MOSI Hangout - Exploring the Industrial Revolution

To prepare for the video chat with Jamie from the Museum of Science and Industry, we first went to the MOSI site (http://www.mosi.org.uk/explore-mosi/explore-galleries/textiles-gallery.aspx) and looked around, taking notes. On the site, we learned about Sir Richard Arkwright, who was known as the father of the textile mill. Following that, we watched a quick video Jamie had sent us about what he’d talk about whilst videochatting. During the video, the class all took notes on the vocabulary presented, looked them all up on Google, and compared definitions to find the best matches. Next, we all came up with questions that we had for Jamie.

Though the chat was plagued by a poor connection, Jamie still taught us a lot about the Industrial Revolution, the working conditions, and the machines that were involved. Originally, families worked together in ‘Cottage Looms’, which were small-medium sized looms that the whole family worked at in one room. The families wanted to maximize hours of usage, so they would put the machine in a very well lit area. Sadly, this format of creating textiles was slow and not very profitable. To make the most progress in a day, the families worked from sunrise to sundown, and the children even helped out by brushing debris out of cotton with a metal brush. It was a very hand to mouth existence, and they made their own clothes too. Next came the Arkwright factory looms. These were up to 4x more productive than cottage looms, using the same amount of people. Oftentimes, these looms would harvest the power of water from a water wheel located outside the factory. Since these were almost automated, the workers only needed to do some tasks and feed in the cotton. Next up was the spinning machine, or the almost completely automated, infamous mills that were very loud and very dangerous. Over time they became slightly safer, but they were still the cause for many a death in the Industrial Revolution. In addition to this, they were terrible for the environment, and pumped out massive amounts of pollution per year. We learned how dangerous operating the machines could be; Jamie said that children’s fingers could be stripped down to the bone.

Here’s a picture from the chat:

I really enjoyed this chat, it really showed me that the Industrial Revolution still lives today. I was quite impressed with the MOSI’s textile mill machine collection. Jamie was pretty cool, and this activity was definitely both a lot of fun and very educational.