The other day in History Class we learned about all of the "ingredients" in the Industrial Revolution, and how each was revolutionary. The essential question for the activity was, "What was 'revolutionary' about Industrialization?" There were a lot of good reasons why, and I will go over a couple of the ones we learned.
First, the new technology that was developed was very revolutionary. All of the inventions played a big role in helping, but one of the most important one was the Steam Engine. The steam engine was run off of coal and it improved the quality of mines. It used water and heat (steam) to pump all of the water out of the mines and it increased efficiency of mining materials. Another couple of big inventions were the Spinning Jenny, and John Kay's Flying Shuttle. These two machines revolutionized the British Textile industry because they both were able to spin a lot faster than the 'putting-out' system. These machines basically snowballed into factories and machines that could go even faster and faster and more efficiently.
Another 'ingredient' to the Industrial Revolution was all of the new resources. These resources, such as coal and iron, were very important to the Revolution. For example, Abraham Darby came up with a way to improve iron and make it better quality and less expensive. He would use coal to smelt the iron from its ore and by doing this, he would remove all of the impurities from the iron, therefore making it stronger and last longer. The other resource, coal, was probably the most important because it was the main energy source for everything. From powering steam engines, to smelting iron and iron ore, coal was used for everything. And since steam engines created an even more efficient way of mining coal, there was a lot of it in Britain. These resources were very revolutionary because they had so many helpful uses.
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