Author Description

The industrial revolution in Britain changed the world. The images we all share of steam engines and locomotives, smoke and smog, multi-storey textile mills and regiments of working men and women flooding out of factory gates at the end of their shift are all so familiar that it is easy to forget how enormous, far-reaching and upsetting were the events and processes that brought us into this new, industrial age. In Britain all of these things, and more, happened first and most dramatically. Factories as we know them were invented here; mines were sunk to new depths; inventive and entrepreneurial minds sought to make things in new ways that were better, faster and cheaper; engineers harnessed water and steam power as never before to drive machinery and equipment in concentrated centers of production. Innovations were put to work in new types of building, by new types of people and organizations. Alongside functional innovations such as these, as farm workers became factory workers, emerged entirely new ways of living.