Industrial Revolution

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    George Stephenson

    George Stephenson was a English engineer and principle inventor of the railroad locomotive
  • Thomas Newcomen

    Thomas Newcomen created the steam engine. The steam engine used atmospheric pressure to push the piston down after condensation of steam created a vacuum in the cylinder. His steam engine was used mainly for the draining of mines and in raising water to power waterwheels.
  • James Hargreaves

    James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny. He said he received the idea when his daughter, Jenny, accidentally overturned their spinning wheel. He wanted to construct a machine where one person could spin several threads at one time.
  • James Watt

    James Watt created a new steam engine while repairing a model of Newcomen's engine. In his steam engine he put a separate condenser. He did this because he realized how much steam was wasted in Newcomen's engine.
  • Richard Arkwright

    Richard Arkwright, along with his team of workers, invented the spinning frame. Their machine was able yo produce thread far stronger than James Hargreaves' spinning jenny. The reason it was far stronger was because their machine stretched first and then twist, unlike all of the other thread spinning machines that twisted and then stretched.
  • Henry Cort

    Henry Cort found a quicker and a easier way to produce iron bars. His process, known as the puddling process, consisted of smelting molten pig iron on a bed of reverberatory furnace.
  • Edmund Cartwright

    Edmund Cartwright invented the wool combing machine. This invention saved labor but also caused a aggravation among workers.
  • Nicolas LeBlanc

    Nicolas LeBlanc developed the process of making soda ash from common salt. In his process, salt was treated with sulfuric acid to obtain salt cake. Then it was then roasted with limestone or chalk and coal to produce black ash.
  • Eli Whitney

    Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. He made it when he realized the lack of money crop in his area and the decline of market for tobacco. Whitney, along with his friend Catherine Green, worked through the winter to make a machine that could quickly and easily clean cotton with a system of hooks, wires, and rotating bush.
  • Robert Fulton

    Robert Fulton built the fist submarine, at his own expense. He called it the "Nautilus". When he first came up for the idea in 1789, the French government rejected the idea. He built it so it could creep under the hulls of the British warships and leave a powder of charge to explode later.
  • Elias Howe

    Elias Howe created a sewing machine that helped revolutionize garment manufacture in factories and at homes. He wanted to perfect his machine for use in sewing leather and similar materials.
  • Cyrus Field

    Cyrus Field noted the first success of the first transatlantic cable. He became interested in doing it in his early career in the paper business. He created two companies to help him do it and he finished it on his third try.