Essay: Manufacturing in the mid-18th century to mid-19th century

Introduction
During the industrial revolution from about mid-18th century to mid-19th century, almost every part of the manufacturing was changed or improved. Three very important technological developments that boosted the revolution were in the textile world, in the use of steam power, and in the making of iron. The industrial Revolution had some kind of influence on nearly every aspect of the everyday life for the population too. Some invention made it easier to do your work; others made it easier to travel back and forth. This report contains a technical presentation of the use of steam power throughout the invention of the steam engine. The focus points are the steam engine, the railroad and how it changed the industry and society.
The steam engine
The inventor of the steam engine and its improvements
In the 17th century, Britain had changed their main fuel from wood to coal, which made the increased the demand for coal dramatically. Therefore, the concept of increasing the productivity of each mine was very much in focus. One of the problems with drifting a mine, was that the workers sometimes would penetrate into underground water sources, and eventually flooding the mine. The inventor, Thomas Savery, was the one who found a solution to this problem, by using steam pressure, and thereby creating the Britain’s first steam engine. The machine was inspired by Denis Papin, a French-born British physicist, who invented the pressure cooker. With Papin’s ideas of a cylinder and a piston steam engine, Thomas Savery created a working steam pump, to pump out the water from the mines. The steam pump worked by boiling water until it was completely turned into vapour, then by moving this vapour into another tank, making a vacuum in the original tank. This vacuum was then enough to pull up the water, though this only worked by drawing out water from a depth of a few meters. Another problem was also, that the pressure was too much, and resulted in the boilers exploding. James Watt then later fixed this, creating the low-pressure engine, followed by many other improvements.
In 1765, James Watt, together with Matthew Boulton, was the ones who made the most significant improvement, revolutionizing the steam engine. With financial backing from Boulton, Watt developed a single-acting rotative steam engine, along with Watt’s signature separate condenser, another of his improvements allowing working with a higher pressure. The steam engine featured a parallel motion mechanism that doubled the power of the existing steam cylinder. The Boulton-Watt engine did also have a new kind of system, making the machine’s operator able to control the engine speed with a device called a centrifugal governor.
How a steam engine works
The way a steam engine works, is based on the pressure of steam, moving between the front and back side of the piston. At first, water is vaporized by boiling water and lead it into the engine. The slide valve, connected to a flywheel, then switches between two different directions the steam can travel in. One direction goes to the front side of the piston, and the other to the backside of the piston. If the steam leads to the front of the piston, the pressure of the steam will push it towards the opposite direction and it the same, if the steam is lead to the back of the piston. By pushing the piston to the maximum or minimum position, a way to the slide valve is opened, which steam will be lead through because of the high pressure. The slide valve is then moved by the flywheel, opening up an exhaust outlet where the steam can get out, lowering the pressure on one of the sides of the piston. The slide valve is at the same time opening up for the other direction for the steam to travelling, resulting in the piston now going in the opposite direction. By this technique, the piston can continue moving from the maximum to the minimum position. The piston is then connected to the piston rod, which drives the driving-rod, which then drives the flywheel that turns steadily even when the piston is at the end of its stroke and not pushing. This action changes the steam engine’s original push-and-pull movement into rotational movement, which for example, was used for steam locomotives and many other machines.
The model to the left is similar to the Boulton-Watt steam engine, though the system with the piston rod and the driving-rod and different, as well as the way of pushing the slide valve by the flywheel.
The railway
The invention and its use:
John Blenkinsop was an inventor of steam locomotive and designed the first practical railway locomotive. Born in 1783 and died in 1831. He was an englsih mining engineer and wanted to reduce the cost of transporting coal from Middle Colliery to Leeds. Him and Matthew Murray joined forces, which led to the producing of the first locomotive. They didn’t want the steamtrain to run with smooth wheels on a smooth rail, therefore they experimented with the rack railway.
The Salamanca locomotive, was the first successful steam locomotive. It was built in 1812 with its cog-toothed driving wheels. ‘The locomotive had two vertical cylinders within the top of the boiler, and the pistons drove the rack wheels through rods and pinions. The locomotive weighed 5 tons and on a level track was capable of hauling a load of 90 tons at 4 mph. ‘
In 1825, the first steam operated public railway was opened and began to be accepted as a real alternative to horses. These trains followed the Killingworth/Hetton design, which was a more modern and improved design, made by George Stephenson for the Killingworth Colliery. The locomotive was named Locomotion by the company Robert Stephenson & Co, which were the ones who built it. Locomotion.
How the railway changed the British society:
The railway changed the way people saw transportation. The trains were three times faster than the coach on the roads and even eight times faster than shipping across canals. The speed made it even possible to deliver fresh fish and vegetables from Scotland to London on only one night. They could carry much more, but more expensive than travelling by canals, of cause the wealthy businesspersons payed the extra bit to get their goods across the country fast. Earlier they could have lost buyers because of the waiting time, but no more. Soon the canals were empty, everything happened by train. The railway was in the first built to bring down the cost of transporting goods. In 1840 2400 miles of railway connected industrial towns. In 1851, the government made it possible for people to travel by railway too, the train stopped at every station and only costed one penny each mile. The middle class used this opportunity to begin a life in the suburbs so they could travel into the city, where the work was, every single day. The suburbs became so popular because they look like the country villages, but had all the advantages a city had. This resulted in huge the expansion of London between 1850 and 1880. It was not only the middle class and business persons, who benefited from the railway, also the lower class’ (the poor people) lives were improved too. They moved to the suburbs to buy in smaller houses. The men took the train to work and the women were servants in middle class houses. 16% of the population were ‘in service’ in private homes. The demand for houses was bigger than the building speed, which resulted in overcrowded and unhealthy cities, people lived excessively many in each house. In fact, one out of four babies died and in 1832, 31.000 were killed due to cholera.
Some other effects the railway had on the social life was that people were able to take short daytrips and holidays. The sport became national because the teams could travel across the country to compete. The speed of mail and newspaper did also increase dramatically, which made it possible for almost every region of England to read the news on the same day.
The railway created placed to work too. Heavy and important materials were sent by the railway to build new railways and things associated with this like trains, trucks, etc. in 1880 about 300.000 jobs was connected in some way to the railway.