Resources and Transportation in the Industrial Revolution

‘The Industrial Revolution.’ It sounds daunting, a string of long words, but in reality it was simply a time period in which the Industrial world went about accelerating itself into the future at astonishing speeds, with many great inventions popping up. But what really was it? The Industrial Revolution propelled many practices and technologies forward, from simple things like cleaning clothing all the way to the creation of complex machines used in mining operations far away from other resources. People could access water and electricity in rural places, instead of clustering around cities or food/water supplies in a bid to survive. Farmers, using new machines, increased productivity, increased production, and increased profit.

            Resources - the valuable commodities that seem to make the world go round. From coal to flax seeds, the only way to harvest resources was to do it manually. Farmers and miners had a hard and long job, and usually had to pay others to help them. Over the course of the Industrial Revolution, this problem slowly withered away. Farm machines were invented, pushing many out of the farmhand market and into the cities, where new machines and technologies were being developed. Many went to work in factories, making the parts and machines that were instrumental to the new success of the revolution. With these new machines, farmers could make use of all their land a lot easier and pull a lot more product in. More productivity = more production = more profit. New machines made mining a lot easier, with devices to pump water out of the mineshafts for easier access, and new drills that sped up the mining process so it didn’t have to be done all by hand. As said before, more productivity = more production = more profit.

            Next up is transportation. Pre-Industrial Revolution, everyone got around by horse. Now, there was steam engines. Steam engines were the answer for everything. Steam engine trains, steam engine farm machines, everything. Trains moved at fast speeds, could hold huge loads and transport things very easily. They were a huge advance in technology, and made things much, much easier for the whole world.