Speaker 1: Get in Text with Technology with Text Stuff from Hastuffs Tacolom.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and today I want to look at the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution because this show is all about technology and
Speaker 1: about doubt. We wouldn't have the technology we enjoy today
Speaker 1: without the era of change that is the Industrial Revolution. Now,
Speaker 1: industrial Revolution is a huge topic. It's enormous. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to be tackling this in a series of episodes
Speaker 1: right now. It looks like it's gonna be three. I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure yet, but this will be the
Speaker 1: first of them. So typically we think of the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution as a period in which automation, mass production, urbanization,
Speaker 1: all of these things change the way that we humans live.
Speaker 1: And it's a time in which corporations came in to
Speaker 1: being and we started to see the delineation of work
Speaker 1: between laborers and management and the rise of unions and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. But it's even more complex than that,
Speaker 1: And the story doesn't have a clear beginning, middle, and end,
Speaker 1: which is problematic because we humans like stories that have
Speaker 1: a clear narrative. But as you guys know, history rarely
Speaker 1: follows that pattern. So before we can even talk about
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution, we need to see why it was
Speaker 1: such a big deal, which requires that we look way, way,
Speaker 1: way back. And when I say way back, i'm talking
Speaker 1: about the Neolithic Revolution. There are two big revolutions of
Speaker 1: human behavior and UH and and various things around that
Speaker 1: that have shaped the way we human beings exist here
Speaker 1: on the planet. The Neolithic Revolution was the first one,
Speaker 1: and this took place thousands of years ago, like somewhere
Speaker 1: between nine thousand and seven thousand BC. That was pretty
Speaker 1: much when this was taking place. That's when humans began
Speaker 1: to discover agricultural techniques and we began to transition from
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer lifestyles where you're very nomadic and you're depending
Speaker 1: upon finding the food you need day to day, to
Speaker 1: an agrarian lifestyle where you're actually cultivating food in both
Speaker 1: crops and livestock. People began to settle down and the
Speaker 1: vast majority of people were farmers. So most people, in fact,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people were spending their days out
Speaker 1: in fields, you know, tending to crops or livestock. Now,
Speaker 1: the term revolution gives you a couple of implications, and
Speaker 1: they can be a little misleading. Actually, it implies that
Speaker 1: we're talking about a moment of abrupt change in history,
Speaker 1: but that's not really the case with either the Neolithic
Speaker 1: or Industrial revolutions. These things took a lot of time. Now,
Speaker 1: the Neolithic Revolution took a great deal of time, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a thousand years. But generally speaking, historians bracket
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution as a period in history that began
Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty and ended around eighteen fifty in Britain.
Speaker 1: Europe and the United States and some other areas followed
Speaker 1: suit in timelines that kind of overlapped Britain's timeline, but
Speaker 1: Britain got the jump on everybody else. It really got
Speaker 1: started in Britain. Now, seventeen sixty to eighteen fifty, that
Speaker 1: is just one decade short of a full century, and
Speaker 1: the seeds for the revolution were actually planted centuries before that.
Speaker 1: So we need to look at the sixteenth century, the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred's, the late Renaissance to kind of get an
Speaker 1: idea of the sort of things that led up to
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution. And that was a time when philosophy
Speaker 1: was transforming into science. It's when people began to learn
Speaker 1: more about how the world works. And how to make
Speaker 1: practical use of the knowledge they gained. We had were
Speaker 1: the important thinkers like Francis Bacon, John Locke, Galileo Galilei,
Speaker 1: Baruch Spinoza, Renee des Cartes, and even earlier thinkers like
Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci, all of whom made significant contributions to
Speaker 1: human knowledge and philosophy. Now, these were the ideas that
Speaker 1: fueled the Renaissance and led into the Age of Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: And it's also important to point out that the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution wasn't just about technology. It was marked by changes
Speaker 1: in demographics and culture, in socioeconomic conditions, agriculture, manufacturing, and shrade.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of conditions in place that allowed
Speaker 1: this transformation to happen in England specifically. In general, we're
Speaker 1: looking at the time in history when people began to
Speaker 1: leave the pastoral farms and head into cities to earn
Speaker 1: a living. Uh The term industrial revolution revolution was popularized
Speaker 1: by a nineteenth century English economic historian named Arnold Toynbee.
Speaker 1: He popularized the term industrial revolution, and he originally defined
Speaker 1: it as seventeen sixty to eighteen forty, but other historians
Speaker 1: would begin to expand that outward and looking at a
Speaker 1: broader range of years to define the Industrial Revolution. They
Speaker 1: did identify a few trends as being fundamental for the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution to take place, and one of those very
Speaker 1: important elements was that populations were growing throughout Europe. We
Speaker 1: were starting to see more and more people being born
Speaker 1: in Europe at the time, and that also meant that
Speaker 1: there were more people available to do work, and also
Speaker 1: that there was an increasing need to produce more food
Speaker 1: and clothing for everybody. And as you have probably heard
Speaker 1: in your lifetimes, necessity is the mother of invention. If
Speaker 1: you need something, someone's eventually going to come up with
Speaker 1: an idea of how to meet that need, or you
Speaker 1: go without. Now, this challenge meant that many people worked
Speaker 1: hard on ways to overcome the increase in need for clothing, food,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And in Britain there were quite
Speaker 1: a few inventive people who designed machinery and systems to
Speaker 1: really meet those needs. And I also didn't hurt that
Speaker 1: England had a really healthy agricultural system with lots of
Speaker 1: farms spread throughout the country. It was really the right
Speaker 1: place in the right time for change to happen. And
Speaker 1: before the Industrial Revolution, most people were making whatever they
Speaker 1: needed for themselves, or they would inherit some things from
Speaker 1: parents or other family members, and only occasionally would they
Speaker 1: buy something from another person or trade for it. It
Speaker 1: was pretty rare. There are certain certain um occupations that
Speaker 1: lent themselves to working well in this environment, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: we're still talking mostly farmers. There really wasn't much of
Speaker 1: a middle class to speak of before the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 1: There were men and women who specialized in certain crafts
Speaker 1: like carpentry or stonework, but most people just made do
Speaker 1: with what they had, and that was partly because the
Speaker 1: cost of producing goods was quite high. It required a
Speaker 1: lot of labor, a lot of hard work by hand,
Speaker 1: and it also was not easy to get raw materials
Speaker 1: or to ship finished goods from one place to another.
Speaker 1: It was just pretty challenging to make something and deliver it.
Speaker 1: On top of that, Europe was emerging from a socio
Speaker 1: economic system in which there were really three main classes
Speaker 1: of people. You had the nobility, including the royalty. You
Speaker 1: had the clergy, so everyone involved with the church and
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody else. Now, the nobility and clergy wielded
Speaker 1: power in different contexts. Uh sometimes those contexts overlapped sometimes
Speaker 1: certain branches of the clergy were in power or not
Speaker 1: in power, particularly in England where you had Protestants and Catholics,
Speaker 1: kind of shifting the balance of power throughout the several
Speaker 1: hundred years from UH the king Henry the era up
Speaker 1: to the Industrial Revolution. But by seventeen fifty things had
Speaker 1: changed a lot and a century earlier, around the sixteen
Speaker 1: fifties sixteen forties, really England had gone through a civil
Speaker 1: war in which the monarchy was originally abolished. Uh. Then
Speaker 1: England was a protectorate for a little while, and then
Speaker 1: England reinstated the monarchy, but with some big changes. So
Speaker 1: essentially what happened was you had Parliament originally saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't think kings are such a great idea, and sorry, Charles,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get rid of you. We're gonna chuck you
Speaker 1: and your head out, and we're gonna replace you with
Speaker 1: a parliament that will govern the country, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: put Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector of England sort
Speaker 1: of the head of this parliamentary body. Then after a while, UH,
Speaker 1: some shifting political conditions prompted Parliament to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: we kind of like it when we had a king
Speaker 1: that was kind of awesome. We should we should do
Speaker 1: that again. So England reinstated the monarchy, but in the
Speaker 1: process Parliament also wanted to make sure the monarch didn't
Speaker 1: have as much power, so they underwent kind of another transformation,
Speaker 1: something similar to what had happened when King John had
Speaker 1: to sign the Magna Carta back in the thirteenth century.
Speaker 1: The monarch and the House of Lords saw much of
Speaker 1: their power stripped away, and Parliament's House of Commons had
Speaker 1: a greater share of the power. The reason I even
Speaker 1: bring this up, and you might be saying, well, this
Speaker 1: is a technology podcast. This isn't stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class. Where are you talking about it? Well, the
Speaker 1: important part is that this was the decline of nobility
Speaker 1: in England. They were starting to see less and less
Speaker 1: power in their grasp. They were no longer as effective
Speaker 1: as they once were. There was instead a rise of
Speaker 1: a new class, a middle class emerging at the time,
Speaker 1: and you had merchants who were making a great deal
Speaker 1: of money and in many cases were much more powerful
Speaker 1: than nobles who might have a noble title but not
Speaker 1: as much money as the merchants did so we started
Speaker 1: to see a shift in power, and that condition was
Speaker 1: very important for the Industrial Revolution to take place too. Now,
Speaker 1: among the merchants were some pretty interesting inventors, people who
Speaker 1: came up with new ways to make work more efficient.
Speaker 1: And one inventor's work that we need to talk about
Speaker 1: pre dates the Industrial Revolution by a few decades, but
Speaker 1: without his contributions nothing would be the same. So back
Speaker 1: in seventeen o nine, just a few decades before the
Speaker 1: official Industrial Revolution, there was an iron master named Abraham Darby,
Speaker 1: and Darby sussed out how to smelt iron using coke
Speaker 1: as a fuel. Coke in this case, by the way,
Speaker 1: doesn't refer to a tasty soft drink. I live in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and here coke in it means Coca cola. But that's
Speaker 1: not what I'm talking about when you're looking at smelting iron. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a fuel that has a very high
Speaker 1: carbon content. And there are a few different types of coke,
Speaker 1: but the one that concerns us in the context of
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution was made from coal. Now, to make coke,
Speaker 1: you would put coal in an airless furnace or an oven,
Speaker 1: and you would bake it at really high temperatures, and
Speaker 1: during that process there would be ash that would form
Speaker 1: and it would fuse with the carbon inside the coal,
Speaker 1: and after you're done baking it, you end up with
Speaker 1: this kind of porous gray fuel solid fuel, and if
Speaker 1: you burn it, it creates no smoke, but it does
Speaker 1: release carbon monoxide. So why was Darby's discovery such a
Speaker 1: big deal in the first place. Well before he had
Speaker 1: found a way to use coke as a fuel to
Speaker 1: smelt iron ore into pig iron, everyone was using charcoal.
Speaker 1: Charcoal is made by burning wood, which meant that iron
Speaker 1: works had to be located near or inside forests, and
Speaker 1: it made it hard to access the iron works, and
Speaker 1: it also led to deforestation. But England had a steady
Speaker 1: supply of coal and iron ore, which meant it was
Speaker 1: well poised to use this material in lots of new ways.
Speaker 1: In the eighteenth century, the region northwest of Birmingham along
Speaker 1: the Southern River became the center for iron works in
Speaker 1: the early Industrial Revolution. Iron working would also become very
Speaker 1: important in other parts of the United Kingdoms, such as Scotland. Now,
Speaker 1: in the next episode, i'll talk more about the iron
Speaker 1: industry and how that guided England's development, But The important
Speaker 1: thing to remember is that iron was a vital material
Speaker 1: during the Industrial Revolution, and Darby's discovery would literally fuel
Speaker 1: it once it caught on. During Darby's own lifetime, however,
Speaker 1: most iron working facilities continued to rely upon charcoal for fuel,
Speaker 1: so it's only later that others recognize the value of
Speaker 1: adopting Darby's approach. And that's why, even though his his
Speaker 1: discovery predates the Industrial Revolution, it took a few decades
Speaker 1: for it to really play a major role in the
Speaker 1: iron working industry. And that's kind of why we don't
Speaker 1: don't include that in the Industrial Revolution itself. But as
Speaker 1: the iron and coal industries grew, so too did the
Speaker 1: textile industry in England. And that's really kind of the
Speaker 1: first place we can look at, the first the first
Speaker 1: factor of the Industrial Revolution. We can look at and
Speaker 1: see how um advances in technology dramatically changed the way
Speaker 1: industry worked in England. So I'm going to focus on
Speaker 1: textiles for pretty much the rest of this episode. The
Speaker 1: growth of the textile industry was helped by a couple
Speaker 1: of really important geographic features. One is that Britain is
Speaker 1: an island, and as an island, it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of coastline, which means that there's lots of opportunity for
Speaker 1: people to build large ports cities. One of them, Liverpool
Speaker 1: served as an important port for the textile trade. They
Speaker 1: would bring in cotton from the American colonies and also
Speaker 1: from India, and they would end up taking that cotton
Speaker 1: and moving it over to spinners and weavers, and then
Speaker 1: when textiles were done, they could ship the finished cloth
Speaker 1: off to other locations, whether that be in England or Europe,
Speaker 1: or even back to America. This was one of those
Speaker 1: things where UH England would take in raw materials from
Speaker 1: the American colonies, turn it into a finished product and
Speaker 1: then sell it back to the American colonies. UH. The
Speaker 1: region of Lancashire became known for producing cotton goods in particular.
Speaker 1: So why was Lancashire ideal for textiles? The main reason
Speaker 1: is that the climate in Lancashire is wet and that
Speaker 1: makes it easier to work with cotton fibers because as
Speaker 1: cotton fibers dry out, they become brittle, and Lancashire was
Speaker 1: several had also has several fast flowing streams, which made
Speaker 1: it ideal for constructing water powered cotton mills a little
Speaker 1: bit later on in the Industrial Revolution. Now, some of
Speaker 1: the inventions that made the textile industry possible in England
Speaker 1: require a bit of explanation, so we're gonna do some
Speaker 1: tech stuff. How stuff works classic descriptions here. So the
Speaker 1: first one we need to talk about is an invention
Speaker 1: created by a weaver named John k It's a device
Speaker 1: that he made in seventeen thirty three and it's called
Speaker 1: a flying shuttle, which made weaving wide bands of cloth
Speaker 1: much more efficient for weavers, and it makes you wonder
Speaker 1: what the heck of flying shuttle is. So to do that,
Speaker 1: we have to start off with talking about looms. A
Speaker 1: loom is essentially just a device for weaving and a weave.
Speaker 1: If you ever look very closely at woven cloth, you'll
Speaker 1: see there are threads that are in vertical line lines
Speaker 1: and threads that are in horizontal lines, and they weave
Speaker 1: between one another. So to make a weave, you would
Speaker 1: use a loom to hold the threads of one direction.
Speaker 1: So let's say vertically. Uh, let's say that it's just
Speaker 1: a simple loom where you've got a frame and you
Speaker 1: have this this thread called the warp that is threaded
Speaker 1: up and down on the frame, so you've got odd
Speaker 1: and even numbered threads, and then you would take a
Speaker 1: second thread to go in a horizontal direction. This would
Speaker 1: be the weft, and you would weave that back and
Speaker 1: forth under and over alternating strings. So, starting with the
Speaker 1: odd numbers, let's say that you do uh. String number
Speaker 1: one you go over, and string number two you go under,
Speaker 1: and string number three you go over. So for all
Speaker 1: the odd numbers you would go over, all the even
Speaker 1: numbers you would go under, and one full pass of
Speaker 1: that is called a pick. So if you were doing
Speaker 1: this on a very simple loom, where really you just
Speaker 1: have the of the strings there and you're doing all
Speaker 1: this by hand, it takes a while because you have
Speaker 1: to weave the the the weft back and forth through
Speaker 1: all the strings. But gradually there were some looms that
Speaker 1: use some moving parts that made this a lot easier.
Speaker 1: One used warp frames, where you would you would actually
Speaker 1: put two different sets of warp thread on these warp frames.
Speaker 1: One set would be all the odd uh odd threads
Speaker 1: and one set would be all the even threads. So
Speaker 1: imagine that it's almost like a sandwich in a way.
Speaker 1: You've got one set of these threads. Let's say that's
Speaker 1: the odd ones that are laying more or less flat
Speaker 1: in respect to you, and then the other one is
Speaker 1: actually vertical. These be the even threads. If you just
Speaker 1: passed your weft the horizontal line of threads straight across,
Speaker 1: and then you would use pedals to swap the positions
Speaker 1: of those two frames, and you know, they just they
Speaker 1: just passed between each other, and then you pull the
Speaker 1: weft back across the other way. This would have at
Speaker 1: the same effect as weaving the thread up and down
Speaker 1: across those uh, those those vertical threads, but you're doing
Speaker 1: it much much faster. Um. However, if you are working
Speaker 1: by yourself, you pretty much were limited to doing of
Speaker 1: cloth about as wide as your arm. Beyond that you
Speaker 1: would need a second weaver to help you out. Until
Speaker 1: John k came up with this flying shuttle, and uh,
Speaker 1: that ends up making a huge difference. It speeds up
Speaker 1: the weaving process significantly. So, by the way, the process
Speaker 1: of weaving is a little more complicated than just that.
Speaker 1: After you do a pick, you know, after you pass
Speaker 1: the weft through the warp, then you have to use
Speaker 1: a part of the loom called the reed to batten
Speaker 1: the fabric. Now, a read is like a comb and
Speaker 1: it is on the far side of where you're bringing
Speaker 1: the weft through the warp, and you use it to
Speaker 1: pull the new weft hard against the the previously woven
Speaker 1: cloth to pack it together to batten it down. And
Speaker 1: you have to batten that thread after each pass. And
Speaker 1: uh so this is pretty painstaking and obviously if you're
Speaker 1: doing it by hand, it's really slow work. And if
Speaker 1: you're all by yourself, like I said, you're limited to
Speaker 1: that arms width of cloth because otherwise you would not
Speaker 1: be able to pass the shuttle that's the device that
Speaker 1: actually holds the weft thread from one side to the other.
Speaker 1: Now Kay's invention solved all that. The flying shuttle reduced
Speaker 1: the number of weavers needed for wide cloth to just one.
Speaker 1: And here's how it worked. Imagine you've got these two
Speaker 1: frames of vertical lines of thread, uh and all the
Speaker 1: odd lines of thread are on one aime all the
Speaker 1: even lines are on the second frame. Those two frames
Speaker 1: can move so that the shuttle can pass easily between
Speaker 1: the two sets. Moving the shuttle from one side to
Speaker 1: the other completes one line of the weave. Then you
Speaker 1: bring the frames together, pull the horizontal thread and tightly
Speaker 1: using that reed comb so it's packed against its processors.
Speaker 1: Then you switch which frame is up and which frame
Speaker 1: is down, and you pass it again. Just like I said,
Speaker 1: But case shuttle had wheels on it, and it allowed
Speaker 1: it to roll quickly in a channel between the two
Speaker 1: sets of of threads, the two sets of warp threads
Speaker 1: on the frames. You would pull a rope and this
Speaker 1: would make the shuttles quickly roll from one side to
Speaker 1: the other, like left or right or right to left.
Speaker 1: So you pull the rope, the shuttle zooms across left
Speaker 1: or right. You swap the position of the frames, and well,
Speaker 1: first you batten that weft uh and swap the position
Speaker 1: of the frames, and you pull the rope and it
Speaker 1: zips across the other side, and you repeat this process,
Speaker 1: and it really sped things up. And that was just
Speaker 1: the first of several inventions that made it easier and
Speaker 1: less expensive to produce cloth, particularly large amounts of cloth.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna talk a lot more about the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution in a moment, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Alright, So the flying shuttle
Speaker 1: sped up weaving significantly, but now there was a new
Speaker 1: bottleneck in the textile industry, which was making yarn. Weavers
Speaker 1: could go through yarn faster than yarn could be spun.
Speaker 1: Yarn would be made by people called spinners. Traditionally, they
Speaker 1: would use spinning wheels, and normally you would need up
Speaker 1: to four spinners to support one weaver just to make
Speaker 1: yarn fast enough for the weaver to be effective. But
Speaker 1: this flying shuttle made the weavers even more efficient, so
Speaker 1: you needed more than four spinners just to be able
Speaker 1: to produce enough yarn for the weaver to stay active.
Speaker 1: And so the supply couldn't meet up with the weaving speeds,
Speaker 1: and that was an issue. Meanwhile, let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: spinning wheels. It's another interesting technology. Spinning wheels twist fibers
Speaker 1: into yarn, and I could do an entire episode on
Speaker 1: this process. I could probably get someone like Holly from
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History class to talk about it too,
Speaker 1: But in general, here's how it works. You've got a
Speaker 1: large spinning wheel. You've probably seen pictures of these, But
Speaker 1: the large wheel provides the rotational force for a smaller
Speaker 1: component called a flyer. So the flyer's kind of like
Speaker 1: a cylinder. Imagine a cylinder on its side. It's in
Speaker 1: the same plane of rotation as the spinning wheel. But
Speaker 1: you then connect the two with a drive band. Um
Speaker 1: it looks a lot like any kind of belt you
Speaker 1: would imagine for connecting gears together. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the large wheel would be a big gear. The flyer
Speaker 1: is a smaller gear. So as the large wheel rotates,
Speaker 1: the band connecting it to the flyer makes the flyer
Speaker 1: rotate as well. But since the flyer is smaller than
Speaker 1: the big wheel, it's making more rotations per minute than
Speaker 1: the big wheel. Uh. And most flyers actually have a
Speaker 1: section of different grooves that the drive band can fit into,
Speaker 1: and each section is a different circumference, meaning you can
Speaker 1: adjust the speed of rotation or the ratio of rotation
Speaker 1: I should say, of the flyer. So it may be
Speaker 1: that one rotation of the big wheel is the same
Speaker 1: as five rotations of the flyer. But then you can
Speaker 1: swap the band to a different groove that would be
Speaker 1: slightly smaller, like it would be a smaller circumference around
Speaker 1: the flyer, and then one rotation of the big wheel
Speaker 1: might be seven rotations of the flyer. And then you
Speaker 1: could move to maybe an even smaller circumference groove on
Speaker 1: the flyer, and one rotation of the big wheel would
Speaker 1: be the same as eleven rotations on the flyer. If
Speaker 1: you're having trouble imagining this, it's a lot like bike
Speaker 1: gears or even a transmission. That gear ratio is what
Speaker 1: determines the speed of rotation between two different rotating objects.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty interesting stuff that this was something that
Speaker 1: was important well before there wherever bicycles or cars um now.
Speaker 1: The flyer also contains a device called a bobbin. Bobbin
Speaker 1: is the thing that yarn winds around during yarn making.
Speaker 1: The bobbing itself is perched on a spindle. This would
Speaker 1: be the thing that sleeping Beauty pokes her finger on
Speaker 1: and goes unconscious due to that. So you put the
Speaker 1: bobbin on a spindle that allows Usually it allows the
Speaker 1: bobbin to rotate freely around the spindle, so the spindle
Speaker 1: is almost like an axle and it allows yarn to
Speaker 1: wind around it. The purpose for the rotation of this device,
Speaker 1: by the way, isn't just to pull on fiber or
Speaker 1: to wind it around the bobbin. It also creates a
Speaker 1: twist in the fibers themselves, and it's that twist that
Speaker 1: turns the fibers in to yarn. Traditional spinning wheels have
Speaker 1: both the drive wheel and the bobbin along that same plane,
Speaker 1: meaning that the rotation is uh is in the same
Speaker 1: direction for the two. And it also meant that you
Speaker 1: were limited to one bobbin and one strand of yarn
Speaker 1: in the original spinning wheels. But then along came a
Speaker 1: guy named James Hargreaves who invented something called the spinning
Speaker 1: Jenny in seventeen sixty four. Spinning Jenny. So what happened was,
Speaker 1: according to Hargreaves, he came up with this idea when
Speaker 1: one of his daughters accidentally tipped over a spinning wheel,
Speaker 1: and so Hardgreaves, when he looked at the spinning wheel
Speaker 1: that was now on its side, notice that the bobbin
Speaker 1: was continuing to turn even though it was now ninety
Speaker 1: degrees out of alignment of its usual plane. And then
Speaker 1: it occurred to him that if he were to change
Speaker 1: the rotation of this where you use this vertical approach
Speaker 1: to bobbin's instead of a horizontal approach, you could end
Speaker 1: up driving multiple spindles with a single wheel. You could
Speaker 1: do this and make lots of different yarns all at
Speaker 1: the same time, different different strands of yarn. And uh,
Speaker 1: he did make such a device. He created one and
Speaker 1: it was able to feed yarn to eight spindles at
Speaker 1: a time, which meant that you could produce eight times
Speaker 1: the yarn in the same amount of time it would
Speaker 1: normally take a spinner to do one. Uh, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: He's produced He's increased productivity by eight times. You keep
Speaker 1: in mind, remember I said a weaver typically would need
Speaker 1: four spinners to support the weaver's abilities. Now you have
Speaker 1: a possible a device that will make a spinner create
Speaker 1: eight spindles of yarn. So technically one spinner could support
Speaker 1: two weavers under that system. And it made quite a
Speaker 1: stir in his community, so much so that spinners who
Speaker 1: were worried about their jobs broke into his else and
Speaker 1: smashed the machine to pieces. But you can't stop progress.
Speaker 1: Once something's invented, it's gonna pretty much stay invented. And
Speaker 1: it became much easier to make yarn from either wool
Speaker 1: or cotton using the spinning jenny. So this this pulling
Speaker 1: and twisting of fibers works with both wool and with cotton.
Speaker 1: You can do this to to create the yarn. By
Speaker 1: the time of hargreaves death in seventy eight, there were
Speaker 1: versions of the spinning Jenny that could feed up to
Speaker 1: eighties spindles simultaneously, but these devices still required human power
Speaker 1: to work, typically relying on a treadle system, so treuttle
Speaker 1: being like a pedal that you use your foot to
Speaker 1: two power you. You rock your foot back and forth,
Speaker 1: kind of like old sewing machines too. In order to
Speaker 1: create this rotational uh force, there'd be a there'd be
Speaker 1: a piston essentially, or or a stick really attached to
Speaker 1: one end of the treadle and around the hub of
Speaker 1: one of the big wheel, and as you tilt the
Speaker 1: treadle back and forth, it would cause the wheel to rotate. Now,
Speaker 1: because this required human power, it still meant that things
Speaker 1: were a little slow, and that you eventually would have
Speaker 1: to take breaks because people need rest. But all that
Speaker 1: began to change when Richard Arkwright patented a machine in
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty nine that drew out cotton by passing the
Speaker 1: fibers through rollers before moving on to the yarn making process.
Speaker 1: So he created a device where rollers would essentially squish
Speaker 1: this fiber and make it faster to produce yarn. His
Speaker 1: original machine used horses to provide the power, so it
Speaker 1: literally ran on horse power, but in seventeen seventy one
Speaker 1: he figured out how to upgrade the system using water power.
Speaker 1: Now that created the opportunity for textile mills to grow,
Speaker 1: becoming mills water powered cotton mills and harnessing those stream
Speaker 1: powers of England to draw fiber from cotton and make
Speaker 1: yarn and then weave it into cloth arc great was
Speaker 1: incredibly successful. You would eventually employ around five thousand people
Speaker 1: and he even received a knighthood in sevent eight six
Speaker 1: for his contributions to English industry. Now, Hargreaves approach was
Speaker 1: suitable for creating the weft for a weaver. That's that
Speaker 1: long thread that you use on the shuttle. So this
Speaker 1: is the horizontal threads. If you think of the vertical
Speaker 1: threads as the ones that are attached to the frame.
Speaker 1: This is the thread you pass back and forth over
Speaker 1: and over again. Has to be really long because each
Speaker 1: time it passes, you know you still need to have
Speaker 1: more thread to complete the weaving. So our great's invention
Speaker 1: was was really good at creating the fiber for the warp,
Speaker 1: and hargreaves His invention was really great for creating the
Speaker 1: fiber for the weft. These are two different types of
Speaker 1: of yarn in this case, like it just was more
Speaker 1: suitable for one application versus the other. Now that meant
Speaker 1: that by combining the spinning Jenny and Arkwright's machine, you
Speaker 1: could create both types of yarn, and it ended up
Speaker 1: increasing the speed of yarn making. It was a huge
Speaker 1: jump ahead, So now the textile industry is really taking off.
Speaker 1: Another inventor named Samuel Crompton would improve upon the spinning Jenny.
Speaker 1: He invented a new spinning machine in seventeen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: His machine was called the Crompton's Mule, and it combined
Speaker 1: features of the inventions from Hargreaves and from Arkwright, which
Speaker 1: meant that you could create yarn that would be that
Speaker 1: would work for both the warp and the left using
Speaker 1: this one device. And by the name, the Crompton's Mule
Speaker 1: is actually a pun. So the spinning Jenny got its
Speaker 1: name from Hargreaves, his daughter who knocked over the spinning
Speaker 1: wheel and getting which gave him the idea. But a
Speaker 1: jenny is also the name for a female donkey, and
Speaker 1: if a donkey mates with a horse, the product is
Speaker 1: a mule. Thus crumpted mule is the descendant of the
Speaker 1: spinning jenny, which is cute, right, I mean, I appreciate it,
Speaker 1: but I like puns. At this point, spinners could finally
Speaker 1: outpace weavers, so the flying shuttle originally made It made
Speaker 1: a demand on yarn that spinners were having trouble meeting.
Speaker 1: But now with the with Crompton's mule and these other devices,
Speaker 1: there was a yarm production that was outpacing the weaving.
Speaker 1: But the balance was restored when another inventor came along
Speaker 1: named Edmund Cartwright, who created a water driven loom, and
Speaker 1: that's sped up the weaving process even more. And Cartwright
Speaker 1: got the idea because he visited a water powered mill
Speaker 1: that Arkwright had designed. So with this invention, there was
Speaker 1: now a new demand on cotton imports. So you see
Speaker 1: where the shifting demands have created the opportunity for people
Speaker 1: to invent machines to make things faster. First it was
Speaker 1: the need to speed up the weaving process. Then the
Speaker 1: need to speed up the yarn making process to meet
Speaker 1: the weaver's needs. Then weaving was falling behind. And now
Speaker 1: that they are both very fast compared to the way
Speaker 1: the process was just a few decades earlier. There was
Speaker 1: a greater need for raw material, raw cotton, and so
Speaker 1: the demand shifted from England to the places where they
Speaker 1: were importing cotton from, which was largely the American colonies.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to close out this particular episode with
Speaker 1: another famous invention that kept the industrial Revolution rolling along strongly,
Speaker 1: and this one was an invention that happened here in America.
Speaker 1: So keep in mind that the Industrial Revolution did affect
Speaker 1: the United States. The United States did have an industrial revolution,
Speaker 1: it just started later in the US than it did
Speaker 1: in England. In fact, England had instituted bands on the
Speaker 1: exportation of machinery and knowledge. England government didn't want the
Speaker 1: industrial knowledge to get outside of the country because they
Speaker 1: wanted to have a competitive edge over other nations, particularly
Speaker 1: in Europe. But in America, there was a fellow named
Speaker 1: Eli Whitney who invented the cotton gen and I think
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone in elementary school at some point. Here's
Speaker 1: the story of Eli Whitney inventing the cotton gin. This
Speaker 1: was invented in the late seventeen hundreds. Now what is
Speaker 1: the cotton gin. Well, first of all, cotton, when you
Speaker 1: pick cotton, you're actually picking a flower that looks like
Speaker 1: it's exploded everywhere. And cotton has a lot of seeds
Speaker 1: in it, and in order for you to turn cotton
Speaker 1: into yarn, you have to pick the seeds out, and
Speaker 1: that's very painstaking. It's a very slow process. Typically you
Speaker 1: would hand comb cotton with wire combs to get all
Speaker 1: the seeds out, and it takes time and a lot
Speaker 1: of effort. But the cotton gin made the process much
Speaker 1: easier and faster. So what Eli Whitney did was he
Speaker 1: created essentially a spinning drum that has a handle crank
Speaker 1: handle attached to it, so you turned the crank that
Speaker 1: makes the drums spin. On the drum, he had a
Speaker 1: set of wire teeth all along the drum side and
Speaker 1: that would just comb straight through the cotton bowls cotton
Speaker 1: balls being the name of the the raw cotton that
Speaker 1: you've picked off the plant, and that would pull out
Speaker 1: the seeds, so the seeds and and some strands of
Speaker 1: cotton would get dumped out the bottom of this device,
Speaker 1: and on the other side of it you would get
Speaker 1: cotton that had been cleaned, had been the seeds had
Speaker 1: been picked out of it, and all you had to
Speaker 1: do was turned the crank and it was much faster
Speaker 1: and took way less work than having to use combs
Speaker 1: to hand pick the seeds out of the cotton. So
Speaker 1: demand in England for cotton was really high, and this
Speaker 1: was just one of the ways the industrial Revolution was
Speaker 1: spreading beyond brit in itself, and of course in the
Speaker 1: case of the United States, we have to mention this
Speaker 1: development is also connected to some truly awful moments in history,
Speaker 1: including the displacement of Native American tribes. Because you had
Speaker 1: Southern farmers who needed access to greater amounts of land,
Speaker 1: they wanted to grow more cotton. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of money in cotton. It was an incredibly valuable cash crop.
Speaker 1: Because the demand in England was so high for the cotton.
Speaker 1: Uh so the farmers wanted to have more land, and
Speaker 1: the easiest way they saw to get more land was
Speaker 1: to displace Native American tribes that had been living on
Speaker 1: that land for generations and making them move to other
Speaker 1: places and then they repurpose that land to grow cotton.
Speaker 1: That was one of the really ugly things that was
Speaker 1: a result of this particular explosion of industry. The other
Speaker 1: was the reliance upon slavery, a horrible institution that was
Speaker 1: very popular in the South at this time in American history.
Speaker 1: So obviously both of those things are terrible, but they
Speaker 1: also both made the early Industrial Revolution possible. The way
Speaker 1: it it unfolded so terrible thing, but we do have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge it. So we're just getting started with the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution. These are still the early years of the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, but the textiles really led the way. They
Speaker 1: showed that something that originally took a very painstaking, slow
Speaker 1: handcrafted process could be made easier through technology. And as
Speaker 1: it was made easier, it could also be made more cheaply,
Speaker 1: which also meant that there could be you could sell
Speaker 1: it to more people, that could be a greater demand actually,
Speaker 1: and that that in turn created a demand for people
Speaker 1: to work in this industry. It gave created jobs in
Speaker 1: this new emerging middle class in England. Now, our next
Speaker 1: episode will look more at the iron industry and how
Speaker 1: that developed during the Revolution, including things like developing some
Speaker 1: pretty impressive architectural structures like bridges and canals, and will
Speaker 1: also talk about the development of the steam engine. And
Speaker 1: the third installment, I'm planning on talking more about how
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution took place in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: including America, Also that emergence of the working class and
Speaker 1: what conditions were like for the working class during the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, How the technology of the time influenced the
Speaker 1: world we live in today, everything from just the way
Speaker 1: we think about work, the nature of work itself has
Speaker 1: been shaped by technology. Also the way that developing nations
Speaker 1: today are having their own industrial revolutions and the problems
Speaker 1: that that are that creates, as well as we try
Speaker 1: and factor in things like how how can we encourage
Speaker 1: developing nations to be environmentally conscious when in our own past,
Speaker 1: both in in Europe and in the United States, we
Speaker 1: have gone through this same process, you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty to two hundred years earlier, but we didn't
Speaker 1: worry about environmental concerns while we went through that process.
Speaker 1: That didn't that was not something that we thought about
Speaker 1: while that was going on. And yet we're placing those
Speaker 1: sort of demands on other people today. So that's gonna
Speaker 1: be part three. We'll talk about that, but in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for the show, whether it's a
Speaker 1: company or technology or personality or tech trend, or some
Speaker 1: other pivotal moment in history in which technology was really important,
Speaker 1: let me know. You should email me. My address is
Speaker 1: text stuff at how stuff works dot com, and the
Speaker 1: same goes for any suggestions for guesthosts or interview subjects.
Speaker 1: Let me know, and also don't forget you can join
Speaker 1: me on social media. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumbler.
Speaker 1: The handle for all three of those is text stuff
Speaker 1: hs W. Make sure to drop me a line and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit hastoc works dot com.