading to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840, according to Wikipedia's historical overview of the period.

Scholars commonly split the era into two phases. The First Industrial Revolution, roughly 1760 to 1840, centered on mechanized textile production, steam power, and early iron manufacturing. The Second Industrial Revolution, from the 1870s into the early 20th century, brought steel production, mass production techniques, assembly lines, and electrical systems, per the same source.

The Machines That Started It

Textile production was transformed first. The spinning jenny (1764), the water frame (1769), and the power loom (1785) multiplied how much cloth a single worker could produce — mechanized cotton spinning is estimated to have raised worker productivity roughly 500-fold compared with hand methods, according to Wikipedia's summary of the period's technology.

Steam power made mechanization portable and scalable. Thomas Newcomen built an early steam engine prototype in the early 1700s, but it was inefficient. James Watt, working at the University of Glasgow, patented a separate condenser in 1769 that cut fuel consumption by roughly 75 percent, and he later partnered with Matthew Boulton to add rotary motion. Of the roughly 500 steam engines the pair sold before their patent expired in 1800, 84 powered cotton mills and 52 powered mines, with the rest serving a wide range of other industries, according to the World History Encyclopedia's account of the Watt steam engine. Total steam power in use in Britain is estimated to have grown from about 10,000 horsepower in 1800 to 210,000 by 1815, per Wikipedia.

From Home and Field to the Factory

Before mechanization, textile production largely happened in homes and small workshops under the "cottage industry" system. Factories concentrated expensive machinery, steam power, and large workforces under one roof, and this factory system required strict schedules and continuous shifts that were new to most workers, HISTORY.com notes in its overview of the period.

Later advances extended the pattern across other sectors. Reduced reliance on charcoal in favor of coke lowered fuel costs for iron production, and hot blast furnace technology, patented by Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, further cut costs, according to Wikipedia. Railways followed: Richard Trevithick developed early steam-powered trains in the early 1800s, and by 1830 locomotives were moving goods between Manchester and Liverpool, HISTORY.com reports.

The Human Cost: Labor and Child Work

Factory work demanded long, rigid hours. Children in British factories commonly worked 12-to-16-hour shifts, six days a week, according to the Economic History Association's (EH.net) survey of child labor in the period. Children were widely employed alongside adults: in textiles, roughly 10 to 20 percent of workers under 13 and 23 to 57 percent of those aged 13 to 18 were employed by 1833, while children and youths made up 19 to 40 percent of mining workforces by 1842, per EH.net.

Employers favored child labor largely for cost reasons. According to the World History Encyclopedia, a child worker was about 80 percent cheaper to employ than a man and 50 percent cheaper than a woman, and children's small size and nimble hands suited tasks such as reaching under machinery. The same source states some children started work as young as five, and describes a practice called "hot bedding," in which one child left a warm bed as another began a shift.

Low wages compounded the hardship: factory children could earn as little as four shillings a week, EH.net reports.

Early Reform Laws

Public concern over factory and mine conditions led to a series of British laws. The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802 sought to improve conditions for parish apprentices. The Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819 set a minimum working age of 9 and capped working hours at 12 per day, according to EH.net. The Factory Act of 1833 barred employment of children under 9 and capped work for 9-to-13-year-olds at eight hours daily, while also creating paid inspectors to enforce the rules, according to both EH.net and the World History Encyclopedia. The Mines Act of 1842 banned underground work for children under 10 and barred women and girls from mine work, per EH.net and the World History Encyclopedia. The Factory Act of 1844 limited everyone's working day to 12 hours and required dangerous machinery to be separated from workers, and the 1847 Ten Hours Bill limited working hours to 10 per day for children and women, according to the World History Encyclopedia and EH.net.

Social reform ran alongside legislation. Writers such as Charles Dickens, notably in Oliver Twist (1837), drew public attention to child labor, and changing Victorian attitudes about childhood contributed to the eventual founding of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1889, the World History Encyclopedia notes.

Lasting Economic and Social Effects

The shift from agrarian life to industrial life also reshaped where people lived. Rapid industrialization pulled workers from rural areas into cities, producing overcrowding, pollution, inadequate sanitation, and unsafe drinking water in many urban centers, according to HISTORY.com. Wikipedia's overview likewise describes the era's urban migration as replacing agricultural employment with factory-based work on a large scale.

Economically, average income and population grew on a sustained basis not seen before, and living standards improved for most people in the Western world over time, according to Wikipedia — though the same overview notes that some historians argue meaningful improvement for workers did not arrive until the 20th century. Wikipedia also states that economic historians generally regard the onset of the Industrial Revolution as comparable in importance only to humanity's earlier adoption of agriculture.