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Thomas Savery and the steam engine
English engineer and inventor who built the first steam engine. A military engineer by profession, Savery was drawn in the 1690s to the difficult problem of pumping water out of coal mines.
Steam engine: An engine in which the energy of hot steam is converted into mechanical power, especially an engine in which the force of expanding steam is used to drive one or more pistons. -
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The industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, when agricultural societies became more industrialized and urban. The transcontinental railroad, the cotton gin, electricity and other inventions permanently changed society.
The Industrial Revolution was the transition from creating goods by hand to using machine.
Capitalism was a central component necessary for the rise of industrialization -
Jethro Tull - Drill auger
Jethro Tull invented the seed drill in 1701 as a way to plant more efficiently. Prior to his invention, sowing seeds was done by hand, by scattering them on the ground or placing them in the ground individually, such as with bean and pea seeds. Tull considered scattering wasteful because many seeds did not take root. -
Thomas Newcome - Steam Engine
Newcomen was an ironmonger by profession, but made a significant contribution to the Industrial Revolution with his invention of the atmospheric steam engine. Thomas Newcomen was born in Dartmouth, Devon in 1663 and established himself as an ironmonger in his home town.
The engine pumped water using a vacuum created by condensed steam. He created a steam engine for the purpose of lifting water out of a tin mine. -
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit - Mercury thermometer
He is best known for inventing the alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714) and for developing the Fahrenheit temperature scale; this scale is still commonly used in the United States.
The more predictable expansion of mercury combined with improved glass working techniques led to a much more accurate thermometer. -
James Hargreaves - Spinning Machine
James Hargreaves was born near Blackburn in about 1720. Hargreaves received no formal education and was unable to read or write. He worked as a carpenter and weaver but had a strong interest in engineering.
The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. -
Richard Arwright - Hydraulic Spinner
Sir Richard Arkwright, textile industrialist and inventor whose use of power-driven machinery and employment of a factory system of production were perhaps more important than his inventions.
The spinning frame was the first powered, automatic and continuous textile machine in the world and enabled production to move away from small homes to large purpose-built factories. -
John Fitch - Steamboat
John Fitch, pioneer of American steamboat transportation who produced serviceable steamboats before Robert Fulton. Fitch served in the American Revolution (1775–83) and later surveyed land along the Ohio River.
After he was captured and released by Delaware Indians, Fitch was haunted by dreams of canoes chasing him. These dreams inspired his first steamboat design, which didn't have a paddle wheel but a moving rail that lifted a series of paddles much like those on the Indian canoes. -
William Murdoch - Gas lighting
William Murdock, Scottish inventor, the first to make extensive use of coal gas for illumination and a pioneer in the development of steam power.
Murdoch turned his hand to making light from gas produced by burning coal. He was inspired by youthful experiments in which he had put coal dust in his mother's old kettle and lit the gas coming out of the spout -
Eli Whithney - Cotton remover
American inventor, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer, best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin but most important for developing the concept of mass production of interchangeable parts.
Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America's leading export. -
Johann Aloys Senefelder - Lithographic machine
Alois Senefelder, was a German actor and playwright, who accidentally discovered that he could duplicate his scripts by writing them in greasy crayon on slabs of limestone and then printing them with rolled-on ink.
The plate-making machine etches images and text into aluminium plates as microscopic dots. Once complete these plates are put into the litho press as a part of the set-up process. These are then transferred (offset) to rubber blankets or rollers and then to the print media. -
Alessandro Volta - Electric drums
Was a Lombard physicist known especially for the development of the first electrical cell in 1800. He was born in Como in Lombardy, Italy.
Any practical use of electricity would require a source of continuous current, when Alessandro Volta invented the first electric pile, the forerunner of the modern battery.
Volta found that electricity could be produced by just stacking alternate layers or discs of metals zinc and silver in a saltwater bath that would allow current to flow. -
Joseph Marie Jacquard - Jacquard Loom
French inventor of the Jacquard loom, which served as the impetus for the technological revolution of the textile industry and is the basis of the modern automatic loom.
This handloom was used for weaving silk at Stonehouse in Lanarkshire in the 19th. This attachment simplified the way in which complex textiles such as damask were woven. The mechanism involved the use of thousands of punch cards laced together. This cards used in the mechanism laid the foundation for modern computer programming. -
John Stevens - Propeller Thruster
American lawyer, inventor, and promoter of the development of steam power for transportation. His petition to the U.S. Congress resulted in the Patent Law of 1790, the foundation of the present U.S. patent system.
He designed and built a steam locomotive, which he operated on a circle of track. -
Friedrich Koening - Printing press
Was a German inventor best known for his high-speed steam-powered printing press, which he built together with watchmaker Andreas Friedrich Bauer. Revolutionized printing when he introduced a steam driven, flat-bed cylinder press that could print at ten times the speed of the Stanhope. Allows us to share large amounts of information quickly and in huge numbers. Is so significant that it has been one of the most important inventions of our time. It drastically changed the way society evolved. -
Michael Faraday - Electric generator dynamo
English physicist and chemist whose many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism.
consists of a coil of copper wire wound around a hollow core. Faraday showed that the magnet had to be in motion to induce a current, an early demonstration of converting a mechanical energy into electrical energy.