Portrayal of Machines During the Industrial Revolution

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Portrayal of Machines During the Industrial Revolution

Intuitively, we believe the portrayal of the machine in popular image-making during the Industrial Revolution became increasingly critical as time went on. With the building up of urban areas and unfurling of train tracks across the countryside, people's lives were forever changed by the machine.

Probing more deeply into the conceptualization of the machine, we view the role of the machine from the perspective of distinct socioeconomic classes. The upper-class entrepreneur, the well-educated technician, the working class and the leisure class interpret the effects of machines on humanity differently. The upper-class entrepreneur understood the machine as a vehicle for increased productivity. Distilling the machines into scientific parts, the technician elevated the aims of industry into a purer art form. Appealing to a broader, more general understanding of the machine, the working class was enchanted by the whole-- production as a miraculous process in itself. The leisure class, from their elitist perspective, beckoned the industrial age as a final stage in the evolution of mankind. From all viewpoints, the machine provided a focal point for social commentary and a symbol for the endless possibilities of the Industrial Revolution.

If we are convinced that written historical text is unbiased truth, images provide another doorway through which we access the past. The simplicity of a pencil drawing or the lavish stroke of oil reminds us that the past we see is a construction, an impression, a feeling. Whether the machine was imagined as a toy, or the picture of scientific clarity depended on the artist and the audience for whom the image was created.

Revolut...

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... for unending development and fulfillment of mankind's possibilities was implicit in the portrayal of machines during the Industrial Revolution. Whether the machine was conceptualized as animate livestock or merely as means to a productive end, industrialization changed radically not only the modes of production, but the place of humanity in an industrialized world.

Works Cited

Klingender, Francis D. Art and The Industrial Revolution. London: Noel Carrington, 1947.

Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. ed. Howard L. Parsons. Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology. "Marx and Engels on Ecology."

Perry, Marvin. Western Civilization: A Brief History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.

Smith, Adam. Moral Philosophy: Concepts of Nature and Utility. 1750s.

Ure, Andrew. The Philosophy of Manufactures: The Blessings of the Factory System. 1835.

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