The Effects of the Industrial Revolution

In the Industrial Revolution, many breakthroughs have changed our lives in many ways. The Industrial Revolution began in 1750-1850, which all started in Britain. Since the Industrial Revolution started, it has spread around Europe, North America, and the globe. Although the Industrial Revolution’s inventions became a problem, progress, and promise, many of the important inventions and large factories were built to allow people to get things faster and it allowed people to have jobs.

Thomas Savery, an English military engineer, first built the Steam Engine in 1698 by using a pressure cooker. He tried to solve the problem by using the method of pumping water out coal from the coalmines because water would get stuck in the mineshaft. Because his method of pumping water using coal, the machine took up a lots of it for small amounts of water. Savery asked for the help from Thomas Newcomen. Newcomen knew there was a way Savery’s invention could be improved, so Newcomen built a machine that allowed a piston at one direction. Both inventors could not think of any ways the steam engine could be fixed. Many decades later, an inventor known as James Watt took the challenge to improve Newcomen’s steam engine design in 1763. Using Newcomen’s design of using the piston, instead of the piston moving at one direction, he allowed the piston to move back and forth. Not only did he use this method, Watt found a way to use the back and forth motion by turning a wheel. After Watt developed a way to improve the steam engine, he didn’t have enough money to build the steam engine, but was able to convince a manufacturer that building the Steam Engine could become a profitable business. Together James and his business partner started a company that would build steam engines, which later became a promise because the Steam Engine was one of the first inventions that took off in the Industrial Revolution and the Steam Engine method is still used in today’s inventions such as trains.

The Water Frame was developed by Thomas Highs and later discovered by Richard Arkwright in 1769. The Water Frame was a spinning frame that is run by water, part of the reason factories were built near rivers. The Water Frame provided thread that was stronger than thread being used in the Spinning Jenny. Because the frame was too large to be operated by hands, he created a type of method by powering the machine using a water wheel.