9.2 Steam Power and the Spread of Industry

Notes

New power sources and transportation spread industry across Europe, North America and Japan.

• James Watt improved the steam engine in the 1760s and 1770s, making it efficient enough to power factories, mines, ships and trains.
• Railroads: George Stephenson's locomotives led to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830), the first major passenger railway.
• Steamships and canals cut travel time and costs.
• The Bessemer process (1850s) made cheap steel, used for railroads, bridges and skyscrapers.
• A Second Industrial Revolution (late 1800s) brought electricity, the telegraph and telephone, chemicals, and the internal-combustion engine.
• Industry spread to Belgium, Germany, the United States and, after 1868, Japan.
• The cotton gin (1793) increased U.S. cotton production for British mills and, tragically, expanded slavery in the American South.