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James Watt's steam engine
James Watt's engine displaced Thomas Newcomen's slow, clumsy steam pumping engine. Watt's engine had a flywheel, crank, and steam governor. -
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5 years later
In 1764, while repairing a Newcomen steam engine, Watt notices that it wastes a lot of steam. Watt develops a way to improve the Newcomen machine and in 1769 receives a patent for his own steam engine, which will be widely utilized during the Industrial Revolution. -
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4 years later
1775 Arkwright develops mills in which the whole process of yarn manufacture is carried on by one machine. In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule, a cross between machines invented by Arkwright and Hargreaves. -
spinning mule
Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule, a machine used to spin cotton and other fibers, in 1779. It was improved by Richard Roberts, who patented an automatic mule in 1825. -
Power loom
Loom a machine for weaving cloth. The earliest looms date from the 5th millennium BC and consisted of bars or beams fixed in place to form a frame to hold a number of parallel threads in two sets, alternating with each other. By raising one set of these threads, which together formed the warp, it was possible to run a cross thread, a weft, or filling, between them. -
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4 years later
In 1789 he patents the first wool-combing machine. -
cotton gin
Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, a machine for cleaning cotton of its seeds. -
sewing machine
Lockstitch sewing machine invented by Elias Howe, in 1846. -
railroad
The United States begins building a transcontinental railroad in 1862 to connect the East Coast with the West Coast. -
the telephone
Alexander Graham Bell patents his telephone. Networks of telephone lines are built quickly across the United States. -
the lightbulb
In 1879 Thomas Edison introduces the modern age of light when he invents the incandescent lightbulb. -
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3 years later
Thomas Edison installs the world’s first permanent commercial central power system, in lower Manhattan, New York. The system becomes operative in 1882. Electricity is later applied to driving all kinds of machinery. Electric lighting quickly spreads across the United States and is soon adopted in Europe. -
the first flight
At Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright achieve the first powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight. Making it the first successful controlled flight in history