Describe the impact of inventors and their inventions during the industrial revolution.

nventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution

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Inventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution

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Brian Duignan

Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion.

A Factory Interior, watercolor, pen and gray ink, graphite, and white goache on wove paper by unknown artist, c. 1871-91; in the Yale Center for British Art. Industrial Revolution England

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1986.29.390)

The Industrial Revolution (1750–1900) forever changed the way people in Europe and the United States lived and worked. These inventors and their creations were at the forefront of a new society.

Spinning and weaving

The creation of the following ingenious machines made possible the mass production of high-quality cotton and woolen thread and yarn and helped transform Great Britain into the world’s leading manufacturer of textiles in the second half of the 18th century.

The spinning jenny. About 1764 James Hargreaves, a poor uneducated spinner and weaver living in Lancashire, England, conceived a new kind of spinning machine that would draw thread from eight spindles simultaneously instead of just one, as in the traditional spinning wheel. The idea reportedly occurred to him after his daughter Jenny accidentally knocked over the family’s spinning wheel; the spindle continued to turn even as the machine lay on the floor, suggesting to Hargreaves that a single wheel could turn several spindles at once. He obtained a patent for the spinning jenny in 1770.

the second significant cause of the great migration was the desire of black southerners to escape segregation, known euphemistically as jim crow. rural african american southerners believed that segregation - and racism and prejudice against blacks - was significantly less intense in the north.