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1700s
People began producing products in new ways. Inventors in Great Britain built machines that did some of the work including cloth making and spinning thread. The British cloth makers built mills, also called factories, along the rivers. In the mills, they installed large machines, which were ran by flowing water. People began to leave their homes and farms to work in the mills. This change was named the Industrial Revolution. -
1790
Congress passed a patent law to protect the rights of inventors.
The British also tried to protect their inventions. One law prohibited textile workers from sharing technology or leaving the country. One such worker was Samuel Slater. Slater built copies in the United States of British machines that made cotton thread. -
1793
The new machines changed the way people made cloth. Some inventions wove the thread into cloth. These machines saved time and money, because it was easier than doing it by hand. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, it quickly and easily removed the seeds from picked cotton and allowed a huge increase in cotton production. -
1800
Around this time, it reached the United States. Changes began in New England because of its geography. New England's poor soil made farming difficult. People willingly gave up farm work to earn wages elsewhere. New England's many rivers and streams offered the waterpower needed to run factory machinery. The area had many ports, this allowed the shipping in of raw materials and the shipping out of finished goods. -
1814
Francis Cabot Lowell improved on Samuel Slater's mill. Lowell's Massachusetts textile, or also cloth, factory not only made thread. It also wove the thread into cloth. Lowell began the factory system, in which all manufacturing steps are combined in one place. -
1830
The changes in the law paved the way for the growth of corporations, a type of business that can have many owners. Because of their legal status, corporations can grow to a large size. They sell stock to raise the money to build factories and expand their business. Large corporations began to appear in this era, and their great size helped drive industrialization.
