Agricultural Advances

- Invention of the plow in 1784 by James Small of Scotland.  It was a a cast-iron mould board, and wrought and cast-iron shares.

-Charles Townsend form England learned from the Dutch about fertilizers and instituted a new system of crop rotation. These and several other agricultural innovations in animal husbandry and crop production created what has become known as the agricultural revolution.

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Power

- By harnessing the power of steam, and using it to power machines, the people found a much more efficient energy source and revolutionized the production of goods.

-  In 1769 Watt patents the steam engine. Watt continued to experiment and by 1782 had produced a rotary-motion steam engine.  His machine now drove on both the forward and 

backward strokes of the piston, and a sun-and-planet gear produced rotary motion. Whereas his earlier machine, with its up-and-down pumping action, was ideal for draining mines, this new steam engine could be used to drive many different types of machinery.

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Innovations in Transportation

-  In 1775 Crompton produced his spinning mule, so called because it was a hybrid that combined features of two earlier inventions, the Spinning Jenny and the Water Frame. The mule produced a strong, fine and soft yarn, which could be used in all kinds of textiles, but was particularly suited to the production of muslins. The Spinning Mule could also be driven by the new steam engines that were being produced by James Watt and Matthew Boulton. A large number of factory owners purchased Crompton's mules.

-  In 1807 Fulton makes the first steamboat.

-  In 1814 Stephenson first used the steam engine for railroad. Working at a colliery, George Stephenson was fully aware of the large number of accidents caused by explosive gases. In his spare time Stephenson began work on a safety lamp for miners. By 1815 he had developed a lamp that did not cause explosions even in parts of the pit that were full of inflammable gases. By 1814 he had constructed a locomotive that could pull thirty tons up a hill at 4 mph. Stephenson called his locomotive, the Blutcher, and like other machines made at this time, it had two vertical cylinders let into the boiler, from the pistons of which rods drove the gears. These early steps in industrialization increased productivity (at the expense of labour) and facilitated urbanization and increased consumerism.

-  The railway and steam boats also allowed the old and new countries to exploit their resources more extensively.

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Inventions in Textiles

-  In 1733 British Weaver John Kay invented a device called the flying shuttle, which cut weaving time in half. Kay placed shuttle boxes at each side of the loom connected by a long board, known as a shuttle race. By means of cords attached to a picking peg, a single weaver, using one hand, could cause the shuttle to be knocked back and forth across the loom from one shuttle box to the other. A weaver using Kay's flying shuttle could produce much wider cloth at faster speeds than before.

-  In 1764 James Hargreaves invented the spinning Jenny, which quickened the production of textiles. The machine used eight spindles onto which the thread was spun from a corresponding set of rovings. By turning a single wheel, the operator could now spin eight threads at once. Later, improvements were made that enabled the number to be increased to eighty. The thread that the machine produced was coarse and lacked strength, making it suitable only for the filling of weft, the threads woven across the warp.

-  In 1771, Richard Arkwright invented the water-powered frame. Arkwright's machine involved three sets of paired rollers that turned at different speeds. While these rollers produced yarn of the correct thickness, a set of spindles twisted the fibres firmly together. The machine was able to produce a thread that was far stronger than that made by the Spinning Jenny produced by James Hargreaves.

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Communications

-  The invention of the steam power allows travel to long distances in a much shorter length of time than before.  For example, 200km used to take days.  Now, a couple of hours comfortably on a locomotive would get you there, always on time.  This efficient use of time allowed trade to thrive as goods be carried faster and more reliably.

-  Cultures are also intermingled due to the efficiency of travel increased; in other words, the world became connected.

-  Post services also increased its efficiency as locomotives are much faster than the traditional horseback delivery system.

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