Industrial Revolution: Steam Engine, Railways, Electricity

Water in the mine

A tall beam rocks up and down beside a flooded mine shaft. In 1712 Thomas Newcomen built an engine near Dudley, England, to pump water out of a coal mine. Steam filled a cylinder and was then cooled by a spray of water. The steam collapsed, and the weight of the air pushed the piston down. It was a slow, hungry machine that burned huge amounts of coal, but deep mines could not work without it. Coal was cheap at the pit head, so mine owners did not mind. We know the machines from drawings, accounts and a few surviving engines.

A cooler idea

A new engine appears, with a second chamber beside the cylinder, and its flywheel starts to turn. This is James Watt’s separate condenser. Watt, a Scottish instrument maker, realised in the 1760s that heating and cooling the same cylinder wasted most of the heat. His patent of 1769 let steam condense in a separate vessel, so the cylinder stayed hot. With the Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton he built engines that, by the usual figure, burned about a quarter of the coal of Newcomen’s. Later gears turned the beam’s rocking into rotation, so engines could drive mill machinery. The unit of power, the watt, is named after him.

Cotton and the factory

Rows of spindles spin faster, and a river turns a big wheel. In 1769 Richard Arkwright patented the water frame, a spinning machine driven by water, and in the 1770s his mill at Cromford began a new kind of workplace: the factory. Workers came to the machines, not machines to the workers, and the hours were set by the clock. Cotton mills in Lancashire later switched to steam. Britain led, and by the early 1800s cotton goods were its main manufactured export. The buildings at Cromford survive and belong to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so visitors can walk through one of the first factories.

Cities of smoke

Chimneys multiply, and a small town swells into a smoky city. People moved from farms to mill towns such as Manchester, which grew many times over in a few decades. Factories made cloth, tools and goods cheaper, and over time wages and living standards rose. But early industrial life was hard. Families lived in crowded housing without clean water, the air was thick with coal smoke, and children as young as six or seven worked long hours. Government inquiries and the writings of Friedrich Engels and Charles Dickens recorded it. Laws such as the Factory Act of 1833 began to limit children’s work.

The Rocket

A small locomotive with a tall chimney races along a track, pulling a carriage. In October 1829 the Rainhill trials near Liverpool tested engines for a new railway, and the Rocket, built by Robert Stephenson with his father George, won, reaching about 48 kilometres an hour. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened on 15 September 1830 and ran its passengers on a timetable, with steam locomotives pulling the trains. On the opening day the politician William Huskisson was struck by the Rocket and died, a reminder that new machines brought new dangers. Railways shrank distances, brought standard clock time to Britain and soon spread to the world.

Wires and light

Dots and dashes run along a wire between two cities, and then a glass bulb glows. In 1844 Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought” by telegraph from Washington to Baltimore, and news began to travel faster than any horse. Around 1879 and 1880 the English chemist Joseph Swan and the American inventor Thomas Edison each made practical electric lamps with a glowing filament in a glass bulb. Many other inventors had tried before them. Power stations soon followed. Coal-fired industry created great wealth and also the carbon dioxide that now warms our climate, which is why historians link this age to our own.

Steam and the Industrial Revolution