Causes of the Industrial Revolution

Sachi Belani, JJ Larkins, Tessa Garbely, and Lauren Marino

The Agricultural Revolution

• The Agricultural Revolution was the precursor to the Industrial Revolution 

• agricultural improvements between the 18th and 19th century

• inventions including the plow and Jethro Tull's seed drill made planting crops and seeding grains easier

• harvesting machines including the sickles and reapers, that mechanically harvested grain crops

• new innovations caused workers to be off the land, and provided the economy for building factories, seen in the Industrial Revolution

• more productive farms and a smaller work load allowed workers to move to cities and industrialize

Seed Drill Reaper

The British enclosure movement led many peasants to work in factories.

Technological Aspects (Inventions)•  flying shuttle (John Kay) 

o speeds up weaving of cloth on the loom shoots thread across loom and back leads to the invention of the spinning jenny

•  spinning jenny (James Hargraves)o speeds up spinning of cotton and/or wool

spins more than one thread at a time leads to the invention of water frame

power becomes a problem    •  water frame (Richard Arkwright)

o provides power version of spinning jenny that uses power of moving water

(example: stream)•  spinning mule (Crompton)

o combination of spinning jenny and water frameo becomes important because it accelerates cloth growth

flying shuttle

spinning jenny

spinning mule

water frame

More Inventions...

• Steam Engine - most important invention (power source)o Thomas Savery 

invented for use in coal mines, kept them from filling up with water

allowed factories to be built closer to raw materialso Thomas Newcomen 

improved version of Savery's safer - used a pressure valve still not that powerful, too big

o James Watt 4x more powerful smaller - easier to operate most importantly, cheaper

Even more inventions...

• Power Loom (Edmund Cartwright) o weaving made mechanicallyo people went to factories to work themo lives governed by the clock & time 

• Cotton Gin - (Eli Whitney) o automated system to get seeds out of cotton fibero meets demand of factories 

• Interchangeable Parts - (Eli Whitney) o started with weapon production (same barrel size, etc.)o moved to commercial goodso if a part breaks, it can be easily replaced, since

everything is exactly the sameo even expands to the machinery

Cotton Gin Interchangeable Parts

Power LoomSteam Engine

Bessemer Process

• cold air removes impurities from iron metal, junk (slog) goes to bottom

• purer iron mixes with carbon, making flexible steel • allows skyscrapers to be built• many other structures (bridges, railroads, etc.) can be

stronger

Henry Ford

• made a better version of the assembly line• broke down the jobs to make assembly line• studied time/motion• paid workers much better than anyone else so that workers

will buy cars from him