The Industrial Revolution

1. The Industrial Revolution • By Jack P-W and Zoe Peltz

2. Major Facts and Events in the Industrial Revolution • 1) Lots of people begin to move out of their homes in the rural areas, and begin to move into industrial, urban areas to get jobs. People might not live in one place their whole life now, the more modern day living styles are born. • 2) The need for quick communication grows due to a faster moving society and the country’s growth. Because the country was getting bigger, people needed to find ways to communicate without having to travel the distance. Inventors like Samuel Morse and Alexander Bell invented devices like the telegraph and telephone to cancel out that long journey. • 3) Women and children begin to work outside of the house in factories. Families become more dependent on their wages. Another area for men to dominate over women is created-the work place. Child labor begins to grow in countries over the world, and their education suffered due to work. • 4) Use of other forms of power such as steam, and coal replace the muscles of men and animals, ability to produce things grows greatly. Number of objects that can be manufactured grows. This begins to move society at a much faster pace. • 5) North and South begin to differ greatly. The North is/contains: Industrial/urban cities that are faster moving, investors, and merchants. The South stays more like it’s original self, more rural areas, less industrial, and slave labor continues and is depended on greatly. The Southern economy weakens, more work is done in factories, and farming becomes less important. • 6) The modern term “businessman” begins to be used in society. Before the revolution, the richest people were merchants, nobles, and landowners, but now the men that owned factories and railroads became equally as powerful and rich, if not more so. • 7) Although there had not been a specific class system in America, it was still hard to get out of whatever class a person was in, especially if he/she was poor. With the Industrial Revolution came great opportunities, people who were impoverished could now work their way up in society more easily. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was possible, and that was when the American dream was born. • 8) With the new factory towns, came good and bad. It was good that people could now work their way up in society with these towns, but the factory towns produced a lot of pollution. Thousands of tons of coal were burning in enormous furnaces released thousands of pounds of carbon into the air. Also with these crowded cities, disease spread extremely quickly. Work conditions were bad and illness spread these were the many hardships that people faced during the Industrial Revolution.

3. Significant Inventors and Their Inventions • Eli Whitney was among the great inventors in the Industrial Revolution. He was one of the first American inventors who pioneered the innovative industry, his contributions to the Industrial Revolution were great, not only his inventions, but his way of thinking. When he was 23, he went to Yale College, and four years later he invented the cotton gin, which separates seeds from cotton. Little did he know that the cotton gin would be among the most important inventions in the Industrial Revolution. The cotton gin would unfortunately reignite the need for slavery in the South. Because the South’s economy had plummeted, the cotton gin helped the greatly, which led to a dispute over slavery. Eli Whitney also invented interchangeable parts. These were identical parts that were created many times so that if a part on a machine or gun broke, it would be easy to replace it with a part that was identical to it. This helped people assemble weapons and machines much quicker, and helped the North achieve victory in the civil war.. • Samuel F.B. Morse invented two things that were essential to the Industrial Revolution, he improved the telegraph, and he invented Morse Code. Many different forms of telegraphs were invented before Morse invented his version, but the most successful version was invented by him. By using electromagnets, he could send pulses along wire that could be translated into words through Morse code. Congress funded a project by him in which he sent a message from Washington to Baltimore using a 40 mile long wire, and it worked! • Many different inventors contributed to the many different versions of steam engines, among them was Scotsman James Watt. James Watt improved the design of Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine, having his use 75% less coal than Newcomen’s design. This made the steam engine pollute much less than it had before. These steam engines could move heavy loads of machinery and resources, and they can still be found in factories today! • Lots of different inventors are said to have invented the telephone such as Antonio Meucci, Philip Reis, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, but Bell spoke the first sentence over the phone ever to his assistant saying, “Watson come here, I need you.” • The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770 by James Hargreaves. Normally, one person could only spin one thread at a time, but the Spinning Jenny allowed people to spin many threads at once. Eventually the design was improved by Richard Arkwright to the point where it could spin up to 120 threads of yarn! At its time it became very valuable to the textile industry, and it increased clothing production greatly.

4. Significant Inventors and Their Inventions Continued • Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive in England in 1803. In the 1800’s the transcontinental railroad linked the east and the west coasts of America. Railroads were vital to the trade industry in the United States. They played a great importance in the Industrial Revolution and the Civil War. WIth the railroads, it became easy to transport resources and goods from factories to merchants. The railroads provided a constant supply of materials for the factories, helping the Revolution greatly. • In 1879 Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. He was not the first nor the only person to try inventing an electric lamp. He had many trials and errors, at first making a model that used bamboo, and it worked! The electric light was superior to candles in all ways: it lasted hundreds of hours, the possibility of of causing a fire was very slim. • Francis Cabot Lowell may not have been an inventor, but he was very significant in the Industrial Revolution. At the time, spinning and weaving threads were done in different factories, but he Lowell came up with the idea of having them both done in the same factory. He eventually found a few business partners, and they funded his factory project. Eventually the factory he made turned into one of the first factory town in America. • Robert Fulton improved John Fitche’s steamboat design so that a boat could make a trip up to Albany and back to New York City with passengers in 62 hours. The steamboat was extremely important to westward expansion in the United States because the steamboats could ride up the various rivers leading west.

5. The North and South • During the Industrial Revolution, the North and the South started to differ in many ways. While the South kept to their ancestors ways by farming for a living, the North started to become more modern and started expanding. They started opening up factories where people would work and their cities became more urbanized. The North’s population was also much greater than the South’s. Throughout the Northern States, they had about 23 million people, while the Southern States only had about 9 million, and that included the 3.5 million slaves. The North manufactured 97% of the country's firearms, 96% of its railroad locomotives, 94% of its cloth, 93% of its pig iron, and over 90& of its boots and shoes. 7 out of every 8 immigrants settled in the North due to its easy transportation system. The North had twice the density of railroads per square mile. This manufacturing ability gave the North a great advantage during the Civil War. North South

6. Pros and Cons of the Industrial Revolution Pros Cons Eventually, machines had been built that replaced people, and they lost their jobs. The jobs that were available required a good education, which was not achieved because of child labor. At first, lots of jobs became available to people who need money. Production times were decreased greatly. Eventually need for greater education grows, leads to better education system. Pollution levels raised. People moved out of rural areas and into cities. The populations of the cities grew too quickly. Entered America into a particularly special age in which they were leading the technological and trading industries in the world. Job conditions got worse, people were paid minimal amounts and worked to the bone as competition grew. America begins to be recognized as a dominant country. The trading industry in America grows rapidly.

7. THE END!