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   Industrial Revolution; Part 3

Industrial Revolution; Part 3

Hardly less remarkable than the development of the cotton industry was that of iron. Hitherto iron had been smelted by charcoal, and as the forests decreased the price of fuel rose. But in the eighteenth century, chiefly through an improved blast invented in the year of George III's accession (1760), coke and coal began to be used in place of charcoal; and this placed the unlimited resources of the British coalfields at the disposal of the ironmasters. Other inventions followed, such as new methods of rolling and puddling iron - due to Henry Corf - and before the end of the century great ironworks had arisen in various districts. The "age of iron" had come; and in 1777 the first iron bridge was made, and in 1790 the first iron vessel launched.

Other manufactures besides that of cotton and iron were also developed, such as that of earthenware, owing largely to Josiah Wedgwood. The utilization of a new power - that of steam - is, however, far the most important feature in the period before 1815. The power of steam had been recognized some time before, but it was left to Waff (According to Sir Walter Scott, who saw him in old age, Watt was not only one of the most generally well-informed, but one of the best and kindest of human beings, who, in his eighty-fifth year, had "his attention alive to everyone's question, his information at evereone's command") - a mathematical-instrument maker of Greenock - to produce in 1769 the first efficient steam engine. At first the steam engine had only a vertical motion, and was used chiefly for drawing up water; later, however, was discovered the possibility of a rotatory and parallel motion, and steam power could then be utilized in manufactories. The last four years of our period saw still further developments. The first steamer, the Comet, sailed down the Clyde in the year of Napoleon's Russian campaign (1812). The first locomotive engine was invented by Stephensou two years later. And the year of Waterloo (1815) saw the invention by Humphry Davy of the safety lamp for the use of the miners without whose labour the employment of steam power would have been impossible.

Though the railway and the steamer really belong to the era' after 1815, yet the period anterior to that date saw great improvements in the methods of communication. The canal, invented, like so many other things, originally by the Chinese, was introduced into England in 1759. A canal made by Brindky (In the course of his life Brindley built as many miles of canals as there are days in the year, i.e. 365. He did most of his work in his head, as he wrote with difficulty, and never spelt with any approach to correctness. When he had a very puzzling piece of work, he went to bed and stayed there till his difficulties were solved) for the Duke of Bridgewater, from the Worsley collieries to Manchester, at once halved the price of coal in that city, and led to such a development in the building of canals, that by the end of the eighteenth century London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Hull were connected by water, as well as the Forth and the Clyde. Early in the next century no place south of Durham, so it was said, was more than fifteen miles distant from water conveyance.

Chronology
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