The availability of inexpensive steam power and iron for machinery led to an age of remarkable inventiveness. In the century between 1660 and 1760, the British government had registered an average of six new patents per year; applications of steam technology drove that average to more than two hundred patents per year in the 1770s, more than five hundred per year in the 1790s, and nearly five thousand per year by the 1840s. The British inventions of the early industrial age were not the result of excellent technical schools; continental schools such as the Schemnitz Academy in Hungary or the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (the first engineering school) in France were far superior. Most British inventions were the inspiration of tinkerers and artisans. One of the most important inventors of the early industrial age, Richard Arkwright, was a semiliterate barber with an exceptional mechanical aptitude.

The earliest beneficiary of the new technology was the textile industry. Woolen goods had been a basic British export for centuries; in the early 18th century woolens accounted for 25 percent to 33 percent of export revenue. Cotton goods were a newer export, produced from raw cotton imported from Britain's American colonies. In 1700 textile manufacturing had not changed much from medieval industry. Fibers were spun into thread by hand, perhaps with a spinning wheel, perhaps with simpler tools such as the distaff. The threads were then woven into cloth on handlooms. Spinning was usually done by women (hence the terms spinster or distaff side); weaving, by men. The entire handcraft process fitted comfortably into a rural cottage.

The new technology of the steam age soon threatened cottage industry. Machines first changed the spinning of thread: James Hargreaves's spinning jenny allowed one person to spin thread onto multiple spindles, producing ten times as much thread--soon one hundred times as much thread--as a good manual spinner. Arkwright's water frame mechanized the spinning of threads to produce stronger thread with less labor. The spinning mule of 1779 combined the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the steam engine to produce forty-eight spindles of high-quality thread simultaneously. Looms were also mechanized: The mechanical improvement of John Kay's flying shuttle loom allowed one person to do the work of two, and Edmund Cartwright patented the first steam-powered loom in 1785.

The consequence of this new technology was the textile factory. There, the steam engine could be linked to the spinning mule, to the power loom, or to banks of dozens of each. All goods, from raw cotton to coal, could be delivered to a single, convenient site, chosen for inexpensive transportation costs such as proximity to mines, location on a river, or nearness to a great harbor. Instead of having the looms of cottage industry scattered around the countryside, they were now grouped together in a single building or factory complex, where an overseer could control the pace and quality of work. Steam-powered textile machinery produced high-quality cloth in vast quantities. . .

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