WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: How the Industrial Revolution Worked, Part Three 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:14.440 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.160 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.000 and how the tech are you? It is time for 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.239 a tech Stuff classic episode. This week we are wrapping 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.400 up a three part series. So the first two parts 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.040 published on the previous two fridays. If you have not 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.880 listened to them, I recommend you check those out first. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.879 This is How the Industrial Revolution Worked, Part three It 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:41.480 originally published on December two, two thousand fifteen. In this episode, 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:45.280 we'll cover everything from transportation to what it was like 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.440 to be a member of the working class at that time, 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.199 and how we started to see some new lines dividing 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.279 different classes. It used to be that it was the 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.400 nobles versus the peasants, with clergy in the middle, really 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.680 clergy off to the side on their own kind of ladder. 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:06.880 But things changed in the Industrial Revolution. So during this 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.960 period in Britain's history, which as you may remember, is 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.640 in the mid eighteenth to mid nineteenth century, so the 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.319 seven the mid seventeen hundreds to the mid eighteen hundreds, 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.240 transportation was getting a major overhaul. Roads had been in 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.959 really poor shape ever since the Romans had left Britain 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:28.440 and they were in need of repair and redesign. Shipping 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:32.000 by boat was really popular, and many of Britain's rivers 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:36.199 became important conduits for trade goods. Engineers would actually start 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.440 to begin to design canals to connect various rivers together 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.600 in order to speed up transportation. And then there were 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:50.080 the rail systems. So railroads pre date trains and locomotives 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:54.320 by a lot, because people figured out fairly early on 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:57.320 that it's a lot easier to push or pull a 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.600 heavy cart that's along a set of hard rail than 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.920 it is to move that same cart against the ground, 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.920 that it will roll more smoothly and you have to 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.440 use less effort to get it from point A to 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.360 point B. So at first wooden rails were used and 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.919 carts would have flanged wheels to allow them to stay 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.880 on the rails securely. Not all carts were like this, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:22.720 not all rail systems were like this, but it was 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:27.919 generally one of the accepted standards across the world by 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:30.960 this point, where people knew if you built the wheels 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:32.919 in this way so that they essentially kind of hug 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.080 the rails, it's not likely to tip over, and you 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.360 can move at a good clip. By a good clip, 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:40.840 we're talking a couple of miles per hour, usually because 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:45.560 you're carrying so much stuff. Now, typically you'd use horses 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.799 to pull the carts along the rails. People did experiment 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:52.440 with other things, uh, But one of the pioneers in 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:57.799 railroads in England was Richard Reynolds. Now, Reynolds was an 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:02.000 iron master who worked at Brookdale, and that's the iron 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.080 works that was founded by Abraham Darby. You can listen 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.480 to the previous episodes on this series and you'll hear 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.960 me talk about the Darby family. Well, Reynolds became friends 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:15.760 with Abraham Darby, the second, so the son of Abraham Darby. 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:20.280 And in seventeen sixty Reynolds came up with the idea 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:26.880 of replacing wooden rails with cast iron rails. He thought 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.400 that this would be a much better use of cast iron. 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.200 It would be better than the wooden ones because the 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:35.960 wooden rails would break down over time. They could also 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:39.640 just collapse depending upon how heavy the load was, and 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.720 cast iron would last longer and be able to withstand 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.800 greater weights. Now, there's no historical record of anyone doing 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.160 this before Reynolds, so he might have actually been the 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:54.000 person to invent this, but it's not safe to just 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.040 declare it, so it's possible someone else did. We just 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.720 don't have a record of it, so I guess for 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:04.200 practical purposes, we can say he invented this idea before 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:08.720 long tramways all across Britain were following his his lead, 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.680 and so he was using rails in order to move 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:17.560 giant carts of coal or iron back and forth between locations. 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:20.359 But soon these were being used all over the place 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:24.360 for various reasons, and so they started convert wooden railways 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:29.560 into iron railways. This is fifty years before the invention 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.000 of the locomotive, which turned railways into a major means 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:35.560 of transport, not only in Britain but all across the world. 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.400 And we'll get to the locomotive a bit later, but 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.640 just imagine for fifty years, this was a way of 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:46.560 getting heavy loads of cargo to load from location to location, 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:51.320 but there were no trains, it was just horse drawn carts. 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:54.680 In the last episode, I also talked about the punt 0:04:54.720 --> 0:05:01.359 custalta aqueduct, punt consulta child mangle. Every single time I 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.159 try and say it's okay. The Welsh have trouble with 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:05.880 this one too. That's just one example of the innovations 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.560 and transportation that were introduced in the Industrial Revolution. Uh. 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:12.159 It was during this time that nations like the United 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:16.279 Kingdom and the United States really began to build extensive canals, 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.039 roads and railways to speed up that travel. And I 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.360 mentioned Thomas Telford as the architect who designed and built 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.919 the pot Consulta aqueduct. That was the one that was 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.760 a raised aqueduct made out of an iron trough that 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.599 connected two rivers together, and it spanned a valley so 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:40.320 that the waterway actually passed above the valley. It didn't 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.480 have to descend into the valley and then go back up, 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:47.000 it went straight across. He made several important contributions to 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.800 England's transportation systems, not just this aqueduct, and his designs 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.760 were adopted by engineers and other countries like the United States. 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:58.840 So it might be worth looking into who Telford was like. 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:03.520 Who was Thomas Telford. He was born in August of 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:08.160 seventeen fifty seven on the border between England and Scotland. 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:12.479 He's generally considered a Scottish architect. His father died when 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.279 he was just a baby, and his mother relied on 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.760 her relatives to help raise the child. Essentially, Telford was 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.640 raised by his his relatives, not by his mother, and 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:26.760 at age fourteen he became apprenticed to a stonemason. He 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:30.640 was really keen to learn everything there was to learn 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.360 about construction, and so he would actually study at night 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.360 after working a full day shift with the stonemason. After 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.640 learning his trade with the stonemason, and by the time 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:42.719 he was twenty five, he had worked on several important 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:47.080 construction projects and including some in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.640 ended up picking up stakes to move to London. That's 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.320 where Telford met Sir William Chambers, who was a prominent 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.680 Scottish architect, and Chambers had begun work on Somerset House 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:03.600 or Somerset House if you prefer if you're being more 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.440 British with it, and Telford ended up joining the crew. Now, 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:09.600 if you're not familiar with London, Somerset House may sound 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.600 like it's a quaint cottage. It's not. House is a 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:18.600 not an accurate word to describe this massive building. It's 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:23.240 an enormous neo classical structure, and it was big enough 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:25.600 so that it could house the Royal Academy of Arts, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:30.360 the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and the quarters 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.640 for the Navy Board and offices for the King's Barge Master. 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:38.040 This is a big, big building, massive in fact, and 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.800 it had a whole bunch of challenges that were associated 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:44.880 with it, not just because it was huge, but because 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:46.600 it was going to be the quarters for the King's 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:49.920 barge Master as well as for the Navy Board. It 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:52.520 had to be built up against the River Thames. There 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.120 had to be direct access to the Thames River, so 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.880 that was a big challenge. And if you're not if 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:01.280 you've never seen it, you should look at the pictures 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.280 of the Somerset House. The middle section of the structure 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.160 is what Telford specifically worked on. If you're looking at 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:09.520 a modern picture, you're going to see this really big 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.920 building that has wings on either side, but those east 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:15.920 and west wings were actually built later in the Victorian era. 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:20.040 It's that central structure that is what Telford worked on 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:23.760 as part of Chambers's crew. So Telford would go on 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.960 to work for a man named Sir William Pulteney who 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.880 was the richest man in Britain at that time, or 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:34.160 at least one of them. Telford became the Surveyor of 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.560 public Works in Shropshire, which was a position that was 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.240 created just for him. There had not been a surveyor 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.520 of public works before Telford. He would become a pioneer 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.120 in a new field that would eventually become known as 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:53.080 civil engineering. In two he designed and built the Montford 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.200 Stone Bridge across the River Severn, and that was the 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:58.400 one that was so important in the textile industry. If 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:00.760 you listen to the first episode in this series, I 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.160 talked about how important seven was and uh in its 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:09.040 association with Lancashire and the iron working and coal industries. 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:14.800 Telford also began to build suspension bridges, which was a 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.440 new idea at the time, and folklore has it that 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.120 when Telford built his first suspension bridge he had to 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.640 study his nerves with a prayer before allowing the cables 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.480 to take on the weight of the structure, because even 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:31.520 though he had worked out the math, he still could 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.240 not be absolutely certain that this was going to work. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:39.080 And suspension bridges are actually a really cool technology. It actually, 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.959 I guess will benefit us to describe how those work. 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.520 With a suspension bridge, typically, what you have are a 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:51.040 pair of very tall towers and uh these towers are 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.319 attached to the bridge via cables. You know, the typical 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:59.120 bridge has columns or pylons or piers underneath it that 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.120 holded up, but a suspension bridge doesn't. It has these 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:06.840 towers that have cables attached from the tower first to 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:12.240 each other, and also there's vertical cables that attached the 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:16.600 main cables between the two towers and the bridge. The 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:21.040 towers actually support most of the weight. Specifically, they support 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.400 the force of compression. See compression pushes down on the 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.280 surface of the bridge. That compression is transferred to the 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.959 cables or chains that are attached the edges of the 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.319 bridge the frame of the bridge, and that gets transferred 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.640 to the towers. Then you have supporting cables that connect 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:41.840 the towers to anchorage points on either side of whatever 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.280 you're building the bridge across, like a river, and these 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:49.400 cables support the tension forces created by the bridge. So 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:53.360 suspension bridges don't need any columns or pylons under them. 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:55.600 That frees up a lot of the space beneath the bridge. 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.040 But engineers like Telford who were aware of how the 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:03.160 bridges should work. We're a little antsy about how things 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.080 actually would work once everything was ready to go, And 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:10.360 luckily for us, physics tends to obey the law. So 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:14.079 the designs worked out in everyone's favor, but no one 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.400 was entirely sure at the time. Now, Telford's next project 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:20.920 was the Aqueduct, which must not be named because I'm 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:23.640 tired of trying to pronounce Welsh words, which was a 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.480 phenomenal success and that came as a great surprise to 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:29.720 numerous critics who were absolutely convinced it would fall apart 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:33.320 as soon as water was flowing, and it didn't, stayed 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:37.640 together and ended up increasing the speed of transportation in 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:41.840 that part of England. After the aqueduct, or well Wales, 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:43.840 I should say England and Wales because it was connecting 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.200 the two. But after that Aqueduct, Telford became the head 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:51.240 engineer of the Caledonian Canal in Scotland. That's a really 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:55.360 big canal. It's sixty miles long and the construction was 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:59.080 a huge boon for Scotland at the time because many 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:03.160 people in Scotland had become homeless, and the reason they 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:09.160 became homeless is pretty dastardly. It was in the wake 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.200 of what has become known as the Highland Clearances, which 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:17.720 is a very polite way of describing what actually happened. 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:23.319 So this was a period when aristocratic people, so clan leaders, nobles, 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:25.800 decided they would make a great deal of sense to 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:30.040 evict Scottish families from their ancestral homes in order to 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:34.240 convert that land into sheep grazing territory, so converting it 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.840 from farms into gray's land. And Highlanders were forced to 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:39.960 leave their homes, and some of them had been in 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.400 those homes for centuries. Are the families had, I mean 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.679 only a few Highlanders are immortal. As the documentary series 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.520 Highlander teaches us, it's a really dark time in Scottish 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.080 history and it really dealt severe damage to Gaelic culture 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.440 as a result. What what seems to have happened the 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:59.360 way it tends to be described, is that a lot 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.360 of clan leaders, for various reasons political reasons that were 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:08.400 handed down from the crown from royals, had decided that 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.480 rather than be considered a clan leader, which came with 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.959 a bunch of responsibilities, including if someone in your clan 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.960 acted up you were held responsible as leader. They started 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.400 to call themselves landlords instead, and that was a slippery 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:26.840 slope that led to these evictions. So Telford's canal took 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.120 three decades to construct, and it meant that he had 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.120 to rely heavily on a lot of labor from this 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.000 part of Scotland, so it gave a lot of people 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.839 work when they went home to harvest crops. He ended 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:43.200 up hiring Irish workers, which caused some real problems in 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:48.120 the area. People locals were upset at that, but Telford 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:52.599 was already running over budget and behind time, and unfortunately 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.200 for everybody, by the time the canal was finished, it 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:01.800 was actually not terribly useful, and that's because it just 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.600 took too long to make and technology had changed while 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.000 the canal was being built. It was built well, and 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.480 it's considered to be a marvel of engineering, but ship 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.559 building had changed so dramatically by the time the canal 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.840 was finished. Steamships had become the new standard, and steamships 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:22.720 needed more space than what the canal could provide. The 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.720 canal was actually too small to accommodate steamships, and so 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.000 it wasn't as used used as heavily as it had 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:33.560 been planned. Now Telford would go on to create super waterways. 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:38.040 It's kind of like super highways. There were these interconnections 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:43.040 that uh that put various canals finally in contact with 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:45.800 each other, so that made shipping much more efficient. And 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:49.200 in eighteen twenty he became the very first president of 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:54.960 the Institution of Civil Engineers in Britain, so essentially kind 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.240 of invented the discipline of civil engineering, or at least 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:02.840 was instrumental in the mention of that discipline. Telford made 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.280 another major contribution to England's transportation system as well. One 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.080 of his most important improvements involved raising the foundation of 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.480 a road in the center of the road to aid 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:17.880 in draining water. So he was very good at building roads. 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.200 He used these large flat stones as the foundation, and 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.360 by raising that center, water would drain off it much 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.960 more effectively. It wouldn't pool and destroy the road over time, 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:30.680 and his work was so successful that it became the 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:35.240 standard road design in England and beyond. One of Telford's 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:39.880 contemporaries and rivals was a guy named Isambard Kingdom Brunel. 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:43.000 And if that name sounds at all familiar, what you 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.119 might remember him when we did our episode on subways. 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.400 He was very important in that episode. He was the 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.480 son of a French engineer. The French engineer had actually 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.080 fled to England during the French Revolution, so Brunell grew 0:15:57.160 --> 0:16:01.000 up in England, although he also studied in France post revolution. 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:04.640 Brunell worked on many important projects throughout his career, but 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.920 he's probably best remembered for his tunnels and his underground systems. 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.440 He designed underground passages that even passed beneath bodies of 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.600 water like the River Thames, and he also designed several 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:20.520 rail railways and steamships in his time. Speaking of steamships, 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:23.840 the idea had been kicking around since the days of 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.480 Leonardo da Vinci, but until the eighteenth century, no one 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.880 had managed to actually make a practical steamship. People had tried. 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.880 There were several challenges that were facing engineers at the time. 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.200 A big one was to create a mechanism that would 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:43.720 translate the reciprocal motion of a piston into a rotary 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.880 motion that could turn a wheel. So pistons move up 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.280 and down or left and right in a cylinder, whereas 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:52.360 wheels turn in a circle. So you have to figure 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.720 out a way to translate one style of motion into another. 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:57.800 And it took a while before that happened. In other words, 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.560 how do you get that simple update own or left 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.920 right motion to become a circle? Well, Thomas Newcomin came 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.359 up with that. That was the invention that he said 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.280 he was most proud of, even beyond his improvements to 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.239 the basic steam engine. Uh. It was essentially kind of 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:16.000 a ratchet that allowed for this translation of motion. It 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.840 was the first big step to solving that particular problem. 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:22.760 Will be back to talk more about the Industrial Revolution 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:35.600 in just a second, but first let's take this quick break. Now, 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:37.600 the other big challenge was to create a steam engine 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:40.440 capable of providing enough power to actually move a boat 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.160 through the water. Now, as I mentioned in the last episode, 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.560 early steam engines relied on using condensation to create a 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:50.240 vacuum and pull a piston downward. They did not use 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.480 steam to create pressure and push the piston upward because 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.040 the materials they were using couldn't withstand that intense pressure 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.800 that steam would create, and they were concer they're too dangerous. 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.720 It was just a recipe for disaster. You would have 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.840 a boiler explode and that could be deadly. Now, pattents 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:10.600 for steamboats date all the way back to six eighteen, 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:14.160 when David Ramsey was awarded a patent for his design. Now, 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.639 there's no evidence that Ramsey ever managed to actually build 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.600 anything approaching a steam powered boat, and other inventors followed suit. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.480 There was one named John Allen who patented a steamboat 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:27.600 design in seventeen nine, and another one was proposed by 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:32.480 Englishman Jonathan Holes in seventeen thirty six. Holes approach was 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:37.439 to use a Newcoming engine, although again he never built 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:39.960 such a boat as far as we can tell. For 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.560 an actual working boat, you have to actually look fifty 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:52.719 years later, so three that's when Cloude Francois Dorote Joefrey Dabam, 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.080 who as you can imagine from that name, was a 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:59.159 French nobleman, built a boat powered by a new Coming 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.919 two cylinder engine, and he demonstrated on a river in 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.080 France and showed that such a boat could actually sail 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:09.720 against the river's current under its own power. It didn't 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:14.320 require manpower or animal power to turn some sort of 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:17.280 device in order to go against the current. It's really 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.199 kind of challenging to explain how monumental this was in 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:25.040 the transportation industry at the time, but people realize the 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.080 promise of steam power would be to make everything easier, 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:32.640 including the shipment of cargo and people. So Joe Frey's 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.240 invention actually broke apart in the river. It was not 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.200 it was not designed to last very long. It shook 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.680 itself apart. Essentially, the boat began to split, the engine 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.840 began to fall apart. He was able to pilot the 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:50.520 boat back to the river bank before it completely disintegrated 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.359 on him and got to shore safely. He would just 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.720 a few years later flee France himself because that was 0:19:57.800 --> 0:19:59.840 just as the French Revolution was getting into the swing 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:05.080 of things. Now, James Watt, who we talked about in 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:09.880 the last episode, invented the condenser, which made it much 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.680 more efficient. It being steam engines made steam engines much 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:14.639 more efficient. You no longer had to heat up and 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.439 cool down the cylinder that had the piston in it. 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.160 You could keep it the same temperature, and you allowed 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:24.240 the condenser to pull steam in and condense into water. 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:28.360 And water started getting a trans Atlantic accident on there 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.480 for some reason, turn into water and uh create that 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.679 vacuum pressure that would pull a piston downward. And also 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:38.240 as around this time when people began to experiment with 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:42.760 double stroke engines. That's when you use steam to provide 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:46.639 both the push on the upstroke of a piston and 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.959 the poll on the downstroke of the piston, and makes 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.320 an engine much more efficient because it's doing work in 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.200 both ways rather than just pulling and then allowing gravity 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:00.520 to reset the piston. Watson's invention and we become the 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:05.280 foundation for working steamboats in the future. Now, I've talked 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:09.080 a lot about Britain in these episodes, because Britain is 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:13.760 the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, there's no question about that. Uh. 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:16.320 A lot of innovations happened in Britain first and then 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:18.760 eventually made their way to other parts of the world. However, 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.840 when we start talking about steamboats, we actually have to 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:26.240 shift our focus over to America. American engineers were facing 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:30.600 a pretty big challenge that the Brits weren't facing. Specifically, 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.840 they were not allowed to use British technology. Britain had 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:41.240 passed laws making it illegal to share trade secrets or 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:46.000 sell certain things like steam engines. So, in other words, 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:48.879 all that information got caught up and stuck and stayed 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:52.359 in Britain. Now, the reason for this was that Britain 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.119 was really trying to maintain trade superiority for as long 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.080 as it possibly could, and part of that was just 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:02.479 keeping all this this information secret so that only Britain 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:05.560 could take advantage of it. So American engineers were forced 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:09.119 to design their own steam engines. Now they had a 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:11.399 general idea of how the British ones were working, so 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:14.560 it's not like they were going completely from scratch, but 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:17.280 it still was a big challenge, and one trio that 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.679 gave it a shot consisted of an inventor named John Stevens, 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:25.359 his wealthy brother in law Robert Livingstone, and a machinist 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:30.399 named Nicholas J. Roosevelt. Their efforts were somewhat hampered by Livingstone, 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:33.399 who felt that since he was providing all the cash, 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:37.720 he should have a major input into how the boat 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:41.000 was actually constructed, despite the fact that he didn't have 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:45.880 the expertise of the other two. But the other two 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:48.800 had very little bargaining power because Livingstone was the guy 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:54.959 footing the bill, So despite protestations from Roosevelt and from Stevens, 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:59.800 Livingstone's design was what stuck, and the resulting boat barely 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:02.960 moved in still water in fact, on the first test 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:07.600 it didn't go anywhere. The second test it moved very 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:10.960 slowly in stillwater, something like three miles per hour, so 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:14.159 it could not really fight against the current, and it 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:17.800 also shook itself apart after a short while. By the way, 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:20.919 I don't think that Robert Livingstone was a dummy. He 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.520 was a smart guy. In fact, he was instrumental in 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:27.800 in American history. He's the guy who essentially brokered the 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:33.080 Louisiana purchase deal between France and America. So very important historically, 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:35.639 just not necessarily the guy you want on your team 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:40.000 when you're designing a steam engine. However, Livingston met another 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:42.760 man who also shared an interest in steam power, and 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:46.120 that man was Robert Fulton. He was an American who 0:23:46.160 --> 0:23:48.399 originally wanted to make his living as an artist. He 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:52.200 painted a portrait of Benjamin Franklin and felt that he 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:55.159 was on his way to becoming a great artist, but 0:23:55.320 --> 0:23:58.280 his career path was cut short after he had a 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:01.600 disappointing meeting with another Erican artist who was living in London. 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:06.080 Fulton actually took his all of his money traveled to London. 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:10.760 He had a letter of invitation our introduction for this 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:13.480 American artist met with the American artist who is kind 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:16.879 but essentially said no, I don't want you as a student. 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.720 You don't have what it takes. But fortunately Fulton met 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:24.200 Livingstone and they began to talk, and they realized they 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:27.760 shared a lot of common interests, including engineering and specifically 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:33.440 in steam engines. Fulton had become really obsessed with ships 0:24:33.640 --> 0:24:37.440 in general and steam engines in particular, and Fulton saw 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:40.760