History Professor Answers Industrial Revolution Questions | Tech Support | WIRED

[00:00] - Hi, I'm Jonathan Rees, history professor and researcher. This is Industrial Revolution Support. [upbeat music]

[00:13] who the fuck is spinning Jenny?" The spinning Jenny is one of the technological innovations to automate the textile manufacturing process.

[00:26] There is a thing called the flying shuttle that comes first and the power loom together make it possible all in a single building and put out sheets

[00:43] in individual homes and have it take, you know, All of them together make textile manufacturing both cheap

[00:55] and help make the industrial revolution possible Creators virtual asks. of panic during the industrial revolution

[01:07] And it's hard not to think about the Industrial Revolution The thing that I keep coming back to when I think about the history that predates AI,

[01:20] the machines that made stuff, Cobblers made terrible shoes. The thing about AI that gets me

[01:34] at least at this point in its evolution, AI writing for example, all the time is terrible writing.

[01:47] but nevertheless, there are still coders are employed can't be done by AI. and it keeps messing up people's orders.

[02:04] by AI unless it can get better at what it's doing. I'm a historian, I can't handle that.

[02:16] Dun Magank asks, explain it to me like I'm five. Canaries go into coal mines they know that there's dangerous gas in the mine

[02:30] So, that was a signal to evacuate the mine immediately. "Amazon warehouses really remind me when mother was losing fingers

[02:44] The thing about Amazon warehouses and during the Industrial Revolution, the machines controlled your time and how you work

[02:58] Literally, there were people who would come behind you and try to measure how long it took you to do just minute tasks so that they can get you to work

[03:11] in the one best way possible in order to be more productive. is that if they go in as individuals and say, somebody is just gonna find someone who's more desperate

[03:24] If they go in together and say, this work is very difficult then at least they have a fighting chance. are literally the people who invented the weekend.

[03:41] and will eventually win the eight hour day. And they'll do things like take and have at least something that they can look forward

[03:53] to during their very difficult 40-plus-hour work week. "What caused the great smog in London 1952 question mark?" is well after the Industrial revolution,

[04:08] which comes out of the Industrial Revolution. has an absolutely enormous impact This is where all of the smog starts.

[04:22] smog was seen as a sign of progress before it got everywhere My adopted hometown of Pueblo, Colorado used that they sold to tourists.

[04:37] because that was supposed to be the greatest thing Burn account_A, asks, could happen without colonialism?"

[04:50] He wrote in the 1940s that the wealth generated for having the industrial revolution happen. but it was absolutely a factor.

[05:04] But there are other factors as well that make that possible. Your homicidal ape asks "Most important inventions I think the thing that I would probably privilege

[05:18] isn't an actually invention, it's the assembly line introduced in the Ford Motor Company When they used the assembly line

[05:30] people in all sorts of different industries go, oh, in order to manufacture anything. is in the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit,

[05:44] where they have this thing called the Exploded Model T Ford. but they're all slightly separated by each other And the reason love that exhibit so much

[05:58] just by looking at the parts that put it together is one person does that one thing,

[06:10] and you can think about that abstract principle But you could manufacture a washing machine that way. It turns out you could manufacture anything that way.

[06:25] even if it's not a specific invention. XX Gertrude asks, "Did mothers work at the same factories I think that question probably

[06:39] where there are children and women working In America, probably the most legendary example of child labor is young breaker boys working

[06:54] for different purposes. they're picking through giant slag piles in order to find usable pieces of coal out of the refuse

[07:07] they're are actually under the looms fixing broken threads. for particular jobs.

[07:19] is that, you know, in a free country, even if they're a child? "Luddites were the OG Tesla Vandalizes."

[07:35] in the textile industry of the Industrial Revolution. the Luddites broke the machines that threatened their jobs.

[07:49] is that they're willing to destroy property The funny thing about the Luddites and there continues to be strong opposition,

[08:04] to all kinds of industrial innovations ever since. "If vast majority who was actually buying all the stuff they produced?"

[08:18] from an economic standpoint the price of it is going to drop. Henry Ford, famously wanted his Model T cars

[08:33] and they were because he could produce them so much cheaper Low prices meant that even if you don't have as much money that those factories produced.

[08:49] Accelerator231 asks, "Why was steel so difficult "What were the main stumbling blocks?" but the more you automate it,

[09:02] So, if you go back to the late 1700s, who are basically stirring this giant mush of metal What Bessemer did is he figured out a way

[09:17] and make those earlier very expensive skills, And the Open Earth process from the 1890s, I think it's also worth noting that steel's really important

[09:32] In the United States, that makes the growth of railroads possible The steel making process is also important

[09:44] people make cars out of steel. to all these different industries. "Did canals of the Industrial Revolution

[09:58] Canals where the barges are driven by horses and the 1850s or '60s,

[10:10] So, canals are just a really narrow period during both in England and America, canals are a way to transport the goods

[10:25] that factories produced to lots of different places and intermittent technology between horses and railroads. in world history until about 1800,

[10:41] The really important driver of the industrial revolution AusPrideAlways asks, If you ask most historians

[10:56] I would say it would be Henry Ford's, and he was very open about his ideas And they looked at the way Ford built cars and they said,

[11:11] just about everywhere, and in any industry. that you can manufacture anything that way, I would say that Ford's facilities are the most important.

[11:26] to large corporations rather than small scale producers adopting the technology and continued to exist." is that once you make money

[11:40] if you put the profits from that back into your business, that will just make your business that much more successful.

[11:55] monopolies become a problem in the late 19th century in different industries from these technologies that they control huge sections of that industry

[12:09] America comes up with something called that's supposed to crack down on those kinds of companies, Even then it's still just enforced intermittently.

[12:26] but what you get in the Industrial Revolution A term invented by the economist Thorstein Veblen Conspicuous consumption is buying things

[12:42] That's a direct result of what they used to call new money, and just trying to impress their friends. "Is there any consensus among historians

[12:58] of the Industrial Revolution?" The causes of the Industrial Revolution There's an argument that the wealth created by slavery

[13:13] There's an argument that enclosure in order to work in these factories. and why it takes so much longer

[13:28] Seldom Sensible asks, The biggest way the Industrial Revolution benefited is that the price of goods dropped considerably.

[13:41] and if you could make it cheaper Clocks became available to people, who are absolutely middle class in the United States.

[13:56] clothing that you didn't have to manufacture yourself, and to experience leisure. or that the benefits outweighed the cost

[14:10] This one's from Quora. to change their skill sets?" The first one is the division of labor

[14:24] Instead of having one person do all the pieces at that job, The second piece of this is mechanization. Where a machine is invented in order to do that job.

[14:38] Division of labor tends to come earlier industrialization, to creating a machine that can do that job. So, when the job you once did becomes mechanized,

[14:52] because we have a machine that will do it better. maybe they'll let you do another part of the job, There's always has to be workers

[15:07] to at least move different parts around the factory. But the jobs, as they become more and more mechanized, an enormous amount on wages.

[15:21] if not actually stop these kinds of innovations. the only way to fight downward mobility. doctors invented a disease

[15:37] Neurasthenia is basically a way of describing People who are sort of fed up and resorts just to slow down and decompress.

[15:55] that the electric stimulation It's not so much a fake disease, but it's the first measure that industrialization

[16:08] The problem with all the treatment from neurasthenia the people who had money to buy these kinds of things. because they don't put up

[16:21] with even a very anxiety-producing job "Did leaving the farm and going to work to 19th century farmers?"

[16:34] was doing and what country they lived in. In Great Britain, there's a big problem with lack of access Enclosure in Great Britain happens

[16:48] when landowners wanted to keep the land for themselves And there had been people on those public lands So, they're forced to go from the countryside into the city,

[17:03] they're willing to take difficult jobs in factories In America, it's more of a draw. Lowell in Massachusetts is set up as a wonderful place

[17:15] but women could go and have a safe place I think it's safe to say it got worse and worse for the workers,

[17:28] and the pay decreased and the hours increased. "Wait, how many Industrial Revolutions have we had?" is that because it's a very long process,

[17:43] there are periods where you get lots of different boosts, and I think some people sometimes mistake boosts So, in Britain in the 1700s,

[17:57] So, that might be a first industrial revolution. a lot of the innovation deals with steel making.

[18:10] The Henry Ford's assembly line known as mass production perhaps that's the third. you might argue that the internet

[18:25] I just tend to think of it as one long technological process that are worth talking about together

[18:37] of that long window. I hope you'll learn something. [bright music]