Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from about 1776 to 1914 which was a major game changer for humanity. Many periods of history are laid out arbitrarily by Historians for book-keeping purposes. A peasant born at the transition at the tail end of the High Middle Ages in 1340 and lived to see the Renaissance over some 80 years would not think the world he was born in to be too different to the one he died, even if he was glad that the whole "everybody's dropping dead of plague" spell did not come back. But the same could not be said if said fellow was born in England in 1780. In that time the majority of people had moved from the countryside to cities, factories were making everything, you could cross the country in a train in a day and send a message to Canada at the speed of light.

The big thing of note here is Energy. For most of the history of Civilization if humans wanted to get something done like move thing from point A to Point B, dig a hole, grind grain, work iron or whatever they had to do it with muscle power, either their own, other peoples' or by those of some cows or horses. A human can produce about 100 watts (joules per second) of motive power continuously, a horse can provide about 750 watts. Latter they worked out how to put wind and flowing water to use with sails, watermills and windmills. Both of which were useful in their own right and by the 1700s they were used in a wide variety of operations but both had serious limitations. There are only so many rivers where you can build watermills and even in windy places there are calm places.

One of the key advances of the industrial revolution was the assembly line which allowed rapid construction of goods by giving each worker a single task to be repeated instead of requiring they have specialized knowledge of the whole process. While this idea goes back to at least the Venetian Arsenal in 1320, it became the standard during this era. One side effect of making things on an assembly line is that items were broken into individual parts that were replaceable if they broke, where before repairs were specialized work if they could be accomplished at all. It would not be till World War II however that quality control was tight enough that parts were interchangeable between factories.

The agricultural revolution, where machines and other modern technology were applies to farming, accompanied the industrial revolution. Indeed, this fed it by allowing enough food to be produced that the majority of workers could take factory jobs instead of agricultural work.

The assembly line lead to widespread and cheap automobiles. The most prominent example was the Ford Model T. These early cars all had unique controls and the modern, standardized control layout would not be invented till 1916, and would not achieve popularity till 1922.

The invention of air conditioning was also a major innovation of this era. This allowed for much denser and heavily mechanized industrial centers, as well greater population in warmer areas.

Vulcanized rubber arose during this era. While important for sealing and tires, one major change this facilitated was in clothing. The elastic waistband brought about modern undergarments among other things. The first plastics also arose during this era, but these early plastics were brittle and had few practical uses, so the true rise of plastics would not be till the era of The World Wars and and beyond.

Women's emancipation would also make serious progress during this era. Industrialization generally rendered raw muscle of less value while machines like the refrigerator, vacuum cleaner and washing machine greatly lowered the time needed for the completion of domestic tasks. Rubber would also lead to the disposable condom, which led to more casual sex.

The metallic cartridge and smokeless powder would arrive in this era. Since black powder would rapidly foul any repeating action, smokeless powder was critical to the function of any self-loading firearm. Machine guns became common during this era with Sir Hiram Maxim's invention of his famous gun in 1886. Self loading pistols would grow in popularity thanks to the wonders of John Moses Browning and Georg Luger among others. These would advance quickly enough that Germany and the United States adopted one by the time the World Wars came around and with them the 9mm and .45 ACP cartridges in common use till this day. Even outside of military service pocket pistols achieved widespread popularity (though revolvers were still dominant) since weaker cartridges required less mechanically complex firearms. Early semi-automatic longarms like Browning's Model 8 and Auto 5 would be introduced during this era. Mexico would be the first to adopt a semi-automatic military rifle for common use, the Mondragón rifle, in 1904 though such designs would be be common till the second World War.

Notes

The appeal of the Industrial Revolution

This era produced many things modern people take for granted and have difficulty considering life without. The rise of film and audio recording during this era and mass printing of advertisement and newspapers during this era mean there is no shortage of records of daily life, so this era is fairly well understood.

The industrial revolution allowed for inventors to not only create meaningful new creations, but see them become common overnight.