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business people over skilled artisans; bitterly resented and widely disregarded by many craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1824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