Industrial Revolutions Inventions

Directions: Use your textbook and/or the internet to find out about these inventions. Then, use your brain to think about each of the four analysis questions.

Agrarian Inventions

Invention / Inventor / Year / Impact
Seed Drill / Jethro Tull / 1701 / Increased number of seeds that took root by predictably planting each one (rather than scattering!)
Crop Rotation
*not in textbook, take a guess!* / Charles “Turnip” Townshend / Early 1700’s
Cast Iron Plow / Charles Newbold / 1797 / Stronger; could plow areas that were rocky; increased food by upping the amount of land that was available for farming
Reaper *not in the text, take a guess!* / Cyrus McCormick / 1834

QUESTIONS:

Why was population growth a key factor that MUST have happened before the Industrial Revolution?

Textile Inventions

Invention / Inventor / Year / Impact
Spinning Jenny / James Hargreaves / 1764
Power Loom / 1784; perfected in 1815
Cotton Gin / 1793 / Picked the seeds from the cotton; reinvigorated & spread slavery and cotton production in the US South; helped Britain overtake India’s cotton production

QUESTIONS:

  1. What was the main focus of production in the early industrial revolution, according to the inventions above?

Age of Steam Transportation and New Forms of Communication

Invention / Inventor / Year / Impact
“Crude” steam engine / Thomas Newcomen / 1705-ish
“Efficient “ steam engine
Steam Locomotive / George Stephenson / 1804
Electric telegraph / Samuel Morse
Charles Wheatstone / 1837

Questions:

  1. How is the first part of the Industrial Revolution (the agricultural and textile revolution) different from the second, or later era, signified by the inventions listed above?
  1. Why do you think the changes of this era are called a “revolution?” What made them so revolutionary? How did it alter human existence, production, society for all classes? Be very complete in this answer - - it is important!