What Are The Key Aspects Of Industrialization

The Industrial Revolution, took place in the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period which was mostly rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urbanized. Before the Industrial Revolution, in the late 1700s in Britain, manufacturing was mostly done in people’s homes, using hand powered tools and basic machines. Industrialization marked the shift to powered, or specialty machinery, factories and mass production of goods. The iron and textile industries, along with the invention of the steam engine, played crucial roles in the Industrial Revolution, which also began the improvement of transportation, communication and banking systems. While industrialization brought an increased volume and the vastness of manufactured goods and an improved standard of living, it also resulted in often dingy employment opportunities and living conditions for the poor and working class of people.

Before mechanization and factories, textiles were mostly made in people’s homes, with merchants often providing the raw materials and basic equipment, and acquiring the finished product from those making it at their homes. In the 1700s, a series of inventions increased productivity even further, while also requiring less human effort. For example in 1764, Englishman James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, a machine that allowed someone to produce multiple spools of threads at the same time. By the time of Hargreaves’ death, there were over 20,000 spinning jenny’s in use across Britain. The spinning jenny was improved upon by British inventor Samuel Compton’s spinning mule, as well as later invented machines. Another key invention in textiles, the power loom, which mechanized the process of weaving cloth, was developed in the 1780s by English inventor Edmund