industRial Revolution
In simpler days, families worked in the family business, thus making their work subsistence work. “Whole families and communities produced goods in workshops, and merchants traded manufactured products throughout the world.” Of course, trading back in the day wasn’t simple, nor was it fast, nor was it full of benefits for the seller. If a trader in Germany were to sell something to a buyer in Finland, he had three choices: go deliver it himself, choose to ship it by a literal ship, or send it on the road. Neither of the choices actually guaranteed the product would get to its recipient safe and sound, so that one can only imagine the costs of either sending or insurance of the product might have been higher than the actual price of the sole thing. Another characteristic about “back in the day” is that not only did it take long to build and send items, but the workers had to actually have plenty of skill in order to be considered a good worker. It all changed in the eighteenth century, when 2 of the most important inventions in the history of production were created: the steam engine and the vacuum iron smelter. The steam engine was improved by James Watt, who later teamed up with Matthew Boulton to perfect his engine, making it fully functional and reliable. Meanwhile, in 1709, Abraham Darby found a way to smelt iron by burning the coal along with coke in a blast furnace, and then pushing air into the furnace. The steam engine was put to use to many things, to mention some, pumping water out of coal mines, power spinning wheels, power looms, create the railroad, etc. The smelting of iron allowed for iron to be casted, that is, to shape it with a mold. This made way to many uses of iron, including the bridge that is the namesake for Ironbridge, England, that was the first bridge made entirely of cast iron. And these two great inventions marked just the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
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Jessica Ríos Mendoza