Where was the first factory in the Industrial Revolution?
Industrial Revolution
Arguably the first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, because the Italian silk industry guarded its secrets closely, the state of the industry at that time is unknown. Although Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk from Italy was cut off to eliminate competition. In order to promote manufacturing the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which were exhibited in the Tower of London.
Factory
Factories arose with the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution when the capital and space requirements became too great for cottage industry or workshops. Early factories that contained small amounts of machinery, such as one or two spinning mules, and fewer than a dozen workers have been called "glorified workshops".
Industrial Revolution
Belgium was the second country, after Britain, in which the Industrial Revolution took place and the first in continental Europe: Wallonia (French speaking southern Belgium) was the first region to follow the British model successfully. Starting in the middle of the 1820s, and especially after Belgium became an independent nation in 1830, numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as puddling and rolling mills were built in the coal mining areas around Liège and Charleroi. The leader was a transplanted Englishman John Cockerill. His factories at Seraing integrated all stages of production, from engineering to the supply of raw materials, as early as 1825.
History of Massachusetts
Massachusetts became a leader in industrial innovation and development during the 19th century. Since colonial times, there had been a successful iron making industry in New England. The first successful ironworks in America was established at Saugus in 1646, utilizing bog iron from swamps to produce plows, nails, firearms, hoops for barrels and other items necessary for the development of the Colony. Other industries would be established during this period, such as shipbuilding, lumber, paper and furniture making. These small-scale shops and factories often utilized the State's many rivers and streams to power their machinery.
French Directory
The continual wars and fiscal crises greatly limited the expansion of French industry. The Industrial Revolution had only just begun in France. Production during the Directory had fallen below what it was in 1789. The number of workers in the silk industry in Lyon had dropped from 12,000 before 1787 to 6,500. The cotton textile industry was more successful due to the embargo against British products caused by the war. New factories and new technologies, such as mechanical looms, were introduced in Normandy and in Alsace. However, the technologies were still primitive; the steam engine had not yet arrived in French factories. The chemical industry was also advancing rapidly during he Directory; the chemist and entrepreneur Jean Antoine Claude Chaptal built a chemical factory in Montpellier, which he soon moved to Chaillot, a village west of Paris. The most effective promoter of French industry was François de Neufchâteau, who was Minister of the Interior before becoming a Director in 1797. He planned a new canal system, began work on a new road across the Pyrenees, and organized the first national industrial exposition in Paris, which opened with great success in October 1798. Once he became Consul, Bonaparte copied the idea of the industrial exposition. Despite this bright spot, French industry was primitive: without steam power, most factories in France depended upon water power, and the metallurgy industry still melted iron with wood fires, not oil.
History of Catalonia
Since the 1830s, boosted by the conditions of proto-industrialization of the prior two centuries of the Catalan urban areas and its countryside, Catalonia became a centre of Spain's industrialization and it became one of the largest textile producers in the Mediterranean. In 1832 it was inaugurated in Barcelona the factory Bonaplata, the first of the country which worked with steam engine. Catalonia had to contend with a grave shortage of energy resources and the weakness of the domestic Spanish market. To encourage industrial expansion, Spain established protectionist policies which reduced foreign competition domestically (although the policy of Spanish government during those times changed many times between free trade and protectionism). Catalonia saw the first railway construction in the Iberian Peninsula in 1848, linking Barcelona with Mataró, built with private capital. These initiatives partially benefitted the country's industrial regions, Catalonia, the Basque Country and later Asturias. As in much of Europe, the working class was molded into an industrial proletariat, living and working in often inhuman conditions.
As a response to the lack of energy resources, a large number of factories were installed on the margins of the rivers when the use of the water turbine widespread. Usually, the factories included a Company town; Catalonia has a high density of this kind of settlements, known locally as industrial colonies ("colònies industrials"). They are especially concentrated in river basins along the Ter and Llobregat. In the comarca of Berguedà, for example, within 20 km there are 14 colonies. These were small towns created around a factory, built in a rural area and, therefore, separate from any other population. They housed between 100 and 500 inhabitants, and in some cases around 1000 people. These industrial colonies were a typical aspect of industrialization in Catalonia, specifically the second industrialization, which resulted in certain areas that were once purely rural becoming industrial. They were first created in the second half of the nineteenth century, especially from the 1870s onwards. The last colonies were created in the early years of the twentieth century. There are more than 75 textile colonies recorded; although there were also mining, metallurgy and agricultural colonies.
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the US, in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system. The Industrial Revolution also led to an unprecedented rise in the rate of population growth.
Machine industry
The machinery industry came into existence during the Industrial Revolution. Companies in this emerging field grew out of iron foundries, shipyards, forges and repair shops. Often companies were a combination of machine factory and shipyard. Early in the 20th century several motorcycle and automobile manufacturers began their own machine factories.
Grafton, Massachusetts
Grafton has been a significant contributor in the success and progress of the American Industrial Revolution that was started in 1793 by Samuel Slater with his cotton mill in Pawtucket . North Grafton's Upper Mill, now known as the Washington Mills complex, that still produces abrasives, was once known as the New England Manufacturing Company. This was part of the New England Village, as North Grafton was known for generations. This part of the mill was built in 1826 and was part of a much larger complex, but most of that is now gone, mainly due to serious fires. Mill housing was built at 12, 14 and 16 Overlook Street. These central-chimney-style homes were boarding houses with ornate trim that has since been lost.
Fourth Industrial Revolution
The First Industrial Revolution took place from the 18th to 19th centuries in Europe and North America. It was a period when mostly agrarian, rural societies became industrial and urban. The iron and textile industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution.
History of Paris
The first large-scale industries arrived in Paris during the reign of Napoleon. They flourished in the outskirts of the city, where buildings and land, often taken from churches and convents closed during the French Revolution, were available. Large textile mills were built in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the Faubourg Saint-Denis, and the first sugar refinery using sugar beets was opened in Passy in 1812 to replace shipments of sugar from the West Indies blocked by the British blockade. Iron and bronze foundries had been started late in the 18th century in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and Chaillot, and early chemical works in Javel, La Chapelle and Clignancourt. In 1801, Paris had nine hundred enterprises that employed 60,000 workers, but only twenty-four enterprises had more than 100 workers. Most Parisians were employed in small workshops. Paris in the 19th century had many artisans producing luxury goods, particularly clothing, watches, fine furniture, porcelain, jewelry and leather goods, which commanded premium prices on the world market. Throughout the 19th century, the amount of industry and number of workers increased. In 1847, there were 350,000 workers in Paris in 65,000 enterprises, but only 7,000 enterprises had more than ten workers. The textile industry declined, but at mid-century Paris produced 20 percent of the steam engines and machinery in France and had the third largest metallurgy industry. New chemical plants, highly polluting, appeared around the edges of the city in Javel, Grenelle, Passy, Clichy, Belleville and Pantin.
Protectionism in the United States
Samuel Slater in 1789 emigrated (illegally since he was familiar with textile manufacturing) from Britain. Looking for opportunities he heard of the failing attempts at making cotton mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Contacting the owners he promised to see if he could fix their mills—they offered him a full partnership if he succeeded. Declaring their early attempts unworkable he proceeded from January 1790 to December 1790 to build the first operational textile manufacturing facility in the United States. The Industrial Revolution was off and running in the United States. Initially the cost of their textiles was slightly higher than the cost of equivalent British goods but the tariff helped protect their early start-up industry.
Beverly, Massachusetts
Beverly has also been called the "birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution," as the site of the first cotton mill in America (1787), and largest cotton mill of its time. The town is the home of one of the country's first Sunday schools (which was built in 1810). Beverly was incorporated as a city in 1894.
Belgium in &quot;the long nineteenth century&quot;
The Industrial Revolution is usually considered to have been spread from Britain to Belgium by two British industrialists, William and John Cockerill, who moved to Liège in 1807 and formed a company producing industrial machinery and iron. Industrial development was possible in Belgium because of large coal deposits located in the "Sillon industriel" along the Sambre-Meuse river valley. Although the town of Ghent, a centre of cotton production in Flanders, industrialised rapidly, the effects of the Industrial Revolution were most felt in Wallonia, particularly in the cities of Mons, Charleroi, Liège and Verviers. By the 1840s, Cockerill was the world's largest manufacturer of steel. Belgium also rapidly developed a large railway system. From the outset, the Belgian state supported the construction of railways, envisaging a railway link between the industrial region of Mons and the port of Antwerp via Brussels. The first stretch of this line, one of the first railways in Europe, opened in 1835 between Brussels and Mechelen.
Benjamin Gott
Benjamin Gott (24 June 1762 – 14 February 1840) was one of the leading figures in the industrial revolution, in the field of textiles. His factory at Armley Mills, Armley, Leeds, was once the largest factory in the world and is now home to the Armley Mills Industrial Museum.
Technological and industrial history of the United States
Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile manufacturing process by employing interchangeable parts on assembly lines—the beginning of industrial mass production. In 1908, the Ford Motor Company released the Ford Model T which could generate 20 horsepower, was lightweight, and easy to repair. Demand for the car was so great, he had to relocate his assembly plant to Highland Park, Michigan in 1912. The new plant was a model of industrial efficiency for the time: it was well lit and ventilated, employed conveyors to move parts along an assembly line, and workers' stations were orderly arranged along the line. The efficiency of the assembly line allowed Ford to realize great gains in economy and productivity; in 1912, Ford sold 6,000 cars for approximately $900 and by 1916 approximately 577,000 Model T automobiles were sold for $360. Ford was able to scale production rapidly because assembly-line workers were unskilled laborers performing repetitive tasks. Ford hired European immigrants, African-Americans, ex-convicts, and the disabled and paid comparatively high wages, but was quick to dismiss anyone involved in labor unions or radical political associations.
Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Completion of the Lehigh Canal in 1829 led to further development. Discovery of iron ore deposits brought Whitehall into the Industrial Revolution when the first blast iron furnace was built in Hokendauqua in 1854. This was immediately followed by the establishment of a railroad system to transport raw materials to the furnaces and to ship the final product. Population grew rapidly as these industries attracted Welsh and Irish immigrants.
Industrial Age
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain because it had the factors of production, land (all natural resources), capital, and labor. Britain had plenty of harbors that enabled trade, Britain had access to capital, such as goods and money, for example, tools, machinery, equipment, and inventory. Britain, lastly, had an abundance of labor, or industrial workers in this case. There are many other conditions that help show why the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain. The British Isles and colonies overseas represented huge markets that created a large demand for British goods. Britain also had one of the largest spheres of influence due to its massive navy and merchant marine. The British government's concern for commercial interests was also important. 
The steam engine allowed for steamboats and the locomotives, which made transportation much faster. By the mid-19th century the Industrial Revolution had spread to Continental Europe and North America, and since then it has spread to most of the world.
History of Massachusetts
While Samuel Slater had established the first successful textile mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793, there remained no way to efficiently mass-produce cloth from the spun yarn produced by the early mills. The yarn was still outsourced to small weaving shops where it was woven into cloth on hand looms. The first woolen mill, and the second textile mill in the Blackstone Valley, was a "wool carding mill", established in 1810 by Daniel Day, near the West River and Blackstone River at Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Then, in 1813, a group of wealthy Boston merchants led by Francis Cabot Lowell, known as the Boston Associates, established the first successful integrated textile mill in North America at Waltham. Lowell had visited England in 1810 and studied the Lancashire textile industry. Because the British government prohibited the export of this new technology, Lowell memorized plans for the power looms on his return trip to Boston. With the skill of master mechanic Paul Moody, the first successful power looms were produced, harnessing the power of the Charles River. For the first time, all phases of textile production could now be performed under one roof, greatly increasing production, and profits. This was the real beginning of the Industrial Revolution in America.
With the early success of the Boston Manufacturing Company at Waltham, the Boston Associates would also later establish several other textile towns, including Lowell in 1823, Lawrence in 1845, Chicopee in 1848 and Holyoke in 1850.
Žižkov
Although 19th-century Žižkov is regarded as a proletarian neighborhood, there was also industry there. The largest factory, producing matches, was founded by French entrepreneurs Sellier and Bellot at Parukářka at the time of the emergence of the city. At the beginning of the First Republic, there were smaller factories – Papírografie on Vápenka, the Strejc and Nosek precision machine plants, and a number of workshops on Kněžská luka. Small business were often hidden in the courtyards of the residential buildings.
History of Rhode Island
In 1790, English immigrant Samuel Slater founded the first textile mill in the United States in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (Slater Mill) and became known as the father of the American Industrial Revolution. During the 19th century, Rhode Island became one of the most industrialized states in America with large numbers of textile factories. The state also had significant machine tool, silverware, and costume jewelry industries.
Ford Valve Plant
Northville's Valve Plant was the first of Henry Ford's "Village Industries" factories. The Village industries were designed to bring the economic advantages of industrial jobs to rural communities through the establishment of decentralized, non-disruptive manufacturing plants. In particular, Ford intended the Village Industries to stabilize the income of farmers who would otherwise have little winter income, and he gave his workers leaves of absence to work their farms.
American (1911 automobile)
The company settled on moving its offices to Louisville, Kentucky in December, 1910, and began manufacturing in an abandoned woolen mill across the Ohio River from Louisville in New Albany, Indiana. The factory buildings were two and three stories in height, located on a six-acre tract on Vincennes Street in New Albany. The factory was reported in 1914 to be "one of the very largest factories in the state of Indiana... and is equipped with machinery, tools, raw materials, parts and accessories for the manufacture of motor cars."
Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park
Samuel Slater, an English industrialist, constructed his first textile mill in Pawtucket, in 1793, along the Blackstone River. In addition to utilizing advanced new technology he had learned about in England, which had previously never been used in an American mill, Slater implemented an innovative management style that helped his factory find significant success. He went on to establish other factories, including company towns like Slatersville. The textile industry continued to expand in the Blackstone region, spawning numerous mill towns. By the late 1820s, the industry was thriving to such an extent that more efficient transportation methods were needed, which led to the construction of the Blackstone Canal connecting Worcester, Massachusetts to the sea port at Providence, Rhode Island. The region's advances were an important component in American industrial history.
Economic history of the United States
Starting with textiles in the 1790s, factories were built to supply a regional and national market. The power came from waterfalls, and most of the factories were built alongside the rivers in rural New England and upstate New York.
Before 1800, most cloth was made in home workshops, and housewives sewed it into clothing for family use or trade with neighbors. In 1810 the secretary of the treasury estimated that two-thirds of rural household clothing, including hosiery and linen, was produced by households. By the 1820s, housewives bought the cloth at local stores, and continued their sewing chores. The American textile industry was established during the long period of wars from 1793 to 1815, when cheap cloth imports from Britain were unavailable. Samuel Slater secretly brought in the plans for complex textile machinery from Britain, and built new factories in Rhode Island using the stolen designs. By the time the Embargo Act of 1807 cut off trade with Britain, there here were 15 cotton spinning mills in operation. These were all small operations, typically employing fewer than 50 people, and most used Arckwright water frames powered by small streams. They were all located in southeastern New England. In 1809 the number of mills had grown to 62, with 25 under construction. To meet increased demand for cloth several manufacturers resorted to the putting-out system of having the handloom weaving done in homes. The putting-out system was inefficient because of the difficulty of distributing the yarn and collecting the cloth, embezzlement of supplies, lack of supervision and poor quality. To overcome these problems the textile manufacturers began to consolidate work in central workshops shops where they could supervise operations. Taking this to the next level, in 1815 Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Company built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business.
Scientific Revolution
Abraham Darby I (1678–1717) was the first, and most famous, of three generations of the Darby family who played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. He developed a method of producing high-grade iron in a blast furnace fueled by coke rather than charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution.
Richard Mowry
The village where the Mowrys lived came to be known as "Quaker City" and is said to be among the earliest places of industrialization in the US. It is part of the historic Blackstone Valley National Heritage Corridor, which is of national significance to the earliest industrialization of the US. There was an iron forge at Ironstone, Massachusetts, just south of Quaker City, started by Benjamin Taft in 1734. Caleb Handy added a triphammer after the American Revolution. The Quakers built buildings from bricks from Moses Farnum's farm. Bog Iron from near the Blackstone River provided the ore for metal working. Grist mills, saw mills, and apparently the earliest textiles from Richard Mowrys marketing and manufactures sprang up nearby. Mowry recorded extensive travels in New England and Central New York, and visited over 88 Quaker meetings, possibly also marketing his inventions for cider or cloth.
Industry in Tianjin
The city of Tianjin considers itself the original home or birthplace of Chinese industrial revolution. Modern industry started there with Tianjin Machine Factory  which was established by the Qing government during the Self-Strengthening Movement. Afterwards,Yuan Shikai promoted new policies in Tianjin. Numerous modern industrial enterprises mushroomed in Hebei  New District in the northern bank of the Hai River. Including Zhou Xuexi, many industrialists established large enterprise groups that were managed by merchant and supervised by the government. By the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese private enterprises were booming. Among them is the most representative Yongli Alkali Factory which won the gold award and certificate in Philadelphia, the U.S. in 1926 by the soldium carbonate it produced. The factory was praised as "the symbol of developing important chemical industry of the Republic China". The development of Tianjin's modern industrial and the establishment of the Concessions in Tianjin contributed to the rapid expansion of modern Tianjin to become the biggest city and center of industry and commerce in northern China, as well as the second biggest city of industry, finance and trade in China. The development of Tianjin modern industry mainly went through four stages: initial period, evolution period, booming period and occupied period.  Because of the industrial boom of Tianjin modern industry, the government of Tianjin built The Tianjin Museum of Modern Industry in Divergence estuary for commemoration.
Paris during the Bourbon Restoration
During the Restoration, Paris became the cradle of the industrial revolution in France. The textile industry had already been installed in the faubourg Saint-Antoine by the firm of Richard and Lenoir, and by Albert in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. In 1812, Benjamin Delessert had built the first refinery of sugar beets at Passy, which became one of the largest industrial enterprises in the Paris region. In 1818, he joined forces with Baron Jean-Conrad Hottinguer to create the Caisse d'Epargne et de Prévoyance de Paris, France’s first savings bank. French scientists made important advances in new technologies, including the manufacture of rubber, aluminum, and gilded products, which were turned into industries. Even before the Revolution, in 1779 the Count of Artois, the brother of the King, had built the first chemical plant on the plain of Javel, next to the Seine, making sulfuric acid, potash, and chlorine, called "Eau de Javel." The plant also made hydrogen gas, used in the first manned balloon flights, and varnish, used to seal the fabric of balloons. During the Restoration, inspired by the work of the chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal and other scientists, new factories were built along the left bank of the Seine, making a wide variety of new chemical products, but also heavily polluting the river.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution
In 1783 a mill was built in Manchester at Shudehill, at the highest point in the city away from the river. Shudehill Mill was powered by a 30 ft diameter waterwheel. Two storage ponds were built, and the water from one passed from one to the other turning the wheel. A steam driven pump returned the water to the higher reservoir. The steam engine was of the atmospheric type. An improvement devised by Joshua Wrigley, trialled in Chorlton-upon-Medlock used two Savery engines to supplement the river in driving on overshot waterwheel.
In 1784, Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, and produced a prototype in the following year. His initial venture to exploit this technology failed, although his advances were recognised by others in the industry. Others such as Robert Grimshaw (whose factory was destroyed in 1790 as part of the growing reaction against the mechanization of the industry) and Austin – developed the ideas further.
Industrial and production engineering
Adam Smith's concepts of Division of Labour and the "Invisible Hand" of capitalism introduced in his treatise "The Wealth of Nations" motivated many of the technological innovators of the Industrial revolution to establish and implement factory systems. The efforts of James Watt and Matthew Boulton led to the first integrated machine manufacturing facility in the world, including the implementation of concepts such as cost control systems to reduce waste and increase productivity and the institution of skills training for craftsmen.
Labour revolt
The Canut Revolts in Lyons, France were the first clearly defined worker uprising of the Industrial Revolution. The First occurred in November 1831 and was followed by later revolts in 1834 and 1848. Following the closure of the national workshops after the 1848 revolution in Paris, there was an uprising in Paris involving 100,000 insurgents involved in a three-day battle with the army, volunteers and reserve forces.
Village industries
More plants were quickly opened, with three more village industries in Phoenix, Plymouth, and Waterford by 1925. After that, there was something of a lull in the village industry program, with only two new plants, in Flat Rock and Ypsilanti, opened in the next ten years. However, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Ford moved to rapidly expand the village industry concept, opening plants in Tecumseh, Newburg, Dundee, Brooklyn, Saline, Milan, Milford, Sharon Hollow, Willow Run, and Manchester. many of these plants, opening in the middle of the Great Depression, had a profound economic effect on the community, employing dozens or hundreds of workers who would otherwise have been unemployed or have moved away. During World War II, three more plants, at Hayden Mills, Cherry Hill, and Clarkston, were constructed.
Carbon County, Pennsylvania
In the 1830s, the first blast furnaces in Northampton County were built by the LC&N in an attempt to make anthracite iron, the foundation of the early industrial revolution in America. The LC&N also built the first wire rope factory in the U.S. in Mauch Chunk.
Moses Taft
He was an important industrialist in the Blackstone Valley, America's first industrialized region. Moses Taft built a woolen mill on the Blackstone River at Uxbridge, circa 1852. The mill ran 24/7 during the American Civil War. Union Blue Uniforms were made at Moses Taft's Mill in historic Uxbridge. Moses Taft was a descendent of the famous Taft family in America which had its roots in Uxbridge. By the mid-1850s the mills of Uxbridge were producing 2.5 million yards (2 million square meters) of cloth yearly. Some of the earliest improvements of textiles, and their industrial processes occurred in the Uxbridge Mills including the Moses Taft mill, also known as the Calumet Mill. In later years after 1910, this historic mill became known as Wheelock Mill or Stanley Woolen, and then became part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, and was also used in the production of several movies including Oliver's Story, and The Great Gatsby.
Fox Mill, Hollinwood
Oldham rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the first ever industrialised towns, rapidly becoming "one of the most important centres of cotton and textile industries in England", spinning Oldham counts, the coarser counts of cotton. Oldham's soils were too thin and poor to sustain crop growing, and so for decades prior to industrialisation the area was used for grazing sheep, which provided the raw material for a local woollen weaving trade. It was not until the last quarter of the 18th century that Oldham changed from being a cottage industry township producing woollen garments via domestic manual labour, to a sprawling industrial metropolis of textile factories. The first mill, Lees Hall, was built by William Clegg in about 1778. Within a year, 11 other mills had been constructed, but by 1818 there were only 19 of these privately owned mills.
Industrial Revolution
Precision manufacturing techniques made it possible to build machines that mechanized the shoe industry. and the watch industry. The industrialisation of the watch industry started 1854 also in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the Waltham Watch Company, with the development of machine tools, gauges and assembling methods adapted to the micro precision required for watches.
Industry
The industrial revolution (from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century) saw the development and popularization of mechanized means of production as a replacement for hand production. The industrial revolution played a role in the abolition of slavery in Europe and in North America.
Village industries
Ford reconfigured the Northland property into a valve manufacturing facility by moving machinery in from the Fordson and Highland Park plants. The Northville Ford Valve Plant was the first village industry to open, in 1919-20. Meanwhile, Ford converted Nankin Mills into a small factory, and in 1920, workers began producing screws.
Machine factory
In the second part of the 19th century more and more machine factories were started. These companies partly grew out of iron foundries, shipyards, forges and repair shops. Many production machines were sold to machine shops, where parts and consumer products were produced. Early 20th century several motorcycle and automobile manufacturers began their own machine factories.
Industrial Revolution
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most of the workforce was employed in agriculture, either as self-employed farmers as landowners or tenants, or as landless agricultural labourers. It was common for families in various parts of the world to spin yarn, weave cloth and make their own clothing. Households also spun and wove for market production. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution India, China and regions of Iraq and elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East produced most of the world's cotton cloth while Europeans produced wool and linen goods.
Industry
The Industrial Revolution led to the development of factories for large-scale production with consequent changes in society. Originally the factories were steam-powered, but later transitioned to electricity once an electrical grid was developed. The mechanized assembly line was introduced to assemble parts in a repeatable fashion, with individual workers performing specific steps during the process. This led to significant increases in efficiency, lowering the cost of the end process. Later automation was increasingly used to replace human operators. This process has accelerated with the development of the computer and the robot.
Tipton
Tipton was one of the key towns in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Even during the 18th century it had established its first key industries. This included the world's first successful steam pumping engine, which was erected at Conygre Coalworks in 1712 by industrialist Thomas Newcomen. A full-size replica of the engine now exists at the Black Country Living Museum just over Tipton's borders in Dudley.
Factory
The Venice Arsenal provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in Venice, Republic of Venice, several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, it mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts. The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people.
Industrial Revolution
Lewis Mumford has proposed that the Industrial Revolution had its origins in the Early Middle Ages, much earlier than most estimates. He explains that the model for standardised mass production was the printing press and that "the archetypal model for the industrial era was the clock". He also cites the monastic emphasis on order and time-keeping, as well as the fact that medieval cities had at their centre a church with bell ringing at regular intervals as being necessary precursors to a greater synchronisation necessary for later, more physical, manifestations such as the steam engine.
Horbury
Wool spinning and cloth manufacture were important originally as cottage industries. At the start of the Industrial Revolution steam engines were installed at Race's Mill in Dudfleet and Foster's Mill on Engine Lane in 1795. Resistance to the implementation of new textile machinery and the factory system was shown when Luddites, who blamed the new factories for depriving weavers from earning a living in a time of widespread hunger and poverty, destroyed Fosters Mill.
Factory
One of the earliest factories was John Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. By 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire and Matthew Boulton at his Soho Manufactory were other prominent early industrialists, who employed the factory system.
Sewing
The Industrial Revolution shifted the production of textiles from the household to the mills. In the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, the machinery produced whole cloth. The world's first sewing machine was patented in 1790 by Thomas Saint. By the early 1840s, other early sewing machines began to appear. Barthélemy Thimonnier introduced a simple sewing machine in 1841 to produce military uniforms for France's army; shortly afterward, a mob of tailors broke into Thimonnier's shop and threw the machines out of the windows, believing the machines would put them out of work. By the 1850s, Isaac Singer developed the first sewing machines that could operate quickly and accurately and surpass the productivity of a seamstress or tailor sewing by hand.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution
The earliest cotton mills in the United States were horse-powered. The first mill to use this method was the Beverly Cotton Manufactory, built in Beverly, Massachusetts. It was started on 18 August 1788 by entrepreneur John Cabot and brothers. It was operated in joint by Moses Brown, Israel Thorndike, Joshua Fisher, Henry Higginson, and Deborah Higginson Cabot. The Salem Mercury reported that in April 1788 the equipment for the mill was complete, consisting of a spinning jenny, a carding machine, warping machine, and other tools. That same year the mill's location was finalized and built in the rural outsets of North Beverly. The location had the presence of natural water, but it was cited the water was used for upkeep of the horses and cleaning of equipment, and not for mass-production.
Second Industrial Revolution
Henry Ford built his first car in 1896 and worked as a pioneer in the industry, with others who would eventually form their own companies, until the founding of Ford Motor Company in 1903. Ford and others at the company struggled with ways to scale up production in keeping with Henry Ford's vision of a car designed and manufactured on a scale so as to be affordable by the average worker. The solution that Ford Motor developed was a completely redesigned factory with machine tools and special purpose machines that were systematically positioned in the work sequence. All unnecessary human motions were eliminated by placing all work and tools within easy reach, and where practical on conveyors, forming the assembly line, the complete process being called mass production. This was the first time in history when a large, complex product consisting of 5000 parts had been produced on a scale of hundreds of thousands per year. The savings from mass production methods allowed the price of the Model T to decline from $780 in 1910 to $360 in 1916. In 1924 2 million T-Fords were produced and retailed $290 each.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution
Cloth production moved away from the cottage into "manufactories". The first moves towards manufactories called mills were made in the spinning sector. The move in the weaving sector was later. By the 1820s, all cotton, wool and worsted was spun in mills; but this yarn went to outworking weavers who continued to work in their own homes. A mill that specialised in weaving fabric was called a weaving shed.
Greater Manchester
Much of Greater Manchester's wealth was generated during the Industrial Revolution, particularly textile manufacture. The world's first cotton mill was built in the town of Royton, and the county encompasses several former mill towns. An Association for Industrial Archaeology publication describes Greater Manchester as "one of the classic areas of industrial and urban growth in Britain, the result of a combination of forces that came together in the 18th and 19th centuries: a phenomenal rise in population, the appearance of the specialist industrial town, a transport revolution, and weak local lordship". Much of the county was at the forefront of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution and into the early-20th century; Peter Smith, Baron Smith of Leigh, chair of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority said "clearly, all of the Greater Manchester area was once at the heart of a very vibrant [textiles] industry", represented by former textile mills found throughout the county. The territory that makes up Greater Manchester experienced a rapid decline of these traditional sectors, partly during the Lancashire Cotton famine brought on by the American Civil War, but mainly as part of the post-war economic depression and deindustrialization of Britain that occurred during the 20th century.
Resolution (beam engine)
Coalbrookdale was a cradle of the First Industrial Revolution and was the scene of Abraham Darby's first production of iron by a coke-fired blast furnace, rather than the previous and expensive charcoal. Coalbrookdale is a narrow steep-sided valley that offered useful water power to drive the furnace blast and the various stamp mills, boring engines, etc. Contemporary visitors commented upon the picturesque 'fine cascades' of water. Although the water power available at Coalbrookdale had been described as 'abundant', it was also seasonal: in the summer months, the lack of water could require the furnace to be 'blown out' for some months and work suspended.
East Midlands
The region can claim the world's first factory, Sir Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill. Additionally, the world's oldest working factory can also be found in the area, producing textiles at Lea Bridge, owned by John Smedley. Both sites are part of the region's only World Heritage Site, the Derwent Valley Mills. An opportunist employee of the Derbyshire textile factories, Samuel Slater of Belper saw his chance and (illegally) eloped in 1789 to Rhode Island in the USA after memorising the layout of the textile machinery while working at Jedediah Strutt's Milford Mill. He was warmly welcomed by the inhabitants of the newly formed USA, so much so that he was later named the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution".
Francis Cabot Lowell
In 1814, the Boston Manufacturing Company built its first mill beside the Charles River in Waltham, housing an integrated set of technologies that converted raw cotton all the way to finished cloth. Patrick Tracy Jackson was the first manager of the BMC with Paul Moody in charge of the machinery. The Waltham mill, where raw cotton was processed into finished cloth, was the forerunner of the 19th-century American factory. Lowell also pioneered the employment of women, from the age of 15-35 from New England farming families, as textile workers. He paid these "mill girls" (also known as Lowell Mill Girls) lower wages than men. Women lived in company run boarding houses with chaperones and were involved in religious and educational activities. The Waltham Machine Shop attached to the BMC made power looms for sale to other American cotton mills. Nathan Appleton established a region-wide system to sell the cloth manufactured by the BMC. Their success in Waltham motivated them to look for other locations. They found a site in East Chelmsford, renamed for Lowell after his death.
Ironstone, Massachusetts
In the early beginnings of America's industrial revolution, a mill, mill village and housing developed at Ironstone significant to the textile industry of Uxbridge. A national historic site marks the "Ironstone Mill and Cellar Hole", one of several examples of Mill worker housing and a mill village in the upper Blackstone Valley. The site, at 136 Ironstone Street, is just north of exit 1 on Massachusetts Route 146, the principal limited access highway between Worcester, and Providence, Rhode Island, also located off Massachusetts Route 146A, the "Lydia Taft Highway". For a complete listing of the National Historic Register listings in Uxbridge, see the link below. The original Mill, built in 1814 by William Arnold, later burned and was rebuilt by David and Seth Southwick in the 1850s. It burned again, and all that remains is the cellar hole. Historic photos remain and are published in a book "Uxbridge, Images of America", by Mae Edwards Wrona, published in 2000, by Arcadia, Tempus Publishing Inc, p56. The mill is a forerunner of America's Industrial Revolution which began here in the Blackstone Valley in 1793 with Samuel Slater and his mill, at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Pawtucket is about to the SE of Ironstone. Slatersville, Rhode Island, the next community south of Ironstone, was established by Samuel Slater and his brother John Slater (industrialist) in 1806, and became the template for mill villages throughout the Blackstone Valley later known as "The Rhode Island System".
Industrial archaeology
During the early 20th century, the historic preservation movement in the United States was still in its infancy. Most of the historic sites that received any attention were related to presidents and political figures, or the early colonial period. However, in 1925, one of the first industrial museums in the United States opened at Old Slater Mill, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, at the site of the first successful textile mill in the country, built in 1793. The museum was founded by a group of business leaders with ties to the New England textile industry, during a period of decline due to Southern competition. The Old Slater Mill Association had the foresight to restore the old mill to its early 19th century appearance, and fill it with a representative collection of textile machinery. In 1966, Old Slater Mill was declared a National Historic Landmark. In the early 1970s, Paul E. Rivard, then the director of the Old Slater Mill museum was one of the key figures in the founding of the Society for Industrial Archeology.
Manufacturing engineering
The history of manufacturing engineering can be traced to factories in the mid 19th century USA and 18th century UK. Although large home production sites and workshops were established in China, ancient Rome and the Middle East, the Venice Arsenal provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in the Republic of Venice several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, this factory mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts. The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people.
Benjamin Gott
Gott's most notable contribution to the industrial revolution happened at Armley Mills, which he leased in 1804. The mill had been badly damaged by fire when he bought the ruins and ordered that the rebuilding include cast iron internal frames and other fireproofing measures. When the repairs were completed in 1805, the new factory was the largest wool factory in the world.
Industrial Revolution
Maudslay left Bramah's employment and set up his own shop. He was engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These machines were all-metal and were the first machines for mass production and making components with a degree of interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools, and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth.
Mechanical engineering
During the early 19th century industrial revolution, machine tools were developed in England, Germany, and Scotland. This allowed mechanical engineering to develop as a separate field within engineering. They brought with them manufacturing machines and the engines to power them. The first British professional society of mechanical engineers was formed in 1847 Institution of Mechanical Engineers, thirty years after the civil engineers formed the first such professional society Institution of Civil Engineers. On the European continent, Johann von Zimmermann (1820–1901) founded the first factory for grinding machines in Chemnitz, Germany in 1848.
History of Oldham
The climate, geology, and topography of Oldham were unrelenting constraints upon the social and economic activities of the human inhabitants. Located above sea level with no major river or visible natural resources, Oldham had poor geographic attributes compared with other settlements for investors and their engineers. As a result, Oldham played no part in the initial period of the Industrial Revolution, although it did later become seen as obvious territory to industrialise because of its convenient position between the labour forces of Manchester and southwest Yorkshire. Cotton spinning and milling were introduced to Oldham when its first mill, Lees Hall, was built by William Clegg in about 1778, the beginning of a spiralling process of urbanisation and socioeconomic transformation. Within a year, 11 other mills had been constructed, and by 1818 there were 19 – not a large number in comparison with other local settlements. The first steam engine for Oldham went into operation in 1794. Oldham's small local population was greatly increased by the mass migration of workers from its outlying villages, resulting in a population increase from just over in 1801 to in 1901. The speed of this urban growth meant that Oldham, with little pre-industrial history to speak of, was effectively born as a factory town.
Gateway Region
The first steam engine in America was introduced at the Schuyler Copper Mine on New Barbadoes Neck in 1755.
In 1791, Alexander Hamilton help found the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.), which encouraged the harnessing of the water power of the Great Falls of the Passaic and to secure economic independence from British manufacturers. Paterson, which was founded by the society, became the cradle of the industrial revolution in America, supported in part by the Morris Canal built in the 1820s. A century later Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, made his mark. In 1872 the Singer Manufacturing Company of New York opened a factory in Elizabethport along Trumbull Street next to the intersection of
the CNJ mainline with the Perth Amboy and Elizabethport Branch.
Many discoveries and inventions, or application or mass production of them, were made in the Gateway Region including the steam engine, the revolver, the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the rocket engine, and the electric railway. It is the site of the first automobile and first submarine in the United States. It can claim to the birthplace of baseball and the American film industry, Television to the home was first broadcast in the Gateway.
Industrial folk music
Industrial folk song emerged in Britain, the first nation to industrialise, in the 18th century, as workers and their families moved from a predominately rural and agricultural society to an increasingly urban and industrial one. These workers tended to take the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapt them to their new experiences and circumstances. Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry. As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in the first industry to fully develop, textile production, which was particularly important in Lancashire, with songs like 'Poverty knock' which described the relentless movement and noise of the loom. The same trends were soon evident in mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries. As other nations industrialised their folk song underwent a similar process of change, as can be seen for example in France, where Saint-Simon noted the rise of 'Chansons Industrielles' among clothworkers in the early 19th century, and in the USA where industrialisation expanded rapidly after the Civil War.
Industrial Revolution
Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods.
History of Bridgeport, Connecticut
By 1930 Bridgeport was a thriving industrial center with more than 500 factories and a booming immigrant population. World War II provided a further boost to the city's industries. Famous factories included Wheeler & Wilson, which produced sewing machines and exported them throughout the world, Remington UMC, Bridgeport Brass, General Electric Company, American Graphophone Company (Columbia Records), Warner Brothers Corset Company (Warnaco) and the Locomobile Company of America, builder of one of the premier automobiles in the early years of the century. The city was home to the Frisbie Pie Company from 1871 to 1958, and therefore it has been argued that Bridgeport is the birthplace of the frisbee. In another "first", Bridgeport had the first dental hygiene school in the country, opened in 1913 by Dr. Alfred Fones with a first class of 34 women.
Tariff in United States history
Samuel Slater in 1789 emigrated (illegally since he was familiar with textile manufacturing) from Britain. Looking for opportunities he heard of the failing attempts at making cotton mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Contacting the owners he promised to see if he could fix their mills—they offered him a full partnership if he succeeded. Declaring their early attempts unworkable he proceeded from January 1790 to December 1790 to build the first operational textile manufacturing facility in the United States. The Industrial Revolution was off and running in the United States. Initially the cost of their textiles was slightly higher than the cost of equivalent British goods but the tariff helped protect their early start-up industry.
Radford, Coventry
Possibly Radford's greatest historical claim to fame comes from its centrality in the birth of the British motor car industry. The Great Horseless Carriage Company was established in 1896 in converted cotton mill works, and renamed Motor Mills, between St. Nicholas Street, Sandy Lane, and the Coventry Canal. It included a red-brick office block with stone banding on Sandy Lane built 1907-08, and an electricity power house which was added in 1907. Soon after, the company changed its name to Daimler and shortly before the First World War, they moved to a new factory at the Lydgate Road/Sandy Lane Junction. The factory was greatly extended during and after the First World War to incorporate entrances on both Sandy Lane and Middlemarch Road. After a merger in 1960, the factory also became home to Jaguar, who remained there till production ceased in the mid-1990s.
Industrial Revolution
The earliest recorded use of the term "Industrial Revolution" seems to have been in a letter from 6 July 1799 written by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto, announcing that France had entered the race to industrialise. In his 1976 book "", Raymond Williams states in the entry for "Industry": "The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen, between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the [19th] century." The term "Industrial Revolution" applied to technological change was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui's description in 1837 of "la révolution industrielle". Friedrich Engels in "The Condition of the Working Class in England" in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society". However, although Engels wrote in the 1840s, his book was not translated into English until the late 1800s, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, whose 1881 lectures gave a detailed account of the term.
Industrial Revolution
Industrialisation led to the creation of the factory. The factory system contributed to the growth of urban areas, as large numbers of workers migrated into the cities in search of work in the factories. Nowhere was this better illustrated than the mills and associated industries of Manchester, nicknamed "Cottonopolis", and the world's first industrial city. Manchester experienced a six-times increase in its population between 1771 and 1831. Bradford grew by 50% every ten years between 1811 and 1851 and by 1851 only 50% of the population of Bradford was actually born there.
High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell
While Lowell is generally known for its central role in the Industrial Revolution as the first planned textile town in the United States (aside from Slatersville, RI, the first planned mill village in the country during said Industrial Revolution), the city had fallen on hard times since the mills left the city in the early 1920s. Wang Laboratories, a major employer in Lowell in the more prosperous 1980s, declared bankruptcy and virtually went out of business in the early 1990s. The Lowell of 1993 had a large percentage of the population unemployed or underemployed, in poverty, and unaffected by positive things in the city like the Lowell National Historical Park and The Lowell Folk Festival (established in 1990). Much of the film takes place in a lower-class section of the city's (Lower) Highlands neighborhood, documenting a period of nearly 18 months, with 1993 being the primary focus.
Crony capitalism
Raymond Vernon, specialist in economics and international affairs,
wrote that the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, because they were the first to successfully limit the power of veto groups (typically cronies of those with power in government) to block innovations. "Unlike most other national environments, the British environment of the early 19th century contained relatively few threats to those who improved and applied existing inventions, whether from business competitors, labor, or the government itself. In other European countries, by contrast, the merchant guilds ... were a pervasive source of veto for many centuries. This power was typically bestowed upon them by government". For example, a Russian inventor produced a steam engine in 1766 and disappeared without a trace. "[A] steam powered horseless carriage produced in France in 1769 was officially suppressed." James Watt began experimenting with steam in 1763, got a patent in 1769, and began commercial production in 1775.
History of Europe
The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th century and early 19th century when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transport affected socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain and subsequently spread throughout Europe and North America and eventually the world, a process that continues as industrialisation. Technological advancements, most notably the invention of the steam engine by Scottish engineer James Watt, were major catalysts in the industrialisation of Britain and, later, the wider world. It started in England and Scotland in the mid-18th century with the mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal. Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries. The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous.
Chicopee, Massachusetts
A sawmill was the first river industry. The mill was built at Skenungonuck (Nipmuc for "green fields") Falls (now Chicopee Falls) in 1678 by Japhet Chapin, John Hitchcock and Nathaniel Foote. The mill was the first industrial site in Chicopee Falls. The saga of Factory Village really begins in the year 1786, when the property comprising two acres of land was leased to 10 local men with the understanding that they would build an iron foundry within two years. This was accomplished and the business flourished.
Machine
The Industrial Revolution was a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. It began in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spread throughout Western Europe, North America, Japan, and eventually the rest of the world.
History of the United States (1849–1865)
With the use of interchangeable parts popularized by Eli Whitney, the factory system began in which workers assembled at one location to produce goods. The early textile factories such as those in Lowell, Massachusetts employed mainly women, but generally factories were a male domain.
Allentown, Pennsylvania
In the late 1870s, Allentown's iron industry collapsed. It left the city economically depressed and to prevent this from happening again, efforts were made to develop a diversified industrial base. Convincing the Phoenix Manufacturing Company to open a silk mill in Allentown was the first major success of that effort. The success of its Adelaide mill at Race and Court Streets prompted the opening of the Pioneer silk mill in 1886 and the city was established as a silk manufacturing center. With its many ancillary businesses, the silk industry became the largest in the city and remained so until the late 20th century. By 1914, there were 26 mills in Allentown, which by 1928, when rayon was introduced, became 85 mills. Over 10,000 people were employed in the Allentown silk industry at its height during the 1940s.
Jack and Gus Mack moved their motor car plant to Allentown from Brooklyn in 1905; taking over the foundries of the former Weaver-Hirsh company on South 10th Street. By 1914, Mack Trucks had developed a reputation for being study and reliable. Many were sent to the battlefields of the Western Front in France before the United States entered World War I in 1917. The British gave the Mack AC five and seven ton trucks the nickname "Bulldog". Mack eventually had a total of eight manufacturing plants in Allentown. In the post-World War II era, the Western Electric plant on Union Boulevard was announced on October 11, 1945, after a nationwide search to locate a new manufacturing plant. On October 1, 1951 the world's first transistor production began at the Allentown Western Electric plant. It would become the backbone of a communications revolution. Over the years the plant was at the forefront of the postwar electronics revolution.
History of Uxbridge, Massachusetts
This community was one place of the earliest beginnings of the American Industrial Revolution. Industrial growth was driven by location, abundant water power, and the Blackstone Canal. Innovators left their mark on America's textile industry. It offers a glimpse of early America- Nipmuc lands, King Phillips War, colonial rule, the Great Awakening, Quakers, and the American Revolution. Uxbridge is the geographic center of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, the earliest industrialized region in the U.S. There are over 375 state or national historic sites here, with an excellent variety of architectural styles. Military uniforms were manufactured here for over 100 years in several large mills. The first U.S. Air Force dress uniform, dubbed "Uxbridge Blue", was made here (see Bernat Mill). In woman's history it claims America's first woman voter, Lydia Chapin Taft.
Royton
Royton has the distinction of being the first town where a powered cotton mill was built; at Thorp in 1764, and is one of the first localities in the world to have adopted the factory system. The introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution facilitated a process of unplanned urbanisation in the area, and by the mid-19th century Royton had emerged as a mill town. At its zenith, there were 40 cotton mills—some of the largest in the United Kingdom—employing 80% of the local population. Imports of foreign cotton goods began the decline in Royton's textile industry during the mid-20th century, and its last mill closed in 1998.
Industrial Revolution
The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T.S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Rapid industrialization first began in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s, with high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring after 1800. Mechanized textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France.
Factory
The first machine is stated by one source to have been traps used to assist with the capturing of animals, corresponding to the machine as a mechanism operating independently or with very little force by interaction from a human, with a capacity for use repeatedly with operation exactly the same on every occasion of functioning. The wheel was invented c. 3000 BC, the spoked wheel c. 2000 BC. The Iron Age began approximately 1200–1000 BC. However, other sources define machinery as a means of production.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution
Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution in Britain was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines. In Germany it was concentrated in the Wupper Valley, Ruhr Region and Upper Silesia, in Spain it was concentrated in Catalonia while in the United States it was in New England. The four key drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power and cheap labour.
Cambridge Assembly
The Cambridge Assembly was a Ford Motor Company factory in Cambridge, Massachusetts which opened in 1913. The factory had the first vertically-integrated assembly line in the world. It was replaced in 1926 by the Somerville Assembly. The plant was later reused by Polaroid Corporation, and is now owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Industrial Revolution
For much of the 19th century, production was done in small mills, which were typically water-powered and built to serve local needs. Later, each factory would have its own steam engine and a chimney to give an efficient draft through its boiler.
History of the Hudson River
During the Industrial Revolution, the Hudson River became a major location for production, especially around Albany and Troy. The river allowed for fast and easy transport of goods from the interior of the Northeast to the coast. Hundreds of factories were built around the Hudson, in towns including Poughkeepise, Newburgh, Kingston, and Hudson. The North Tarrytown Assembly (later owned by General Motors), on the river in Sleepy Hollow, was a large and notable example. The river links to the Erie Canal and Great Lakes, allowing manufacturing in the Midwest, including automobiles in Detroit, to use the river for transport. With industrialization came new technologies for transport, including steamboats for faster transport. In 1807, the "North River Steamboat" (later known as Clermont), became the first commercially successful steamboat. It carried passengers between New York City and Albany along the Hudson River.
Industrial Revolution
By 1746 an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton (whose Soho Manufactory was completed in 1766) were other prominent early industrialists, who employed the factory system.
Hall affair
Locally, Gosport Council next made a concerted effort to demolish as much of old Gosport as it could before further listing of buildings took place. Included in this destruction was the first forge building of Henry Cort, the iron master whose twin inventions of the puddling furnace and the rolling mill fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Weeks identified a derelict building on The Green, Gosport, as Cort’s forge where puddling had been experimented. At Fontley Iron Mills, near Fareham, Hampshire, in the summer of 1964 Weeks and a school friend conducted the first industrial archaeological excavation as they uncovered the site of Cort’s first rolling mill. In October 1965 Weeks appeared in the first TV program ever made on Industrial Archaeology, ‘’What’s It All About?’’, made by the BBC. Despite this national coverage, stating that Gosport had a site of international significance on its hands, the Council demolished the building.
Factory system
The factory system was first adopted in Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century and later spread around the world. It replaced the putting-out system. The main characteristic of the factory system is the use of machinery, originally powered by water or steam and later by electricity. Other characteristics of the system mostly derive from the use of machinery or economies of scale, the centralization of factories, and standardization of interchangeable parts.
West Midlands (region)
Much of the Industrial revolution in the United Kingdom began in Birmingham and the Black Country area of West Midlands. The Industrial Revolution is thought to have begun when Abraham Darby substituted coke in the place of charcoal to smelt iron, at his Old Furnace. The Black Country may be regarded as the world's first industrial landscape, while nearby Ironbridge Gorge claims to be the Birthplace of Industry. The world's first cast iron bridge in 1779 spans the Gorge. The first self-propelled locomotive to run on rails in 1803 at Coalbrookdale, was built by Richard Trevithick. The first iron rails for horse-drawn transport, were made at Coalbrookdale in 1768 by Richard Reynolds at Ketley Ironworks. Iron rails only became widely successful in 1820 when made out of wrought iron at Bedlington Ironworks in north-east England.
Birmingham's industrial development was triggered by discussions at the Lunar Society of Birmingham at Soho House, Boulton's house, and products were carried along the BCN Main Line canal. Soho Manufactory was the first man-made-powered factory in world. Chance Brothers of Smethwick built the glass for The Crystal Palace in 1851. Smethwick Engine, now at Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, is the oldest working steam engine, made in 1779, and is the oldest working engine in the world. Smethwick was a main centre for making lighthouse lanterns.
Machine shop
Further development early in the 19th century in England, Germany and Scotland of machine tools and cheaper methods for production of steel, such as the Bessemer steel, triggered the Second Industrial Revolution, which culminated in early factory electrification, mass production and the production line. The machine shop emerged as Burghardt called, a "place in which metal parts are cut to the size required and put together to form mechanical units or machines, the machines so made to be used directly or indirectly in the production of the necessities and luxuries of civilization."
History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom
The Industrial Revolution, the transition from a farming economy to an industrial one, began in the UK over 30 years before the rest of the world.
Textile mills and coal mines sprang up across the whole country and peasants were taken from the fields to work down the mines, or into the "Dark, Satanic Mills", the chimneys of which blacked the sky over Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Appalling conditions for workers, combined with support for the French Revolution turned some intellectuals to socialism.
Life in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution
The industrial belts of Great Britain included the Scottish Lowlands, South Wales, northern England, and the English Midlands. The establishment of major factory centers helped develop networks of canals, roads, and railroads, particularly in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, and Yorkshire. This is where the proletariat class was born. The Industrial Revolution helped create opportunities for employment for all members of the family. However, any improvement to the quality of life for the working class had come from a hard and bitter experience from factory labor.
Industrial Revolution
In 1793, Samuel Slater (1768–1835) founded the Slater Mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He had learned of the new textile technologies as a boy apprentice in Derbyshire, England, and defied laws against the emigration of skilled workers by leaving for New York in 1789, hoping to make money with his knowledge. After founding Slater's Mill, he went on to own 13 textile mills. Daniel Day established a wool carding mill in the Blackstone Valley at Uxbridge, Massachusetts in 1809, the third woollen mill established in the US (The first was in Hartford, Connecticut, and the second at Watertown, Massachusetts.) The John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor retraces the history of "America's Hardest-Working River', the Blackstone. The Blackstone River and its tributaries, which cover more than from Worcester, Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island, was the birthplace of America's Industrial Revolution. At its peak over 1100 mills operated in this valley, including Slater's mill, and with it the earliest beginnings of America's Industrial and Technological Development.
Lowell Mill Girls
The Lowell Mill Girls were young female workers who came to work in industrial corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers, typically between the ages of 15 and 35. By 1840, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the textile mills had recruited over 8,000 women, who came to make up nearly three-quarters of the mill workforce.
Paris under Louis-Philippe
The Industrial Revolution steadily changed the economy and the appearance of Paris, as new factories were built along the Seine and in the outer neighborhoods of the city. The textile industry was in decline, but the chemical industry was expanding around the edges of the city, at Javel, Grenelle, Passy, Clichy, Belleville and Pantin. It was joined by mills and factories that made steel, machines and tools, especially for the new railroad industry. Paris ranked third in France in metallurgy, after Saint-Étienne and the Nord department. Between 1830 and 1847, twenty percent of all the steam engines produced in France were made in Paris. Many of these were produced at the locomotive factory built by Jean-François Cail in 1844, first at Chaillot, then at Grenelle, which became one of the largest enterprises in Paris.
Second Industrial Revolution
The factory system centralized production in separate buildings funded and directed by specialists (as opposed to work at home). The division of labor made both unskilled and skilled labor more productive, and led to a rapid growth of population in industrial centers. The shift away from agriculture toward industry had occurred in Britain by the 1730s, when the percentage of the working population engaged in agriculture fell below 50%, a development that would only happen elsewhere (the Low Countries) in the 1830s and '40s. By 1890, the figure had fallen to under 10% percent and the vast majority of the British population was urbanized. This milestone was reached by the Low Countries and the US in the 1950s.
Industrious Revolution
Prior to the Industrious Revolution, the household was the major site of production, and could be comparable to a factory. However, things were to change a bit during the Industrious Revolution. If the theory is to be believed, then there was a shift in the running of the household. The everyday goods and products used by the household would slowly shift from mostly homemade, to mostly "commercially produced goods". At the same time, the women would be more than likely to be able to attain jobs outside of the household. This is also seen within the context of the Industrial Revolution, where women would often find small jobs to help supplement their husband's wages. This would demonstrate the gradual movement away from the household as a centre of production.
Majestic Mill, Waterhead
Oldham rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the first ever industrialised towns, rapidly becoming "one of the most important centres of cotton and textile industries in England", spinning Oldham counts, the coarser counts of cotton. Oldham's soils were too thin and poor to sustain crop growing, and so for decades prior to industrialisation the area was used for grazing sheep, which provided the raw material for a local woollen weaving trade. It was not until the last quarter of the 18th century that Oldham changed from being a cottage industry township producing woollen garments via domestic manual labour, to a sprawling industrial metropolis of textile factories. The first mill, Lees Hall, was built by William Clegg in about 1778. Within a year, 11 other mills had been constructed, but by 1818 there were only 19 of these privately owned mills.
Industrial Revolution
Merchant Francis Cabot Lowell from Newburyport, Massachusetts memorised the design of textile machines on his tour of British factories in 1810. Realising that the War of 1812 had ruined his import business but that a demand for domestic finished cloth was emerging in America, on his return to the United States, he set up the Boston Manufacturing Company. Lowell and his partners built America's second cotton-to-cloth textile mill at Waltham, Massachusetts, second to the Beverly Cotton Manufactory. After his death in 1817, his associates built America's first planned factory town, which they named after him. This enterprise was capitalised in a public stock offering, one of the first uses of it in the United States. Lowell, Massachusetts, using of canals and 10,000 horsepower delivered by the Merrimack River, is considered by some as a major contributor to the success of the American Industrial Revolution. The short-lived utopia-like Waltham-Lowell system was formed, as a direct response to the poor working conditions in Britain. However, by 1850, especially following the Irish Potato Famine, the system had been replaced by poor immigrant labour.
Washington, Connecticut
"Industrial Revolution". Early in the 19th century, small mills and factories proliferated along the Shepaug River in present-day Washington Depot, which came to be known as Factory Hollow. Small-scale industry simultaneously appeared along the banks of the East Aspetuck River in New Preston.
Industrialisation
The first transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy is known as the Industrial Revolution and took place from the mid-18th to early 19th century in certain areas in Europe and North America; starting in Great Britain, followed by Belgium, Germany, and France. Characteristics of this early industrialisation were technological progress, a shift from rural work to industrial labor, financial investments in new industrial structure, and early developments in class consciousness and theories related to this. Later commentators have called this the First Industrial Revolution.