Page 104 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-44 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

This line drawing by
artist George Catlin is
a depiction of himself
painting a portrait
during his travels in
the American Indian
country in the 1830s.
It gives the viewer
a sense of European
views of native peoples.

The steam engine provided
for the first time an efficient
way of exploiting the energy
locked up in fossil fuels; it
made available a seemingly
endless supply of cheap energy,
particularly in regions with
ready access to coal. Immedi-
ately it lowered the cost of
extracting coal by easing the
task of pumping water from
mine shafts; in combination
with new spinning and weav-
ing machines invented during
the late eighteenth century, it
also revolutionized the textile
industry, the second-most-
important sector (after agricul-
ture) in most agrarian societies.
the political revolutions that had recently taken place in To exploit these new technologies more efficiently, entre-
Europe and the Americas. By this time European levels of preneurs began to bring workers together in the large,
productivity had already overtaken those of the ancient closely supervised productive enterprises we know as
superpowers of India and China. factories.
In a second wave of innovations that occurred during
Three Waves of the the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century,
Industrial Revolution steam engines were mounted on wheels to create the first
The technological innovations of the Industrial Revo- locomotives. Railways slashed transportation costs over
lution spread in waves. Each wave spawned new land, which is why they had a particularly revolutionary
productivity-raising technologies and spread industrial- impact on the economies of large nations such as the
ization to new regions. In the first wave, during the late United States and the Russian empire. In their turn,
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the crucial demand for coal,locomotives,rolling stock,and track stim-
changes occurred in Britain, although many of the inno- ulated coal and metal production and engineering.During
vations introduced there had been pioneered elsewhere. the early nineteenth century many of these technologies
The most important changes were the introduction of effi- spread to other parts of Europe and to the United States.
cient cotton-spinning machines and the Watt steam A third wave of innovations occurred during the sec-
engine. ond half of the nineteenth century. Industrial technologies