The Revolution in Energy and Industry
Robert Owen
(1771-1858) British cotton manufacturer believed that humans would reveal their true natural goodness if they lived in a cooperative environment; tested his theories at New Lanark, Scotland and New Harmony, Indiana, but failed
Great Exhibition
1851 industrial fair meant to show off Great Britain as the "workshop of the world"
Combination Acts
British laws passed in 1799 that outlawed unions and strikes, favoring capitalist business people over skilled artisans; bitterly resented and widely disregarded by many craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1824
Thomas Malthus
Eighteenth-century English intellectual who warned that population growth threatened future generations because, in his view, population growth would always outstrip increases in agricultural production.
William Blake
English Romantic-era poet who called early factories "satanic mills" and protested against life of the poor
William Wordsworth
English Romantic-poet known for his works on the natural world and protest against the changing Industrial practices, saying how destroyed the rural way of life
David Ricardo
English economist who argued that the laws of supply and demand should operate in a free market
Richard Trevithick
English engineer who built the first railway locomotive
Thomas Savery
English inventor of one of the first primitive steam engines in 1698; it burned coal to produce steam and operated in English and Scottish mines but was terribly inefficient
Thomas Newcomen
English inventor of one of the first primitive steam engines in 1705; it burned coal to produce steam and operated in English and Scottish mines but was terribly inefficient
Mines Act of 1842
English law prohibiting underground work for all women and girls as well as for boys under ten
Factory Acts
English laws passed from 1802 to 1833 that limited the workday of child laborers and set minimum hygiene and safety requirements
George Stephenson
English railway pioneer who built the first passenger railway in 1825
Friedrich List
German-American who wrote "National System of Political Economy" in 1844; he advocated industrialization by railroad building and protective tariffs to improve domestic development
Richard Arkwright
Invented the water frame
Edmund Cartwright
Inventor of the modern power loom
James Watt
Scottish engineer and inventor whose improvements in the steam engine led to its wide use in industry
steam engine
a breakthrough invention by Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 that burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump; the early models were superseded by James Watt's more efficient steam engine, patented in 1769
separate spheres
a gender division of labor with the wife at home as mother and homemaker and the husband as wage earner
tariff protection
a government's way of supporting and aiding its own economy by placing high taxes on imported goods from other countries, as when the French responded to cheaper British goods flooding their country by imposing high tariffs on some imported products
cotton gin
a machine for cleaning the seeds from cotton fibers, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793
spinning jenny
a machine invented in 1765 that could spin several threads at once
Second Industrial Revolution
a period of rapid growth in U.S. manufacturing in the late 1800s
water frame
a spinning machine created by Richard Arkwright that had a capacity of several hundred spindles and used waterpower; it therefore required a larger and more specialized mill — a factory
Industrial Revolution
a term first coined in 1799 to describe the burst of major inventions and economic expansion that began in Britain in the late eighteenth century
Factory Act of 1833
an act that limited the factory workday for children between nine and thirteen years of age to eight hours and that of adolescents between fourteen and eighteen years of age to twelve hours
economic nationalism
an emphasis on domestic control and protection of the economy
class consciousness
awareness of belonging to a distinct social and economic class whose interests might conflict with those of other classes
Fritz Harkort
business pioneer in the German machinery industry, built steam engines, imported materials from England, ambition resulted in large financial losses
William Cockerill
carpenter who went to Belgium in 1799, bringing back secret plans for building spinning machinery
Matthew Boulton
entrepreneur who hired Watt to build better engines
Luddites
group of handicraft workers who attacked factories in northern England in 1811 and later, smashing the new machines that they believed were putting them out of work
Chartist movement
in 19th century Britain, members of the working class demanded reforms in Parliament and in elections, including suffrage for all men
Eli Whitney
invented the cotton gin
Henry Cort
inventor of the puddling system in which coke was used to burn away impurities in pig iron to produce iron of high quality
James Hargreaves
inventor the spinning jenny
Great Britain
nation where the Industrial Revolution began
Grand National Consolidated Trades Union
organized by Owen in 1834, this was one of the largest and most visionary early national unions
deindustrialization
process by which companies move industrial jobs to other regions with cheaper labor, leaving the newly industrialized region to switch to a service economy and to work through a period of high unemployment
John Cockerill
son of William Cockerill who built large, industrial enterprises in southern Belgium, responsible for producing machinery, steel engines, and locomotives
Amalgamated Society of Engineers
the largest and most successful trade union created in 1851 which provided generous unemployment benefits in return for a small weekly payment; one of the first craft unions
Crystal Palace
the location of the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London; an architectural masterpiece made entirely of glass and iron
Rocket
the name given to George Stephenson's effective steam locomotive that was first tested in 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at 35 miles per hour
Zollverein
the name of the free trade zone that German states created in the early 19th century, decades prior to their unification
iron law of wages
theory proposed by English economist David Ricardo suggesting that the pressure of population growth prevents wages from rising above the subsistence level