What technological/economic factors triggered the Industrial Revolution?

Question

In the 19^th century, many things started to change. The world of 1800 would not be a shock to a person from the 15^th century. But for some reason, the world of today would be an incredible shock to someone from the 19^th century. We have airplanes, automobiles, high speed trains. We've even put someone on the moon. All this happened in approximately 150 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution until now. This is all fine and dandy, but why did the Industrial revolution start when it did? What happened?

Answer 1

It all started with a fairly simple change in the way that crops were managed and produced in England. In the late 1700's farmers began to realize that rather than leaving their fields fallow after a harvest, they could plant beans or other products that resulted in restoring the fertility of the soil. Then as they began to rotate their crops in different fields, the crop production began to increase. As crop production began to increase, the food supplies for the general population as well as livesock increased, so both began to increase. The sale of increasing numbers of livestock and volumes of crops resulted in the need for better routes of transportation, so water canals were developed and roads were improved. Eventually the railroad came along and helped spread these new growths in commerce.

Ultimately, each small change led to a new need which was then addressed by another change. Sometimes it was as simple as rotating crops, and other times it involved the inventions of new equipment that could more efficiently harvest the crops or transport them once they were harvested. The successful increase in the volume of crops produced ultimately led to an increasing demand for better ways to process the crops.

As a result of this agricultural change, commerce within the country began to increase as well. Suddenly there were more people who were able to earn wages that allowed them to have disposable income. This resulted in the need for other goods to sell to this increasing working class, and that led to more improvements to help mass produce products, such as textiles. From there it just continued to snowball.

So, having said all that, the simple answer is that a simple discovery of a way to rotate crops to keep the soil more fertile started the whole thing rolling!

Answer 2

The industrial revolution occurred as a result of scientific advances in Europe. Specifically the Steam Engine and related Manufacturing Technology. However the Industrial Revolution began specifically in Britain, since wages in Britain were significantly higher than on the continent. This disparity increased the incentive for British businessmen (vs continental European) to invest in labor saving machines, which began the Industrial Revolution.

Unprecedented scientific advancements allowed economics to favor mechanization and spawn the Industrial Revolution.

Answer 3

The knowledge necessary to build the machines that backed the industrial revolution (notably, steam engines) had been around for quite a while before that (ancient Greeks were fully aware of how to use steam to move things); but it had never been used widely for a variety of reasons:

• Slaves were available to work for free (or at a very small cost); so, why bother with engines at all?
• There was very little population compared to today, so there was no real need to grow a lot of food or mass-produce things.
• And, anyway, a lot of people were just to poor to buy anything; so why bother with mass production when only a few people were actually able to buy something?

In the short run, human labour is vastly cheaper than designing, building, running and mantaining machines, which instead leads to much greater efficiency in the long run. What actually started the whole thing were changing social and economic factors, which made an industrial economy worthwhile.