AP
Est. 1300
Get Wrecked for European History
Trade agreements were a pretty dandy thing in this time. They encouraged countries to trade with each other and economic growth. Pretty good.
Canals were such a huge deal in the Industrial Revolution I'm yelling. You see, these trains couldn't move really heavy stuff, and vehicles didn't exist, so they used canals! What they did was take rivers and widen them to let barges through. These barges could carry 40 tonnes of weight, which was a huge amount for that time! But of course, they had a heck ton of problems that made them go obsolete in just a few years. Some simple reasons are, they could freeze in the winter, dry up in the summer, and the people who built the canals built them at different widths so some larger barges coudn't fit through.
Railroads soon came after these canals, and replaced them because hey, it was way faster. It all started with this dude named Richard Trevithick, who made the first steam engine. We kinda needed this to be steam powered because wood burns not that hot and we were slowly running out of coal. It was a huge deal you know, these things went SONIC FAST(for their time) Too bad Richard died in Peru before he could get all the benifits from inventing this machine. BUT someone else reinvented it for him and they slowly replaced horse-drawn carriages and canal barges for moving goods and people around.
Source: http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/IRbegins.html, A History of Western Society by McKay, http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/britain-1700-to-1900/transport-1750-to-1900/canals-1750-to-1900/
Great Britain established the Industrial Revolution due to being great. It was rich in natural resources and encouraged people to invest in things. They also invented many things that would help with inovation like the steam engine and cotton gin. These advancements helped it pull ahead and make things in bulk. It soon made factories to mass produce textiles to sell for cheap. Due to all this producing, the demand for fuels such as iron and coal increased so factories and trains could be powered. Basically, Britain did really well with all this industry and it got pretty rich, everyone except the working class. That's kinda where the Crystal Palace came from, it was to show off how prosperous Great Britain had become.
Source(s): A History of Western Society by McKay
Now, Great Britain went through that industrialization before anyone else did, so when continental Europe decided to jumpo on the traino they already had a rough idea on what was gonna go down. They saw what Britain went through and kinda just copied them. They went and had working class get together over their problems and the sense of class conciousness increased. They also used all the natural resources they had to manufacture as much as possible. They used the all the fancy things that the British created and brought them back to the continent. They made all those canals, factories, and trains much easier since the technology was already there. And about Prussia being leader of unified Germany, Germany first becaume unified because the differnet classes in the different states decided "hey, teaming up sounds a lot easier" so they did just that.
Source(s): A History of Western Society by McKay
In the Second Industrial Revolution, a heck ton on fancy new things were made! This one was called the technological revolution, and it's where you start seeing things that are more familiar to our everyday lives, and took place between 1870 and 1914. In 1876, Alexander Grahm Bell made the first telephone, so that people could communicate instantly across long distances! Wowza! This and the telegraph were the beginnings of worldwide telecommunication. The first electric railroad appeared in 1879 in Germany, and were far more efficietnt than coal and steam engines, and that was like a great thing for transportation. They quickly replaced horse drawn carriages due to being way better. The first airplane was made in 1903 and the light bulb, or at least the one we use today, was made in 1879. This was also the time that people started up doing mass production or assembly line work. This helped make many things quickly and cheaply and was great for buisnesses and uniformity in products.
Source(s): http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-second-industrial-revolution-timeline-inventions.html
Samuel Morse was the inventor of the first telegraph. It worked by using electric signals to send messages between stations. It could only be used using Morse Code, a code that used dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers in the alphabet. Although it fell out of favor in the 21st century, it was the beginning of the world's journey into telecommunication. It was kinda like Great Britain in the Industrial Revolution. This is a pretty important thing you know, before this thing, we could only communicate sorta long distance with letters and drumbeats. But sound can only travel so far..
In 1873, Alexander started working on transmitting sound using electrical currents. In 1876 he found a way to transmit sound using a needle vibrating in water, and this was the basis for the first telephone. In August of 1876, Alexander used his new invention in front of a crowd to call his assistant from five miles away. It worked so, him and his partners tried to patent it using Western Union, but they were turned down. So they saved it and patented it themselves, and then it obviously because super popular and is even still used today, although there have been many improvements to the original telephone.
Source: https://www.shoretel.com/content/alexander-graham-bell-and-history-telephone
The very first form of assembly line production originated in Henry Ford's automobile factory. You see, cars were just starting to become popular, but they were far too expensive for the common fella! So Ford decided to increase productivity to lower unit cost, making everything cheaper. So he kinda copied what happened in meat packing plants, back then they would hang up the animals and move it from worker to worker. This way they could kill, clean, and fix it for selling much quicker than just having individual people work on one thing. So, in 1913 the first assembly line was created, and the 29 tasks were to be carried out by 29 men who would do each task as the product moved down the line. The assembly line technique was officially installed into Ford factories in the same year, causing the price of the automobiles to drop from $850 to $360 and sales had tripled! This assembly line work is pretty darn efficient, and it's even used today!
Source(s): http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/moving-assembly-line-at-ford