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Industrial revolution

From the first steam engines pumping water out of English mines in 1712 to electric light, cars on assembly lines and the carbon dioxide in today’s air. Seven units cover the steam engine, cotton mills, railways, life and work in industrial towns, child labour and the laws that limited it, electricity and the second industrial revolution, and what industry left behind. Dates and figures come from museum and archive sources named in each unit.

Progress

About this course

James Watt's separate condenser, patented on 5 January 1769, let a steam engine do the same work while burning about two-thirds less coal. Yet for years after his patent it earned him nothing, and he took work surveying routes for canals. He wrote in a gloomy moment that of all things in life there is nothing more foolish than inventing. When Watt died in 1819 his attic workshop was locked and left as it was; in 1924 the whole room moved to the Science Museum in London, and in the 1960s the curator Rodney Law noticed a small brass and tin object on the workbench. It was Watt's first model of the separate condenser.

The seven units start with the steam engine, from the first engines pumping water out of English mines in 1712. Cotton mills follow, where Richard Arkwright opened a water-powered spinning mill at Cromford in 1771 and employed about 1,000 people there. At the Rainhill trials in October 1829, Stephenson's Rocket averaged 12 miles per hour, reached 30, and won £500. Industrial cities show that Manchester more than tripled in population between 1800 and 1850. Child labour and the Factory Acts note that under the 1833 Act no child under nine could work in a textile mill and four inspectors were appointed for about 4,000 mills. Electricity opens with Edison's Pearl Street station supplying about 400 lamps at three in the afternoon on 4 September 1882. The last unit sets about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide before industry against 422.8 in 2024.

Sources include museum and archive material such as National Archives handbills and inspector letters, and each unit names its source.

Before you start

The steam engine unit talks about pressure, condensing steam and work, so Energy and States of matter are useful but not required. On the history side, Age of exploration covers the Atlantic trade and the colonies of the centuries just before.

When you finish

Afterwards you can explain what Watt's separate condenser improved on Newcomen's engine, how the flying shuttle and Arkwright's mill created the factory system, and why 27 September 1825 mattered for railways. You can describe working days in Manchester, what John Snow suspected about cholera, what the 1833 Factory Act changed for children, and how carbon dioxide in the air has risen from about 280 ppm.

  1. 1The steam engine: Newcomen and WattJames Watt’s separate condenser, patented on 5 January 1769, let a steam engine do the same work while burning about two-thirds less coal.
  2. 2Cotton mills and the factory systemIn 1771 Richard Arkwright opened a water-powered spinning mill at Cromford in Derbyshire. As he added more mills there, the number of people he employed at Cromford grew to about 1,000.
  3. 3Railways: from Locomotion to the golden spikeAt the Rainhill trials in October 1829, Stephenson’s Rocket averaged 12 miles per hour, reached 30, and won its builders a prize of £500.
  4. 4Industrial cities and the working dayManchester, the centre of the cotton industry, more than tripled in population between 1800 and 1850.
  5. 5Child labour and the Factory ActsUnder Britain’s Factory Act of 1833, no child under nine could work in a textile mill, and four inspectors were appointed to enforce the law in about 4,000 mills.
  6. 6Electricity and the second industrial revolutionAt three in the afternoon on 4 September 1882, Edison’s Pearl Street station in New York began supplying electricity to about 400 lamps.
  7. 7What the industrial revolution left behindBefore the industrial revolution the air held about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. In 2024 the global average was 422.8.

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Sources for this course (20)
  • Science Museum blog, "James Watt and the separate condenser" (5 January 2019, Ben Russell) and Science Museum Group Collection records for James Watt, Rocket (co26704) and the Huskisson memorial
  • University of Glasgow, "James Watt and the Newcomen Engine"
  • Railway Museum, "Stephenson’s Rocket, Rainhill and the rise of the locomotive"
  • Science and Industry Museum, "Making the Liverpool and Manchester Railway"
  • Locomotion (Shildon)
  • "Locomotion No.1"
  • The National Archives (UK)
  • "1833 Factory Act" education resource and source 1, and "Why did the Luddites protest?"
  • UK Parliament Living Heritage, "The 1833 Factory Act" and "Coal mines"
  • Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee collection (Lewis Hine)
  • "Ford implements the moving assembly line" and "Invention of the Telephone"
  • Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Bell experimental telephone (nmah_689864)
  • US National Archives, "Eli Whitney’s patent for the cotton gin"
  • ETHW (IEEE)
  • "Milestones: Pearl Street Station, 1882"
  • Cromford Mills (cromfordmills.org.uk)
  • NOAA Climate.gov, "Climate change: atmospheric carbon dioxide" (2025) and NOAA GML trends
  • Britannica, "Bessemer process"
  • PMC 7150208, "John Snow, cholera, the Broad Street pump"
  • Natural Earth coastlines (public domain).

Checked: 2026-10-17