Today in class we answered the question "What was revolutionary about industrialization?" We read a handout about the four ingredients of industrialization and came up with their negative and positive impacts on the world. The four ingredients of industrialization are people, resources, technology, and transportation.
During the industrial revolution people found and used new resources to improve their lives. These resources included coal, iron, and cotton. People began mining coal to create iron. Then iron was used to build steam engines and other new machines. This caused problems because the mines were dangerous to the miners, and often times these miners were children. Also, cotton became a much used item in England. British people loved cotton from Africa, and then they began to grow their own. They created new machines to make clothes and textiles out of cotton. But slaves were mostly used to do the heavy work. If they didn't have their own slaves to make cotton, they would be buying it cheap from others who used slave labor, which encouraged the slave trade.
Revolutionary technology was created during the industrial revolution. The steam engine was created to power boats and locomotives by steam power (heat and water). People also improved iron by "smelting" it, or removing the impurities and overall producing a better quality and less expensive iron. But coal was needed to smelt iron, and it was dangerous for people to be working in the mines, and burning coal polluted the air. These inventions were groundbreaking, but didn't come at hour negative impacts.
Picture:
Peacock. "Old Town Railway Station." 1890. Manchester. Photograph. 5 Sep 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment