The Industrial Revolution spread from Britain to other Western nations in the 19th century. New technologies like the steam engine, steel production, electricity, and the internal combustion engine drove industrialization. Mass production techniques using assembly lines also emerged. Rapid urbanization and poor working conditions characterized early industrial cities. Over time, workers' living standards gradually improved due to unionization, labor laws, and increased access to goods. Scientific and technological advances transformed daily life in the Industrial Age.

1. Life in the Industrial Age
1800-1914
World History Chapter 22

2. The Industrial Revolution
Spreads
New Industrial Powers Emerge
To protect its head start, Britain tried
to enforce strict rules against
exporting inventions.
A British mechanic opened factories
in Belgium. Belgium became the
second nation to industrialize.

3. By the mid 1800s Germany & the U.S. joined
Britain as Industrial powers.
The first American textile factory was built in Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, with plans smuggled out of Britain.
Both Germany and the U.S. used British technology to
industrialize.
Like Britain the newly industrialized nations experienced
urbanization.
Working conditions were poor, for adults and children, in the
newly industrialized nations.
By 1900, these conditions had begun to improve.
In time, ordinary workers were buying goods that earlier only
the wealthy could afford.
Because of their technological advantage, the Western
powers came to dominate the world more than ever before.

4. Ch 22.1 - Advances in Technology
Technology Sparks Industrial
Growth
American inventor William Kelly and
British engineer Henry Bessemer
independently developed a new
process for making steel from iron.
Steel was lighter, harder, and more
durable than iron.
Steel replaced iron as the building
material of the industrial age.

5. More Technology
In 1866 Alfred Nobel invented dynamite a much
safer explosive to be used in construction.
Michael Faraday created the first Dynamo.
The Dynamo was a machine that makes electricity
and resulted in electricity replacing steam as the
main source of power.
Thomas Edison developed a practical incandescent
light bulb.
The light bulb enabled cities and factories to
function at night.
By the 1890s, cables carried electrical power from
dynamos to factories.

6. Still more technology
Eli Whitney contributed the concept of interchangeable parts.
Interchangeable parts was using machines to create uniform,
exchangeable goods or parts.
Interchangeable parts simplified both the assembly and
repair of products.
By the early 1900s, manufacturers had introduced the
assembly line.
On an assembly line there is a division of labor (i.e. each
worker performs a specialized task).
On an assembly line a product is assembled by a division of
labor as it moves along a conveyor belt.
Henry Ford used the assembly line to mass produce Model T
automobiles.

7. Transportation Advances
Steamships replaced sailing ships, and railroad
building took off.
Nikolaus Otto, invented a gasoline-powered internal
combustion engine.
In 1886, Karl Benz received a patent for the first
automobile.
Ford’s use of the assembly line to mass-produce
cars made the U.S. a leader in the auto industry.
The internal combustion engine made possible
sustained flight.
In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright designed and
flew an airplane.

8. Rapid Communication
A revolution in communication also made the world
smaller.
Samuel F.B. Morse, developed the telegraph, which
sent coded messages over wire.
By the 1860s, the trans-Atlantic cable was relaying
messages between Europe & North America.
In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the
telephone.
By the 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi had invented the
radio. In 1901 he received a radio message sent
from Britain to Canada.

9. Business Takes a New
Direction
By the late 1800s, what we call “big
business” came to dominate industry.
Big business refers to an
establishment that is run by
entrepreneurs who finance,
manufacture, and distribute goods.
To get needed capital owners sold
stock, or shares of their companies
(partial ownership) to investors.

10. Big Business
Businesses formed giant corporations,
businesses that are owned by many investors
who buy shares of stock.
Corporations supplied capital and dispersed
risk.
Powerful business leaders created monopolies
and trusts, huge corporate structures that
controlled entire industries.
Sometimes a group of corporations would join
forces and form a cartel, an association to fix
prices, set production quotas, or control
markets.

11. “Captains of Industry” or “Robber
Barons”
The rise of big business led to a debate as to
whether the big business leaders were good or
bad for society.
Those who thought these leaders invested their
wealth and created jobs called them “Captains
of Industry.”
Those who saw them as destroying competition
and exploiting workers called them “Robber
Barons.”
By the early 1900s there was an attempt by
governments to regulate large corporations and

12. Ch 22.2 - Scientific and Medical Achievements
The Rise if Cities
Between 1800 and 1900, the population of
Europe more than doubled.
This rapid growth was not due to larger families.
Families in most industrializing nations had few
children.
Populations soared because the death rate fell.
Nutrition improved, due to better methods of
farming, food storage, and distribution.
Medical advances and improvements in public
sanitation also slowed death rates.

13. The Fight Against Disease
In 1870 French chemist Louis Pasteur clearly
showed the link between microbes and disease.
This was called the germ theory of disease.
He also discovered a process called
pasteurization that killed disease-carrying
microbes in milk.
In the 1880s, the German doctor Robert Koch
identified the bacterium that caused tuberculosis.
It still took another 50 years to come up with a
cure.
By 1914 malaria & yellow fever had been traced

14. Hospital Care Improves
In the early 1840s, anesthesia was first used to
relieve pain during surgery.
Due to unsanitary conditions hospitals remained
dangerous places throughout the century.
Florence Nightingale, said that “the very first
requirement of a hospital is that it should do the
sick no harm.”
Nightingale worked to introduce sanitary
measures in British hospitals and she founded
the world’s first school of nursing.
Joseph Lister discovered how antiseptics
prevented infection. He insisted surgeons
sterilize their instruments.

15. Ch 22.3 Daily Life in the Late 1800s
City Life Changes
Major efforts, called urban renewal, were made
to improve living conditions of cities which started
in the last half of the 19th century.
Georges Haussmann, chief planner for Napoleon
III, destroyed many of Paris tangled medieval
streets full of tenement housing. In their place,
he built wide boulevards and splendid public
housing.
In most American cities, the rich lived in pleasant
neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. The
poor crowded into slums near the city center,
within reach of the factories.

16. More on Life in Cities
Paved streets, street lights (first gas lamps then
electric lights), police and expanded fire
protection all made life safer in cities.
Sewer lines and sewage systems made cities
much healthier and cut the death rates
dramatically.
By the 1900, with the use of steel architects
began to construct taller building eventually
including the skyscraper.
Despite efforts at urban renewal cities and
factories remained harsh places for the poor.
Despite their drawbacks, cities attracted millions.
New residents were drawn as much by the

17. The Working Class Advances
By the late 1800s, most Western countries had
granted all men the vote.
Germany legalized labor unions in 1869. Britain,
Austria, and France followed.
The main tactic of unions was the strike, or work
stoppage.
Violence was often the result of strikes.
Pressured by unions, reformers, and working-class
voters, governments passed laws to regulate
working conditions.
Legislation that helped the working class included,
child labor laws, limiting working hours improving
safety, and eventually old-age pensions, as well as

18. Working Class Standards of Living Rise
Wages varied throughout the industrialized
world, with unskilled laborers earning less than
skilled workers.
Women received less than half the pay of men
doing the same work.
Farm laborers barely scraped by during the
economic slump of the late 1800s.
Overall, though, standards of living for workers
did rise.
Still, the gap between workers and the middle
class widened.

19. Changing Attitudes and Values
In the late 1800s, in many countries, the middle
class—aspiring to upper-class wealth and
privilege—increasingly came to dominate society.
By the late 1800s, Western Europe’s new upper
class included very rich business families.
Nobles needed the money brought by the
industrial rich to support their lands and lifestyles.
Below this tiny elite, a growing middle class was
pushing its way up the social ladder.
Workers and peasants were at the base of the
social ladder.

20. Middle-Class Tastes and Values
By the mid-1800s, the modern middle class had
developed its own way of life. A strict code of
etiquette that governed social behavior.
These rules regulated dress and even the
supervision of children and servants.
A successful husband was one who earned
enough to keep his wife at home.
Middle class values encouraged women to stay
at home and care for the family. This became
known as the Cult of domesticity.

21. Women Work for Rights
Some individual women and women’s groups
sought a broad range of rights.
Across Europe and the U.S. politically active
women campaigned for fairness in marriage,
divorce, and property laws.
Women’s groups also supported the temperance
movement, a campaign to limit or ban the use of
alcoholic beverages.
Many of the women active in the early women’s
rights movement in the U.S. had first
campaigned for the abolition of slavery.

22. The Suffrage Struggle
The struggle for political rights proved the most
difficult.
In the U.S., the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
demanded that women be granted the right to
vote.
In general, suffragists faced intense opposition.
Some critics claimed that women were too
emotional to be allowed to vote.
In Europe and most of the U.S., the suffrage
movement succeeded only after WWI.

23. The Growth of Public Education
By the late 1800s, reformers persuaded many
governments to set up public schools and
require basic education for all children.
Teaching “the three Rs” was thought to produce
better citizens and a better workforce.
By the late 1800s teachers received training at
Normal Schools, where the latest “norms and
standards” of educational practices were taught.
Colleges and universities expanded in this period
too. Most university students were the sons of
middle- or upper-class families.

24. Science takes New
DirectionsJohn Dalton developed Atomic theory. He
discovered that all elements are composed of
atoms, and that all atoms of an element are
identical and unlike the atoms of other elements.
The new science of geology started to offer
evidence that the earth was much older than was
previously thought.
Archaeology added other pieces to an emerging
debate about the origins of life on Earth.
Archaeologists were developing their ideas from
fossils they had discovered.
The most controversial figure in this new debate

25. Charles Darwin
In 1859, he published On the Origin of Species.
He argued that all forms of life, including human
beings, had evolved into their present state over
millions of years.
Darwin adopted Thomas Malthus’s idea that all
plants and animals produced more offspring than
the food supply could support. This produced a
competition for survival.
According to Darwin’s theory of Natural
Selection, chance variations are selected by
nature in a struggle for existence.
The most controversial part of Darwin’s theory is
that the variations are the result of chance, in
other words for no reason.

26. Social Darwinism
Darwin himself never produced any social ideas.
Some thinkers used his theories to support their own
beliefs about society.
Applying the idea of survival of the fittest to war and
economic competition came to be known as Social
Darwinism.
Social Darwinism was used to justify industrial
tycoons driving others out of business.
It was used as an argument against any kind of aid or
help for the poor or downtrodden.
It was used to justify war concluding that the victory
was a proof of superiority.
It was even used to justify racism.

27. Religion in an Urban Age
Despite the challenge of new scientific ideas,
religion continued to be a major force in Western
society.
The grim realities of industrial life stimulated
feelings of compassion and charity.
Many Protestant churches backed the social
gospel, a movement that urged Christians to
social service and the improvement of society.
The social gospel was the beginning of the “what
would Jesus do movement (WWJD)”

28. Arts in the Industrial Age
From about 1750 to 1850 romanticism shaped
Western literature and arts.
Romanticism is the name for an artistic style that
emphasizes, imagination, freedom, and emotion.
Romanticism was a reaction to the enlightenment
ideals that stressed, order, harmony, reason, and
emotional restraint.
Realism rejected the sentimentality of
romanticism and sought to portray life in a
realistic manner.
Charles Dickens’ shocking images of, poverty,
the mistreatment of children, and urban crime

29. More on Art
By the 1840s photography was emerging as a
new form of art.
Photography posed a challenge to painters. Why
try for realism, when a camera could do the
same thing better.
By the 1870s a group of painters took art in a
new direction, seeking to capture the first fleeting
impression made by a scene, on the viewer’s
eye.
This new form of art called impressionism,
focused on light and color in the natural world.
Postimpressionism was a movement of individual