THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

By Luke Sinagra

FACT 1

The Industrial Revolution is one of the greatest and

worst times in history. One of the most unfortunate

parts of that time period was that factory owners

were looking for cheap labor and, as a result of that,

child labor became a common thing. By the age of

six, many children were already working fourteen

hours a day in factories!

FACT 2

Eli Whitney is the one who invented the cotton gin,

however, he didn’t realize it would revitalize slavery.

Whitney’s invention helped the cotton industry just

when the south was having economic problems. The

cotton gin (short for cotton engine) was a machine

for getting the seeds out of the cotton. Where as

before the slaves had to do it by hand, they now used

it to increase production by a considerable amount.

FACT 3

Francis Cabot Lowell was a textile manufacturer in

the U.S. in the early 1800s. He founded a mill that

carried out the whole process of making cotton.

After taking a trip to England and visiting a British

cloth factory, he used the knowledge he obtained in

the cloth factory and built his own spinning and

weaving textile. He became quite famous due to this

miraculous invention.

FACT 4

Robert Fulton is in my opinion the most influential

inventor of the period. During the 1780s, he became

the first American to build a steam engine. This

engine was used to power boats 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.

FACT 5

In conclusion, the Industrial Revolution was a huge

outburst of inventions for the U.S. and in any other

parts of the world. Many of the inventions from then

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), and vulcanized rubber ( invented by Charles

Goodyear), for which are lives are much better today.