Overview: Technology and Invention 1700-1799

Overview

The eighteenth century saw the transformation of technology from a small-scale, handcrafted activity to a mechanized industrial system. Building on improvements in agriculture, on established small-scale production (proto-industrialization), and on enhanced navigation and trade, this technological change relied on many new inventions, the increased use of steam power, the utilization of coal and iron, and labor-saving machinery. Taken together, these significant changes provided the foundation for an industrial revolution that was well in place by the century's end.

Agricultural Change

The ability to produce surplus foodstuffs with fewer agricultural laborers was essential for supporting an industrial work force. New crops, new tools, and new methods made that possible. For example, the introduction of the potato from the New World provided Western Europe with a new staple food that had a high caloric and vitamin content and the added advantage of being able to be grown on land less fertile than that needed for grains. In addition, developments such as better management of existing land, the cultivation of swamp land with improved drainage systems, the use of nitrogen-fixing and fodder crops such as alfalfa, clover and turnips, and the deliberate breeding of livestock and stall feeding increased food production. British agriculturists such as Charles Townshend (1674-1738) and Robert Bakewell (1725-1795) were especially influential through their use of new crops and innovations in animal husbandry. New mechanized agricultural technology appeared in the eighteenth century, including devices such as Jethro Tull's (1674-1740) seed drill, Andrew Meikle's (1719-1811) threshing machine, and Eli Whitney's (1765-1825) cotton gin. Taken together, these developments provided better diets, increased food and other agricultural production, and resulted in an increase in population. These were an essential and necessary foundation for industrialism.

The Age of Steam, Coal, and Iron

The Industrial Revolution was defined by steam as a new mechanical power source, by coal as a new energy source, and by iron as a new material. With the work of Thomas Savery (1650?-1715) and Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) steam power met the increased need to drain water from mines with steam-powered pumping engines. It became even more valuable and widespread as an energy source when, in the later third of the eighteenth century, James Watt (1736-1819) incorporated several innovations into steam engine design, such as a governor, a separate condenser, and double acting piston motion. These innovations created a standard for factory use and, for more than a century, the steam engine was the primary power source for industrialization.

The increased use of coal as an alternative source of energy was the result of the overexploitation of wood in Western Europe. Providing higher temperatures than wood and widely available in Britain, coal became a fixture of industrial development. Coal's usefulness increased when Abraham Darby (1677-1717) used purified coal in the form of coke for iron smelting. Because of its high energy content and use for high temperature processes, coal fit the needs of the new technology well—so much so that black, coal ash smoke spewing from factory and locomotive smoke stacks became a hallmark of the industrial age.

The overuse of wood also created a shortage of timber as the traditional building material. That shortage, in addition to the increased industrial demands for stronger and more fireproof materials, made iron (and later, steel) an attractive new structural element. From pistons to pumps and from buildings to boilers, iron became the preferred and often necessary material for these devices. Its strength and durability made it advantageous compared with wood for the machinery and products of an industrial age. Replacing the easily shaped and manipulated wood, iron required a more complex process of extraction and refinement that depended on knowledge of both mining and metallurgy. The technology of industrialism required a higher level of technical knowledge and skill than the preindustrial era, which used natural materials and power sources as the basis of its production.

Mechanized Manufacturing

Mechanized manufacturing, so characteristic of industrialism, required precision machine tools to produce the standardized, interchangeable parts needed for large-scale production. Without carefully calibrated measuring instruments and the special tools these instruments made possible, such as lathes, planners, boring mills, drill presses, and milling machines, mass production was impossible. The contributions of Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800), with his dividing engine, Henry Maudslay (1771-1831), with his use of the lathe slide rest and pattern screw, John Wilkinson (1728-1808), with his precision boring mill, and, Joseph Bramah (1748-1814), with his hydraulic press, made possible the precision machining of metal and wood. In effect, these men and their devices provided the basis for the production of machines by machines—an unheralded but crucial foundation for mechanization.

In the last third of the eighteenth century the British combined steam power with mechanical equipment to transform textile production into the first widespread example of a highly mechanized process. Relying on John Kay's (1704-1764) flying shuttle loom, James Hargreaves's (1720-1778) spinning jenny, Richard Arkwright's (1732-1792) spinning frame, and Edmund Cartwright's (1743-1823) wool-combing power loom, textile production in Britain moved from a handcrafted, small-scale endeavor into a machine-centered, large-scale industrial technology. This transformation led to a centralized factory system with shift work, stringent worker discipline, and the wage system. Because it lent itself to mechanized production and because it had a ready marketplace as an inexpensive and comfortable cloth, cotton was the first successful large-scale product of the industrial process. The merging of steam power with special function machines and machine tools demonstrated the advantages of large-scale production at low unit cost. This kind of technology created a consumer culture with common products available at a modest cost for most buyers.

Mechanical Culture

The transformation of Western technology that occurred in the eighteenth century created a mechanical culture in which technology could thrive. Social attitudes toward invention, innovation and entrepreneurship tolerated and even encouraged deliberate technological change. To a degree not seen before, names of individuals were attached to several significant developments, and governments encouraged inventors and inventions with the patent system and with prizes for targeted technologies. Inventors and industrialists became symbols of progress and agents of positive change. Increasingly, technology was seen as advancing civilization—with materialism as a measure of improvement in a culture. This embrace of technological change permeated the whole culture. The middle class especially profited from and promoted mechanization, materialism, and held industrialism in high regard.

Conclusion

Technological methods in 1800 were quite different from those used in 1700. Industrialism transformed the way people performed technology. Special machine tools replaced the artisan's hand tools. Highly skilled workers, along with a much larger pool of unskilled laborers, superseded the artisans and craftsmen of a preindustrial era. Factory-based, large-scale production supplanted small-scale, home production. Simple machines gave way to special purpose, powered devices. Easily processed animal and vegetable substances diminished in importance and use as industrialism relied more heavily on minerals whose extraction and refinement required special knowledge and skills. Many people traded the subsistence self-sufficiency of an agrarian culture for the materialism of an interdependent industrial economy.

This transformation promoted technological change and rewarded those who created that change. Inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs emerged as heroic figures whose work advanced the goals of a material world and made life more pleasant for the members of an industrial society. This ready social acceptance, along with the rewards of patent protection and other incentives for invention, stimulated the process of technological change with a resultant plethora of new devices and processes.

At the same time, the creation of this mechanical culture reshaped the work habits and work environments of countless laborers. The factory system, which took shape in this era and matured in the following century, mandated a rigorous work schedule, strict worker regulations, and the adoption of the wage system with almost no social net for most factory workers. Yet, in most cases workers accepted these changes in exchange for steady employment and the more diverse experiences of an urban, industrial culture.

The age of steam, coal, and iron created a new technological culture as well as the cornerstones of the industrial era. With the accelerated pace of technological change and production, the West began its embrace of industrialism as a hallmark of constant change, material comfort, and progress. Technology through industrialism became much more important to individuals and to society. From food production to cotton production, from power sources to energy sources and building materials, and from home to workplace the nature and degree of technology were transfigured so that invention and industrialism became synonymous with technology itself. For at least three centuries the industrial age dominated Western culture, provided the demarcation for classifying societies based on their level of industrialism, and provided a means for the creation of new wealth and prosperity for those who embraced this new means of manipulating the material world.

H. J. EISENMAN