Samuel Slater, who had been an apprentice in an English cotton factory, disguised himself and went to America. He reconstructed a cotton-spinning machine from memory, and then proceeded to build a factory of his own. The Industrial Revolution had arrived in the United States.
The main features involved in the revolution were technological, socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following:.
1) The use of new basic materials, primarily iron and steel.
2) The use of new energy sources, together with both fuels and motive power, such as coal, steam engine, electricity, petroleum.
3) The invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom, that permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy.
4) A new organization of work known as the factory system.
5) Important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph and radio.
6) The increasing application of science to industry .
Before the Industrial Revolution people made goods on a small-scale from their own homes, or in workshops beside their house. The whole family would be involved in producing and selling the product. It was safe to work at home as they only used hand tools and simple machinery, these worked by hand and foot. It was called the Domestic System. Later, it has moved aside for more complex machines and new methods were invented, which were powered by steam and gathered together in factories to produce more goods. It meant that people would work regular hours and not when they wanted to.
Before the invention of steam-engines, wind mills and water wheels were used for powering big machinary. The first steam engine in the early seventeen hundreds was mainly used in the mines for pumping out water. A Scottish engineer, James Watt, invented the first workable steam engine in 1782. This invention created a vast new source of power.
