Karuna Khemaney
December 10, 2013
Industrial Revolution Portfolio
Essential Question: How do innovations and change affect individuals, communities, and the world?
- Agricultural Revolution
Terminology:
The definition for crop rotation is when crops rotate from field to field.
The seed drill was a device that plowed the ground, put seeds in, and covered the seed with dirt. Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend invented this device.
Selective breeding is when humans select animals based on their quality and physical appearance.
A revolution means a major change. In this case, Britain went through a major change called the agricultural and industrial revolution.
Visuals:
Four-field system [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
Schoolhouse+Lane
This is a diagram/ image of the four- field system. Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend, the inventor of the four- field system used it by putting the fields into four parts and then putting the wheat in the first field, barley in the second field, turnips on the third field, and clovers on the fourth field. Every year, he would rotate the crops and from this idea Charles found out that a lot more crops had grown and a fair amount of nutrients were in every field.
Seed drill [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
This is an image of a seed drill. A seed drill is a device that JethroTull invented. It was a new and effective way to plow the ground and put seeds in. As you can see there are sharp blades sticking out at the bottom, which aligns the line of where the seeds have to be dropped down from the tube. The flat axe blades are for covering the seeds and putting the dirt back into place. The seed still was a new innovation that was easier and faster to plow the crops.
This video explains what selective breeding is about and gives two specific examples; one on animals and one on plants. If the farmer wants fatter chickens he would take a fat female chicken and a fat male chicken and breed it, which would fortunately make a fat baby chicken. The farmer selects animals or plants based on the quality or their physical appearance.
Main Ideas and Supporting Details:
The agricultural revolution occurred mostly in the 18th century to the end of the 19th century in Britain. It is when agriculture improved and moved on for having higher demands because of new inventions and machines. There were different kinds of industries such as clothing industry, real estate industry, construction industry and more.
Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend was the person who invented the crop rotation and the four- field system. Crop rotation was when you would rotate crops from field to field for every year or so. Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend grew on that idea and called it the four- field system, where there were four fields right next to each other and they would rotate the crops that were in it every year. There were different crops like barley, wheat, clover, and turnips. Charles found out that this idea had worked perfectly for the quantity of the crops grew, the crops were growing faster, and there were a fair amount of nutrients in every field.
JethroTull created a new effective way to plow, a new innovation, the seed drill. As you can see in the image above, the seed drill looked quite complex but actually it was a simple machine. After the seed drills’ quantity was increased rapidly, there were results of improved farming. England had a lot of land that can be used for farming, but after a while the nobilities (duke, duchess, kings, queens, lords) started to privately own the land. They would have rock walls to separate the farming land and the private land.
Selective breeding was another discovery/ innovation that was based on animals’ DNA. The farmer would choose to breed the livestock based on their quality and their physical appearance. For this discovery, there was also a big change between the statistics before and after the selective breeding.
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin to help southern farmers to produce more cotton, but he did not know that he had created a machine that used more slaves in America. Tobacco was one of the most important crops but rice, corn, indigo, and special strain of cotton was also some of the main crops. As the cotton gin was increasing rapidly and taking more interest in buyers, Eli Whitney noticed that people needed machines to clean cotton. He designed a machine that matched the hand motions and the actions of the workers cleaning the cotton. This was called revolutionized manufacturing.
Citation for main ideas and supporting details:
The agricultural revolution. (n.d.). About.com Inventors. Retrieved November 5, 2013, from
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund:The Enclosure Movement. (n.d.). The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund:The Enclosure Movement. Retrieved November 6, 2013, from
Essential Question:
How did the agricultural revolution affect individuals, the community, and/or the world?
Before the inventions and ideas like the seed drill or crop rotation, farmers had to work hours and hours in the farm plowing and the amount of time that they worked on something the more percentage of food the farmers got. The farmers also had to share their own crops to nobilities such. After the machines and inventions started growing the quantity and the great variety of crops, there was an adequate amount of food for families, which meant that peoples’ health status improved which made families have healthier babies. People lived longer, and died in an old age. People had a lot more demand on manufactured goods such as clothing, for the machines worked efficiently while workers could not work the whole time for they will be exhausted and do a poor job and end up with a poor product. Unfortunately, because the quantity of the machines was rapidly increasing farmers and workers lost their jobs with nothing else to do so there were quite a lot of riots and protests.
- Factory Innovations and Labor Changes
Terminology:
The Spinning Jenny was where 8 spools of yarn were simultaneously spinning. It was invented in 1764.
The steam engine was a complex machine. It first started out way back around A.D. 60 and different people kept on improving the machine.
Coal was very essential to England and was one of the main sources for producing energy. Coal was heated, which when vaporized and produced steam, which made energy. There was a lot of coal in England so it was used in trading as well as producing energy.
Textile industry was when materials such as cotton, wool, silk, was exported around England and traded over different countries.
Visuals:
Women in coal mines[Photograph]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
Women instead of men worked in coalmines. They used windlasses to lift coal and lift women. They would be pulled up between narrow and dark spaces. Just like children they would work long hours from day to night.
Spinning jenny[Photograph]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
This image shows the machine called the Spinning Jenny. This image is a very good image because you can see where there are the tilted spindles and the head wheel. There was a huge increase in the Spinning Jenny because there were more resources on cotton and thread.
This video is a great video that explains how a spinning Jenny works. The person will explain with an actual Spinning Jenny on what is happening when he is moving the wheel and how thread is produced.
(Video)
Main Ideas and Supporting Details:
England had a shortage on wood to produce fuel so when it came to resources their reliance was on coal. There was a greater demand for products that used coal such as heating stoves and fireplaces as well as blacksmithing. Because now there main resource was coal that meant that there was an increase in mining. But by the 18th century miners were reaching their limit to where they can mine underground and the main problem was that there were water seepages. Not only were there water seepages but also miners had cave-ins, floods, explosions, and respiratory illness. There were explosives that would break another way
Another great resource other than coal was wool. England had a lot of livestock such as sheep so they spun it into thread. England traded wool all around the world and in exchange they got something new and exciting; cotton. Women would work at home carefully spinning the wool and now, also cotton into thread. This new idea was called the cottage industry. These women were called spinsters.
Because the population growth was increasing, people needed new, efficient ways to produce thread. John Kay invented what he called a fly- shuttle where there was one person rather than two people working on one loom. Unfortunately, nobody thought his invention was good enough and people thought that it would just leave more people to having no jobs so there were some disagreements.
James Hargreaves improved John Kay’s idea in 1765. Ratherthan a single worker spinning thread onto a single spinning wheel, his new invention allowed 1 spinner to simultaneously spin 8 threads at once. This new effective invention was called the Spinning Jenny names after James Hargreaves’ wife. Years after years, the quantity of Spinning Jenny’s were increasing rapidly. By 1778, 20,000 spinning Jenny’s’ were in working. By 1830, new, improved models finished products faster and the time was reduced to 20 hours.
Richard Arkwright patented a water frame, which had water powered rollers and spindles to make strong thread. In 1770, England worked 8 million pounds of raw cotton into thread and cloth. 20 years later, the amount of cotton increased to 37 million pounds and by 1830 machines was busy working 250 million pounds of raw cotton.
All these new inventions and machines meant that there needed to be more space to produce, and more labor. Machines were more efficient than people because they had a higher quality, they finished products in a shorter time, and they did not stop to take a break. In some places in Europe, peasants would work as agriculturists in summer and spring and, and then they would take jobs at the factories in the winter and fall. On the other side, people who moved from the rural areas to the urban areas, were stuck in cold, unhygienic factories working the whole day whether they liked it or not. When the workers were not paying attention, there would be accidents with people cutting off their arms and legs with machines. Lateness and poor quality led to whippings and harsh punishments.
Main Ideas and Supporting Details Citations:
Primary History Victorian Britain. (n.d.). BBC News. Retrieved December 8, 2013, from
Essential Question:
How did the factory system affect individuals, the community, and/ or the world?
England was a drive from dependence on agriculture. In the late 1700s, England led by ministers and parliamentarians who were sympathetic to trade were starting to their resources, iron ore and coal to different countries. England also had a lot of sheep to make wool so they traded wool to countries such as India, Egypt, and later to the United States. There was an increase in population so when it came to making more factories, there needed to be more people working. That meant that more jobs were available, so more people started to move from the rural areas to the urban areas. As years passed by, new innovations and machines were starting to come out people started to lose their jobs. Even though, the workers still had to manage and keep an eye on the machines, the machines mostly did all the work and they gave out faster and higher quality products that workers could not. Now it was hard to get a job, for if you did not work hard or give the product in time there would be consequences.
- Transportation
Terminology:
Steam engines were a source of transportation at that time. They were used to carry people and resources from another place.
Because England had a shortage of wood, oil could not be a main resource at that time, so something so different came in handy, coal. Miners had to dig deeper and deeper to get more coal and the demand for coal increased.
The demand for transportation vehicles and automobiles increased because people built roads and streets.
The demand for also digging deeper into the mines to get more coal increased because people had more demand on transporting and trading goods to different places.
Visuals:
Newcomen atmospheric engine[Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
This image shows how Newcomen’s steam engine worked and how energy was produced. As you can see it looks like a very complicated process, from transferring the water and pumping and heating it. The brick is what separates the two waters. At the top of the brick in the middle is the water reservoir.
Steam ships[Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
chapters/IR/033.html
A Frenchman, Denis Papin, was the first person to put the steam engine that Thomas Newcomen invented on to a ship. It was said that it traveled faster and handed in resources at a faster time.
Steam locomotive[Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
school_links/sports/track/History/Industrial%20Revolution/
Borsig_steam_locomotive.jpg
This image represents a steam locomotive. A locomotive is a vehicle to transport goods or people to different places. Power was produced by steam when they burned coal and the heat vaporized and turned into steam.
Main Ideas and Supporting Details:
Steam was an old- age source of natural power. People were already inventing things with metal in the AD 60. Hero of Alexandria brought up the first steam engine but it technically wasn’t a steam engine it was a small device, which was a metal sphere with jets coming out of it. Little did he know that this invention was the start of new ideas. In 1702, an Englishman Thomas Savery built a low- powered steam engine that worked as a pump. He called this the atmospheric engine.
Thomas Newcomen’s engine was very efficient, capable with 12 strokes of the piston a minute. By 1760, 100 of the steam engines used in England. Like everyone his goal was also to try to solve the problem of water seepage. As it was written before, Britain had a lot of demand for coal because it was their main resource, so miners had to dig deeper which led out water.
After the steam engines came out, new innovations including stead started overflowing the society. A new transportation device had been created, the steam ship. Denis Papin, a Frenchman, was the first person to try to put a steam engine onto a ship. Denis’s problem was that he could not get the piston to flow in the right direction. Thomas Newcomen also tried to fix the problem but failed to do so when he came upon the same problem. James Watt was the man who improved Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine. James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton was not only interested in science, they were determined to make improvements on the engine. Watt and Boulton made 18% efficiency on the engine and people all around the world wanted to see Britain’s creations. Countries got resources from all around the world and all the inventions were being improved. For example, one steamboat could carry what 20 horses were carrying. The 18th century was a very crucial century with the telescope giving intellectual freedom to create and innovate anything. After that, people were really enthusiastic to try to make the steam engine work. People came out with new ways to transport goods and people such as the engine car, the steamboat, canals, motorcycle, elevator, etc.
Essential Question:
How did transportation affect individuals, the community, and/or the world?
Transportation affected the industry financially, socially, and economically. The machines and inventions such as the steam ships and trains made it easier to transport and trade with other countries for resources and steam took a shorter time when creating a product. But as the machines were developed over the years, that still meant that workers had to work especially hard because they could get fired and they did not need anything done by hand. Transportation was not only to transport goods but also to transport people. With new inventions and improved past inventions, people were carried and reached to a destination faster than the past years. Transportation affected people around the world by having a better relationship through England with trading resources in time with high quality. As new inventions came along, people all around the world wanted to see the magic, and came to England.