Skip to Main Content

The Industrial Revolution: Inventors and technology of the era

Resources to support the Year 9 Humanities Unit: The Industrial Revolution

Inventions - recommended websites

These sites provide information on a large number of inventions and inventors of the Industrial Revolution era.

Industrial Revolution Inventions and Innovations
These sites provide a good general introduction to all of the inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

  • Inventions That Changed History
    Contains excellent information on Photography, Anesthesia, Telegraph and Telephone, Antibiotics, Steam Engines, Airplanes, Dynamite and the Lightbulb.
     
  • Inventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution
    Includes Textile Industry, Steam Engine, Steamboat, Railroads, Telegraph, Steel-making, Photography, Electricity, Road Building, Telephone, Airplanes.
     
  • Legacies Remembered: Inventors
    Includes Wright Brothers, Eli Whitney, James Watt, Alessandro Volta, Nikola Tessla, George Stephenson, Blaire Pascal, Nikolaus Otto, Thomas Newcomen, Samuel Morse, Guglielmo Marconi, Louis Lumiere, James Hargreaves, Charles Goodyear, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, George Eastman, Rudolf Diesel, Abraham Darby, Louis Braille, Henry Bessemer, Alexander Graham Bell.

Flying Shuttle (John Kay)

Technology

Victorian Technology and Innovation

Victorian Technology

Victorian Technology

The technology developed in Victoria's reign brought a social and economic revolution whose effects are still being felt today. By Paul Atterbury.

Agriculture, Medicine, Steel Making etc

Agriculture

Seed Drill and Horse Drawn Hoe (Jethro Tull)

Four-Field Rotation of Crops (Lord Townshend)

Selective Stock Breeding (Robert Bakewell)

Medicine
Antibiotics / Pasteurisation (Louis Pasteur)

. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/britain-1700-to-1900/industrial-revolution/diseases-in-industrial-cities-in-the-industrial-revolution
. http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/article39.html

Anaesthesia (Horace Wells)

Vaccines (Edward Jenner)

X-Rays (Wilhelm Rontgen)

Stethoscope (Rene Laennec)

Steel-Making (Henry Bessemer)

Coke Smelting (Abraham Darby)

Road Building (John MacAdam)

Canals (James Brindley)

Telegraph (Samuel Morse)

Electric Battery (Alessandro Volta)

Diesel Engine (Rudolf Diesel)

Diesel Locomotive (Rudolf Diesel)

Dynamite (Alfred Nobel)
The Classroom: What Was Done Before Dynamite Was Invented?
Pneumatic Tyre (Charles Goodyear)

Photographs (Nicephore Niepce)

Food Canning (Nicolas Appert)

Electric Motor (Michael Faraday)

Elevator (Elisha Otis)

Skyscraper (James Bogardus)

Refrigeration (Jacob Perkins)

City Sewers (Joseph Bazalgette)
Sir Joseph Bazalgette and London's Sewers
Telephone (Alexander Graham Bell)

Phonograph (Thomas Edison)

Internal Combusion Engine (Nikolaus Otto)

Electric Lightbulb (Thomas Edison / Joseph Swan)

Bicycle (John Starley)

Automobile (Karl Benz)

Electric Alternating Current (Nikola Tesla)

Moving Pictures (Antoine Lumiere)

Plastic (Alexander Parkes & Leo Baekeland)
History of Plastic

Air Conditioning (Willis Carrier)

Electric Utilities (Samuel Insull)

Airplane (Wright Brothers)

Washing Machine (Alva Fisher)

Assembly Line (Henry Ford)

Britain's Industrial Revolution

Who Wants to Be a Cotton Millionaire?

Who Wants to Be a Cotton Millionaire?

Cotton was one of the driving forces of the Industrial Revolution. Find out if you have what it takes to make it in this cut-throat Victorian trade.