The Industrial Revolution in America The North The Industrial Revolution in America Chapter 12, Section 1 Pages 384 - 389

Building Background In the early 1700s making goods depended on the hard work of humans and animals. It had been that way for hundreds of years. Then new technology brought a change so radical that is called a revolution. It began in Great Britain and soon spread to the U.S.

The Industrial revolution At the beginning of the 1700s, the majority of people in Europe and the United States were farmers. Many families used crude machines to generate items that they needed in order to make what they needed. Spinning wheels to turn cotton and wool into thread. Hand loom to weave the thread into cloth.

A need for change By the mid-1700’s changes in Great Britain led to a greater demand for manufactured goods. People began creating ways to use machines to make things more efficiently. These changes led to the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid growth for manufacturing and production.

Textile industry The first important breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution took place in how textiles, or cloth items, were made. Before the Industrial Revolution, spinning thread took more time than making cloth. Several workers were needed to spin enough thread to supply a single weaver.

Richard Arkwright In 1769 Englishman Richard Arkwright invented a large spinning machine called a water frame. The water frame could produce dozens of cotton threads at the same time. It lowered the cost of cotton cloth and increased the speed of textile production. The water frame used flowing water as its source of power. As a result, merchants began to build large textile mills (factories) near rivers and streams.

New machines and processes The new textile machines allowed Great Britain to produce cloth faster and cheaper than any other country. To protect the secrets of the textile manufacturing, Great Britain passed laws prohibiting skilled mechanics or machine plans to leave the country.

New machines and processes The new textile machines allowed Great Britain to produce cloth faster and cheaper than any other country. To protect the secrets of the textile manufacturing, Great Britain passed laws prohibiting skilled mechanics or machine plans to leave the country.

Samuel slater Samuel Slater was a skilled mechanic who went to work in a textile mill and memorized the design of the mill and the equipment. After memorizing industrial secrets, Slater disguised himself as a farmer and immigrated to the United States. After arriving in the United States, Slater moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island and set up a textile mill in 1793. By 1835, Slater owned all, or part, of thirteen mills.

North versus south Textile mills spread quickly throughout the Northeast. The primary reason why the North focused on textile mills was because of the abundance of rivers (power source for the mills). The South decided to remain focused on its agricultural economy and did not become involved with the development of the textile industry.

A manufacturing breakthrough By the late 1790s, the U.S. was concerned about a possible war with France, so it wanted more guns for the army. Each weapon was made by hand, and no two were identical – making it a very slow process to produce them. In 1798, Eli Whitney addressed this particular problem and development a new technological process.

Whitney’s idea Whitney developed the concept of interchangeable parts. Making parts of a machine the very same way made it easier to produce and assemble the machine. It was also easier to replace broken parts. Whitney promised to produce 10,000 guns in two years. As a demonstration of his process, Whitney took the parts of ten guns and quickly assembled the weapons in a very rapid process.

Mass production American inventors improved on British technology and were able to produce machines that used inter-changeable parts, establishing a new standard in industry. Interchangeable parts sped up mass production – the efficient production of large numbers of identical goods/parts.