M6: 1. INDUSTRIALIZATION: Technology and Science

M6: Industrialization: Progress and Abuse

A spirit of discovery and innovation drove the advance of scientific and technological efforts. These brought improvements in human comfort, health, and longevity as well as in modes of communication and transportation (“Industrial Revolution,” n.d.).

Technological improvements and advances came with the Industrial Revolution. These were advantageous to society in many ways, but not all were beneficial. As industrialization brought change, society adapted to its demands and new conditions. A great number of these changes had significant impacts that were negative both for people and for the environment (“Industrial Revolution,” n.d.).

In the agricultural world of earlier medieval and modern era, families lived and worked together enjoying the struggles and the rewards of their collective efforts on the land. This was also true of families who worked

The BASF-chemical factories in Ludwigshafen, Germany, 1881

together in manufacturing goods in home cottage industries. Industrialization and the demands for ever-greater productivity created changing demographics and the rise of towns and cities where factories attracted dispossessed farm workers. With the transition to urban living, families lacked the benefit of spending their days working together. In order to increase worker productivity, children and parents were intentionally separated from each other when working in mills and workshops. Men and women worked in separate work settings (“Industrial Revolution,” n.d.).

These changes resulted in a breakdown of the parent-child mentoring and socialization that had long existed. Large numbers of orphans resulted when families lost parents due to the dangers of industrial labor, or were given away because parents could not support the many children born to them. Author Charles Dickens (1812–1870) chronicled the detrimental changes in the industrial society in his writings, such as David Copperfield (“Industrial Revolution,” n.d.).

City dwelling and the resulting slums also meant that conditions were created for the spread of disease and contagion such as cholera. Urban dwellers were cut off from the healthful benefits of country air and environs, which could offer stress-reducing qualities through association with nature and animal husbandry. The combined effects of land reform and industrialization damaged the healthy development of children and collapsed the supports of strong family life (“Industrial Revolution,” n.d.).

M6: Manufacturing and Steam Power

Mechanization of industry was a direct contributing factor in the increase in manufacturing output. Natural sources of power previously meant the dependence on the wind (e.g., for milling and moving sailcraft) and hydropower (e.g., for manufacturing). Thomas Savory in England worked on a steam-aided pump (1698) to drain mines, which was improved in 1712 by Thomas Newcome, who made it less susceptible to blowing up. But it was James Watt in 1781, collaborating with Matthew Boulton, who created a rotary-action steam engine that could power machinery. By the first quarter of the nineteenth-century, steam-powered textile manufacturing greatly improved the output of textile production. Application of steam power led to significant improvements in productivity in other industries, such as iron production, with the invention of blast furnace technology (Wilde, 2019).

The transition to greater dependence on steam power did not eliminate water power, but steam power quickly became the major source of industrial power, rising from 5% to 80% in the United States from 1836 to 1860. It offered the great advantage to factories not located near rivers and streams (“Steam Power during the Industrial Revolution,” n.d.).

M6: Transportation

Model of steamship, built in 1784, by Claude de Jouffroy.

Steamboats: 1807. Steamboats dramatically changed the transportation of goods and people by way of canals, rivers, and oceans. John Fitch adapted a steam-driven engine aboard a ship in Philadelphia in 1787 in the first trial of a steamboat. It was later in 1807 that Robert Fulton built the first successful steamship, the Clermont and opened up the huge steamship industry to the world. Steam power would also be supplanted by other fuels, including diesel and, more recently, liquefied natural gas, which significantly reduces carbon emissions and improves fuel efficiency (Kumar, 2019).

(See how this technology worked: https://steamboats.com/museum/engineroom.html.)

Trains with Steam Engines: 1814. The adaption of steam engines to trains and ships would significantly bolster transportation of passengers and goods while reducing the costs and transport time of using horse-drawn or wind-driven means. The steam locomotive came into use in 1814. The first successful steam-powered locomotive was built by the British engineer George Stephenson, and by 1825 he had developed the first passenger train running on rails and powered by steam engines. With time, diesel-powered trains replaced steam trains, and further development brought remote-controlled bullet trains attaining high speeds of some 200 miles per hour in the 20th century.

 New and more effective means of transport meant that markets were opened as delivery over longer distances became profitable.

Internal Combustion Engines: 1887. Steam-powered engines in time gave way to internal combustion engines, the next revolution in human transportation. Many individuals contributed various components, designs, and fuels to power an automobile beginning in the late seventeenth century. Inventing what is often recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine—with a vertical cylinder, and with gasoline injected through a carburetor, Gottlieb Daimler patented this design in 1887. He later built the world’s first four-wheeled gas-powered auto in 1888. Cars, vans, and trucks of all sizes and designs have come down the design pike, with natural gas and electric powered vehicles challenging the internal combustion engine for efficiency and clean energy (Bellis, 2019).

M6: Communication and Commerce

As the 19th century (1800s) progressed, the world seemed to shrink as better communication methods rapidly accelerated improved means of message delivery. Humanity was long limited to oral communication until writing developed. Communicating across distances was then limited to personal or messenger delivery via the available means of transportation, or perhaps by loud sounds such as drums or smoke signals. Mail carried by coach, boat, Pony Express, and the like was the best transport available. Prepaid mail delivery made sending letters far easier when the Uniform Penny Post arrived in 1840, established by English teacher Rowland Hill (1795–1879). Samuel Morse (1791–1872), an American painter turned inventor, was the originator of Morse code as well as the electrical telegraph, which facilitated messaging across continental distances. A telegraph cable was laid linking Britain and Europe in 1850 and the United States and Europe in 1866 (Lambert, 2019).

The supremacy of telegraph communication was supplanted some 33 years later when Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) and his laboratory assistant, James Watson (1854-1934) succeeded in developing the electromagnetic telephone in 1876, which was an improvement over the design others had attempted. Martin Cooper led a team that invented the first handheld cell phone in 1973. Today texting is the most popular form of communication (Lambert, 2019).

A model of the first telephone transmitter/receiver (microphone/speaker) invented by US scientist Alexander Graham Bell in 1875.

Communication was to further improve as the 20th century dawned and Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) made the first transatlantic radio broadcast in 1901. The first commercial TV broadcast was in 1941 after Scotsman John Logie Baird (1888–1946) invented this means of audio and visual transmission, which he first demonstrated in 1926 (Lambert, 2019).

The world of communication improved yet again and in more far reaching ways as the first communication satellite known as “Echo” was launched in 1960 and the computer—which started as a calculating machine—was introduced to the public as a programmable personal computer in 1979 with Tandy’s TRS 80. The “internet” started with ARPANET, described by Leonard Kleinrock (b. 1934) in a 1961 article, “Information Flow in Large Communication Nets.” The reality came in 1973 when the University College of London and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway) connected to ARPANET, creating a worldwide web, first termed the “internet.” Today, anyone with a computer, tablet, or mobile phone can be in contact with anyone else who has the same digital technology to both send and receive communication textually, audibly, and visually (Zimmermann & Emspak, 2017).

M6: Medicine, Hygiene and Sanitation

Human health and quality of life were improved as the scientific basis of human physiology, disease etiology (origins) and transmission, and medical interventions (treating a wide variety of diseases, promoting health, and extending the lifespan) were better understood. Some key advances include the following:

The recognition that pathogenic organisms (microbes) were responsible for human and animal diseases with the groundbreaking work of Louis Pasteur (1822) while working on alcohol fermentation. This was accompanied by the work of English surgeon Joseph Lister (1827), who developed the antisepsis method that led to sterilizing medical equipment and reduced infections (Zardo, 1987).

The rediscovery in the 19th century of better sanitation methods to address sewage disposal helped to reduce incidents of water-borne diseases. This knowledge was developed in ancient Rome but largely lost in Medieval Europe. Better sanitation was considered the most significant medical advance since 1840—even more important than the discovery of antibiotics or modern surgery according to one British Medical Journal survey (“Disease and Sanitation,” n.d.).