This page tells the facts about the Industrial Revolution. We will give a summary of how it started and some important facts. You can also find additional information about specific individuals and their inventions at the bottom.
Summary:
The Industrial Revolution started in England around 1733 with the first cotton mill. A more modern world had begun. As new inventions were being created, factories followed soon thereafter. England wanted to keep its industrialization a secret, so they prohibited anyone who had worked in a factory to leave the country. Meanwhile, Americans offered a significant reward to anyone who could build a cotton-spinning machine in the United States. Samuel Slater, who had been an apprentice in an English cotton factory, disguised himself and came to America. Once here, he reconstructed a cotton-spinning machine from memory. He then proceeded to build a factory of his own. The Industrial Revolution had arrived in the United States.
The Industrial Revolution brought severe consequences to society. Factory owners, needing cheap, unskilled labor, profited greatly by using children and women to run the machines. By the age of 6, many children were already working 14 hours a day in factories! These kids had no free time to do anything else and earned low wages. Some got sick and died because of the toxic fumes, while others were severely injured and sometimes killed working at the dangerous machines in factories. Obviously, the Industrial Revolution had both good and bad sides.
For more information, try these links below.
Eli Whitney
& The Cotton Gin
Robert Fulton & The
Steam Engine
Francis
Cabot Lowell & The American Textile Industry
Eli
Whitney & The Cotton Gin
Eli Whitney attended Yale College in 1789 at age 23, and in 1793, he
invented the cotton gin. This machine played a large role in the Industrial
Revolution. Unfortunately, when it was invented, nobody, not even Whitney
himself, realized that the cotton gin would revitalize slavery. Whitney's
invention 
helped
the cotton industry just when the South was suffering economic problems.
The cotton gin (short for cotton engine) was a machine for getting seeds
out of cotton. Where before the seeds had to be picked by hand, slaves
used the machines to significantly increase production.
Later, Whitney became quite famous
for building muskets with interchangeable parts. These were the easiest
and fastest guns to make. They became very popular due to their lower cost.
There were good and bad things 
about
these guns. Because they were easier to make, large quantities could be
produced in a short period of time. This factor became important during
the American Civil War. The quality of the guns, though, were not as good
as those which were hand made. Choosing between quality and quantity, factory
owners chose quantity. Whitney's interchangeable muskets became almost
as popular as his cotton gin.
Robert Fulton & The Steam Engine
Robert Fulton was a famous inventor
and engineer. During the 1780s, he became the first American
to build a steam-powered engine. This engine was used to power steamboats
all over the United States. He built a paddle steamboat, the Clermont,
that traveled from New York to Albany on the Hudson River. The steam engine
was a great invention because it was important to the transportation industry.
With steamboats traveling all of the United States's major rivers, they
became the fastest way of transportation for Americans.
Francis Cabot Lowell & The American Textile Industry
Francis Cabot Lowell was a textile manufacturer in the U.S. in the early 1800s. He founded a mill that went through the entire process of manufacturing cotton. He built the Lowell Mills based on the British cotton mills, after taking a trip to England and seeing a British cloth factory. He took home his ideas from the British factories and built his own mills for spinning and weaving. His mills became famous. This was just another piece of the American part in the Industrial Revolution.
In conclusion, the Industrial Revolution
was an outburst of new inventions in the U.S. and in other parts of the
world. Many inventions from this period are still used 
today.
There were other minor inventions, such as: the sewing machine (invented
by Elias Howe), the steel plow (invented by John Deere), the reaper (invented
by Cyrus McCormick), and vulcanized rubber (invented by Charles Goodyear),
for which our lives today are much richer. Overall, the Industrial Revolution
greatly transformed the U.S. economy and society. Its impact will never
be forgotten.
