Impact of the Industrial Revolution on the Further Development of Technology

The Industrial Revolution was a game-changer that managed to affect so much of the world and make a whole lot of processes and business move faster. Ever since it began in the 18th century, it not only impacted fields such as transportation, metallurgy, chemicals, textiles, energy, and agriculture, but it also had a huge impact on technological advancement and progress.

Thanks to this huge global event, human activity in factories has been changed forever and the production of many necessary items and products started increasing highly in quantity. Technology and innovations started appearing more and more and were able to be manufactured more easily, faster, and way cheaper. Let’s have a look at how the Industrial Revolution was able to impact the technology industry through history and what breakthroughs came with it.

Industrial Revolution’s Effects on Technology

Along with this revolution also came the technological revolution which managed to hurl the world in a series of rapid industrial advancements and developments in areas like energy, productivity, luxury, and so much more. So much has changed since the breakthroughs that this brought to the world. The innovation of new technologies made the world move a lot faster and they also made things a lot easier and more enjoyable.
Development of Power Technologies

The production of power was never the same after this major global industrial event. The huge improvements that were made on the steam engine, windmills, and other power generating sources all helped create some game-changing, revolutionary technology developments and allowed us to live more enjoyable lives.

The Power of Steam

In the early 1700s, Thomas Newcomen designed the first-ever version of the steam engine, a long-awaited invention that was about to change everything. Its first revolutionary use was for the coal mines as a way to pump water out of mine shafts.

About half a century later, still during the Industrial Revolution, this invention helped create another revolution when James Watt started tinkering with the original idea of the engine and actually made it way more efficient than it ever was. He added a rotary feature that was integrated into a huge number of industries like the production of paper, flour, ironworks, cotton mills, canals, and so much more. This was one technology development that spread very quickly and left the industrial world changed forever.

Electricity

After steam became immensely popular in Britain and many more industrial areas of the world, Benjamin Franklin then came across electricity and a whole new industry was eventually born.

After that, more great minds heard about this term, business ideas started forming and new markets were being discovered for this precious power source. In the early period of the Industrial Revolution, Britain, a country that had steam-powered engines everywhere you looked was not an obvious market place to grow this industry, but Continental Europe and North America were looking pretty good at the time.

Thomas Edison also started applying this type of technology in the industrial world of the United States and before we knew it, the most popular source of power was born and had already begun a revolution and changed the world without even knowing it.

Other Energy Sources

Electricity and Steam were not the only technological improvements that achieved greatness during this time. Other types of power-generating technologies were also made quite popular during the Industrial Revolution.

Other innovations such as the internal combustion engine is another amazing example of the possibilities and achievements that this industrial period brought upon the world. Imagine where we would be without these initial revolutionary inventions offering the chance for further improvement and never-ending possibilities of making everything better in Britain, the United States, and eventually, the entire world.

How Technology Changed Transportation Forever

Before the Industrial Revolution, the traditional roads and modes of transportation were looking pretty primitive. Thanks to the improvements and constant new technological tools, innovations, and developments, Britain had 2000 miles of canals in use before 1815.

In the early 1800s, a man known as Richard Threvitick showed the world a piece of revolutionary technology that would change the industrial world, the way goods were transported, and how people traveled forever ㅡ it was the steam-powered locomotive. By 1830, similar models of steam-powered vehicles started appearing and before anyone knew it, boats were transporting goods with this type of technology revolution, similar locomotives were carrying all sorts of cargo, and this industrial area just kept growing over the years.

How Technology Changed Communication Around the World

This revolution started bringing changes and improvements to almost everything and people saw that new technological inventions could make communication over long distances possible. Back then, there was no easy way to get information on, for example, how to write an amazing Industrial Revolution essay, and there were no services to help you out when you needed it. But, thanks to small steps and different kinds of tech, this was all eventually made possible and reachable anywhere in the world.

For example, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone brought the world their own patented telegraphy system and after that, it didn’t take long for others like Samuel Morse to create another revolution by bringing even newer, more advanced ways of communication thanks to the rapid industrial improvement and the technology revolution.

This allowed the huge potential for improving the economic state of the world by implementing easy and fast communication systems in banks and other companies. Society was also improving with all of this as so many needs were becoming better and more easily reachable.

Conclusion

You can see that the Industrial Revolution managed to make one major breakthrough inspire another and that’s why so many industries started to advance rapidly. The initial need for everything that was improved was what started things going and thanks to a lot of great people like the ones mentioned here, the industrial era was born and the world was never the same.
However, none of that would ever be possible without the development of certain technologies that skyrocketed so many industries and technical fields all over the world. I don’t think the Industrial Revolution has a precise start and finish date, it was a period of beauty and success and after its birth, it never seemed to actually end as the world has never looked back.

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