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They also made the transition from making these goods in their homes to factories which increased the population density in larger cities. At this point rural life began to dissipate because everyone started moving into the cities looking for work. Once people had begun moving out of these rural villages into developing cities they became large industrial towns and cities thriving with factories and ores to supply the demand of the people. Amongst all the progression with machinery and production, the Industrial Revolution also triggered the population explosion along with the agricultural and energy revolution.
The person that triggered the Industrial Revolution was Thomas Newcomer. The reason why it happened in Great Britain opposed to France or China was the shear reason that Britain had an abundant amount of natural resources that no other countries had. Along with its abundant amount of resources, Thomas saw the potential Britain had in the market. With his knowledge on the market and his expertise with the machinery, the improvement of the engine granted Britain a great competitive advantage over other countries due to use of coal, which was cheap for the people in England and Scotland to use.
The original steam engine was created by Thomas Savers in 1698 but as then later improved production and more suitable for the work that the people in Britain needed to do. Thomas’ engine was not efficient at all but it did increase productivity of labor since it did the jobs that needed water, wind, and muscle in order to do. The engine was not entirely made by Thomas, its basic scientific research was designed in Italy and Germany. With the creation of the engine there was a massive downside where the engine was only able to be used in mines to pump water out.
The good thing about this was that if the machine were to break down the workers could easily pair it due to its interchangeable parts. The importance of coal and other resources proved very important to the growth of the industries in Great Britain. The coal and other precious metals that were in Great Britain allowed people such as Thomas to create the steam engine utilizing those resources making lives easier. Without the British coal industry there wouldn’t have been the point of going through and developing a steam engine.
With the demand for coal slowly rising engineers and scientists knew that they had to improve upon Thomas Newcomer’s popular steam engine and that’s when James Watt had come into play. James Watt improved the design of the engine to a point where it wasn’t losing as much energy as it was before and it also became way less expensive to run because of his new and improved design. Coal was able to run factories that had no access to water making it possible to have mass production of any product anyway. ‘here in Great Britain.
Combined with metals, coal was the foundation of the engineering industries that mechanized manufacturing and integrated the world economy in the nineteenth century. With all this change to the production industries, there were many impacts on society. Since the machines took places of wind, water, and human muscle, factories starting opening to concentrate work in one place to increase production. This meant that any rural life meant nothing because people starting moving into these concentrated areas with factories in order to find jobs.
That’s also when large cities started to form increasing population and demand for workers to work in the factories. The steam engines implemented into these textile factories Came along with increased demand for products, which these engines were able to reach and surpass. Since so many products were being produced in these large cities, they need way to transport them throughout the country, so many of the wealthy entrepreneurs decided on building private road ways to transport their goods.
Before these paved roads many people were using dirt roads between the cities in order to transport goods which ended up taking long amounts of time to ship. This in turn increases profit for the companies allowing them to import raw materials and export finished goods in a timely manner. After the steam engine was created, George Stephenson implemented these steam engines into a locomotive in 1814, which was able to get rid of humans or donkeys transporting coal form mines to factories. This was very similar to the way the private roads worked, improving the time to import raw materials to factories.
Then another man, Robert Fulton, placed the steam engine into a steamship. Now the British were able to import and export goods across the Atlantic Ocean making them even more money because they were now able to trade with the Americas. All of this was good for making money for the country but no one acknowledged the living conditions of the densely populated cities had. They did not have clean running water, they did not have sewage and any leftover waste the factories needed to get rid of, the imply dumped into the ground or into nearby rivers polluting the water and ground around them.
They also had poor working conditions in the factories which led to many people’s premature deaths due to the incompetence of the factory owners and lack of interest and value on human lives. They were such things as child labor, dangerous machines, poor lighting, no circulation Of the air in the factories, and extremely long working hours. The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain brought about the change in the way companies manufacture goods and how also how they value the lives of the people producing them.
Without the steam engines there might not have been the creation of factories and production of goods would not be efficient at all without Britain’s abundance of natural resources and genius of the men who came up with the idea of making the original steam engines. Without these engines the population explosion, agricultural and energy revolution may not have even occurred. These steam engines have molded the way society functions today being able to meet up the growing demand of products around the world and without the use of natural resources none of this would have ever happened.