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nventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution
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Inventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution
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Brian Duignan
Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion.
A Factory Interior, watercolor, pen and gray ink, graphite, and white goache on wove paper by unknown artist, c. 1871-91; in the Yale Center for British Art. Industrial Revolution England
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1986.29.390)
The Industrial Revolution (1750–1900) forever changed the way people in Europe and the United States lived and worked. These inventors and their creations were at the forefront of a new society.
Spinning and weaving
The creation of the following ingenious machines made possible the mass production of high-quality cotton and woolen thread and yarn and helped transform Great Britain into the world’s leading manufacturer of textiles in the second half of the 18th century.
The spinning jenny. About 1764 James Hargreaves, a poor uneducated spinner and weaver living in Lancashire, England, conceived a new kind of spinning machine that would draw thread from eight spindles simultaneously instead of just one, as in the traditional spinning wheel. The idea reportedly occurred to him after his daughter Jenny accidentally knocked over the family’s spinning wheel; the spindle continued to turn even as the machine lay on the floor, suggesting to Hargreaves that a single wheel could turn several spindles at once. He obtained a patent for the spinning jenny in 1770.
