The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution: the Eve of the Napoleonic Wars
"The Foundry" by John Ferguson Weir (1866)
How did this topic come about?
Some time ago, I was interested in the technology of casting sculptures in the 1794th century. There are enough materials on castings of bronze sculptures, but they often refer to the casting of gun barrels. There is more information on the 9th century here, but one work is the most complete - Description de l'art de fabriquer des canons, published in 1746, by Gaspard Monge, Comte de Peluz (May 28, 1818 - July 1804 XNUMX), French mathematician, inventor of descriptive geometry, technical drawing, and father of differential geometry. During the French Revolution, he served as Minister of the Navy and participated in the reform of the French education system, helping to found the Polytechnic School. This book was translated and published in Russia in XNUMX.
The end of the XNUMXth century is the time when France and Britain (as well as many others) will converge in a series of conflicts on land and at sea. And what did the industry that provided the material basis for these wars look like? Hence the interest was born - to look at the level of technology in France and Britain of this period. And then to get acquainted in more detail with the content of the treatise of Mr. Monge, which absorbed the knowledge of metallurgy, metalworking, mechanical engineering.
An idea of the level of industry, crafts, science in France is given by the Encyclopedia, or Explanatory Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts (Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers) - an outstanding work of the Enlightenment and one of the main reference publications of the XVIII century, covering all areas of knowledge.
The main 28 volumes of the Encyclopedia, including 11 volumes of illustrations, were published over a period of 21 years (1751–1772) on the initiative of Denis Diderot and the mathematician Jean d'Alembert. They contain 71 articles and 818 engravings. Among those who collaborated with the Encyclopedia in different years were such prominent figures of the Enlightenment as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Holbach, Helvetius, Rousseau, Buffon, Condorcet and others. The authors and compilers of the Encyclopedia are called encyclopedists.
Title page of the first volume.
The engraving metaphorically represents both the subject matter and the natural science orientation of the publication. Against the background of the columns stands a figure personifying the Truth, the light emanating from it scatters the clouds. Reason and Philosophy, located on the right, lift and tear off the veil from Truth, Theology is kneeling at its feet. Behind Mind are Memory, Modern story and Ancient history (apparently, somewhere nearby is a place for us, lovers of history), time serves as a support for writing history. Below are Geometry, Astronomy and Physics, below them are Optics, Botany, Chemistry and Agronomy. The figures below represent several arts and professions originating in the sciences. This relationship of allegorical figures provides material for understanding the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Symbols and meanings deeply permeate every time.
Many articles and illustrations make it possible to assess the level of development of technology and crafts. Art, medicine, astronomy, agriculture are also in the descriptions, but at the moment we are interested in machines. Below are engravings, which can be used to imagine what technical devices were present in the industry.
Cloth production equipment
rope factory
blacksmith shop
Frame structures in bridges and ceilings
Making nails. Note the great variety of this simple product. This indicates the development and specialization of fastener technologies.
Cannon barrel drilling
Aiming the gun
For lovers of martial arts, a few fencing techniques
Why, out of thousands of drawings, were these chosen?
Firstly, in them you can see and evaluate the level of technology. At the same time, in various industries, the driving force of the equipment was a water wheel or muscle power. The drive was carried out from one shaft and was distributed to separate mechanisms. Thus, the production was already structurally and technologically ready for the use of a steam engine. If we look forward from the XNUMXth century, into the future, we will see that this approach will continue until the beginning of the XNUMXth century.
Throughout the XNUMXth century, a shaft with pulleys and a belt drive to each machine stretched under the ceiling of the production room. The enterprise was served by one, later several steam engines. Only the transition to electricity, reducing the cost of producing electric motors, reducing their size and increasing reliability made it possible to equip each machine with its own drive.
Secondly, we will later try to compare these drawings with the drawings of machine tools for the manufacture of gun barrels in the book "Description of the Art of Making Cannons." I would like to understand whether Russia received modern technologies at that time, or something approximate and outdated. Let's try not to forget it.
Light industry was one of the main driving forces of the industrial revolution. It all started with her. The formation of a colonial system with a division into raw materials territories (colonies) and industrial high-tech centers (metropolises) made it possible, on the basis of price dictates, to create a high level of income for the metropolis, ensuring a steady solvent demand for new fabrics.
At this time, the transition from woolen fabrics to cotton fabrics accelerated. The multiple growth in textile consumption forced the modernization of the machine park, this prompted the development of the production of capital goods, metallurgy, transport, extractive industries, etc. And, of course, such revolutionary changes in the structure of industry as a whole led to a huge energy shortage. The economy as a whole categorically lacked the available power of wind, water, animals and people. Everyone needed a source of mechanical energy independent of place and time, the market was already ready to accept the steam engine.
Consider a few examples of new machines, mechanisms, technologies that were created at that time. Their distant descendants are used by us now. Of course, not a complete and comprehensive list, but examples that have some features that characterize the era.
Let's start with the textile industry.
Textile industry
Fundamentally, the technological process for the production of textile products has been preserved to this day. Fiber preparation, yarn spinning, fabric making. At each of these stages, new equipment came that qualitatively changed not only production, but also social conditions.
Comment. In some cases, the literature indicates the figures for increasing the productivity of a new machine, but it is not clear from the text how the calculations were made, and whether they refer to one worker: to an installation, to an enterprise that has switched to a new technological process.
Eli Whitney cotton gin. Fragment A shows the main components of the device that determine its effectiveness
In the 1793th century, the cultivation of cotton and the sale of cotton fiber in the southern states of North America was not a highly profitable industry. The cultivated varieties of short-staple cotton were distinguished by high stickiness of seeds, which led to a laborious process of cleaning the fiber from them. In 8, Eli Whitney Jr. (December 1765, 8 – January 1825, XNUMX), an American inventor then working as an assistant cotton plantation manager in Georgia, invented the cotton gin.
This mechanism made it possible to separate the fiber from debris, dry leaves and seeds, pre-comb the fibers and form a fiber ribbon of a given width at the output. Essentially, a cotton strip. The main elements were two drums rotating at different speeds. A relatively slow, short-toothed drum tore out individual small pieces of fiber from the loaded mass of raw cotton, the second drum, rotating faster, was equipped with long rows of soft bristles, brushes of a kind.
These bristles tore out individual fibers from cotton tufts stuck on the hooks of the first drum, while not capturing debris and seeds. Seeds fell into a special bunker, and oil was made from them. From the bristles of the second drum, the fibers were captured by the next drum and fed into the accumulator, at the exit of which an endless tape of cotton wool was formed.
Here is a general view. Everything is here - cotton, slaves, planters
The productivity of the cleaning process has increased many times - from 4 to 8 times. The quality of products has become higher and more stable. The profitability of growing cotton increased, plantations began to expand, but this required new workers - slaves. Although Whitney himself believed that his invention would reduce the demand for slave labor and help accelerate the elimination of slavery, his machine turned short-staple cotton into a profitable crop and strengthened the economic basis of slavery.
To give an idea of the changed situation, the following figures can be cited: the volume of raw cotton produced in the United States increased in 1790-1810. from 1,5 to 85 million pounds per year.
In addition, Whitney took up the production of muskets, which were assembled from standard, interchangeable parts. Having received an order from the US government, Whitney set up production weaponsconsisting of standard parts. It was a revolutionary step in the production of weapons and in engineering in general.
The next important step was the invention of productive spinning machines. First, the so-called roving was formed from cotton fiber - not twisted strands of fiber, thread blanks. At the next stage, the roving was twisted, forming a thread with the specified parameters. The most important machine for this second stage of production is the "Jenny's spinning wheel".
The mechanical spinning machine designed by James Hargreaves (c. 1720 - April 22, 1778) in 1764 was called Spinning Jenny. Hargreaves himself was an English weaver, carpenter and inventor who lived and worked in Lancashire, England. It is believed that the appearance of this machine in 1764 was the beginning of the "Industrial Revolution" and marked the process of a global transition from manual to machine labor.
Vintage drawing of "Jenny's spinning wheel"
Eight skeins with a roving and eight spindles for the final product were installed in the "Jenny's spinning wheel" (their number was later increased). Coils with roving, thread prepared for spinning, were placed on a special inclined frame. The slope of this frame ensured the ease of winding the roving. The threads of the roving passed from the skeins through a drawing press of two wooden plates, after which they were wound on spindles.
The spindles on which the finished thread was wound were located on the opposite side of the loom. At the bottom of each spindle there was a pulley, around which there was a belt that provided communication with the manual drive of the machine. When winding the roving on a spindle, it was additionally twisted. The spinning worker had to move the draw press carriage and turn the drive wheel, which made the spindles move.
It should be noted that the first designs of this spinning machine were somewhat inferior to hand-made threads in quality, due to the loose twisting of the thread. In order to make the yarn more durable, linen thread had to be added to it.
Scheme of operation of the "Jenny's spinning wheel" 1 - exhaust press, 2 - roving, 3 - spindle holder, 4 - skeins with roving, 5 - drive, 6 - belt drive; 7, 8, 9 - spindle drive, 10 - thread, 12 - spindle with thread
However, the Jenny spinning wheel also had undeniable advantages.
It was driven by one worker and produced more than six times more yarn than an ordinary spinning wheel could produce in the same time. Thus, many artisans lost their jobs. Although Hargreaves did not manage to sell many copies of his machine, his invention caused strong discontent among local spinners - in 1768 they destroyed the inventor's house and workshop. Hargreaves moved to Nottingham and built a spinning mill with Thomas James, becoming one of the first major manufacturers.
Note: It is commonly reported in the literature that Jenny is the name of the inventor's daughter. However, other researchers say that neither Hargreaves' wife nor any of his daughters went by the name Jenny, contrary to the myth repeated until now. According to them, the word "Jenny" refers to the hand drive used, it was a common slang term in Lancashire in the XNUMXth century, which is sometimes found even now.
Diagram of a hand loom. 1 - drum with warp, 2 - warp threads, 3 - shaft holders, 4 - botanical, 5 - shed, 7 - shaft pedals, 8 - warp tensioner, 9 - shafts
Another contender for the invention that opened the industrial revolution is the flying shuttle. Its inventor John Kay was born in 1704 in Bury, Lancashire. By profession a clothier. In 1730 he moved to Colchester. There he made parts for looms. In 1733, he patented the flying shuttle, which significantly speeded up the manual process of making fabric and cut the labor force in half. If earlier the loom required one weaver on each side, now one operator could work.
In a typical frame loom, which was used before the invention of the flying shuttle, the worker sat in front of the fabric and used pedals or some other mechanism to raise and lower the shafts (shaddle - part of the loom, consisting of two bars, between which are installed warp thread holders ( The shafts, moving up or down, raise or lower the warp threads, forming a shed (a gap between the upper and lower warp threads).
Transverse threads are laid in the throat - ducks. Then the operator had to stretch his hand forward, holding the shuttle with the spool of weft thread, and pass it through the shed. After that, the shuttle had to be captured with the other hand, the pharynx closed, and the botan (the part is designed to seal (nail) the laid weft threads) stretched forward to push the ducks into place. All this required constant leaning forward along the fabric. In addition, passing the shuttle through the shed required several workers if the width of the fabric exceeded 50–60 inches.
Flying shuttle loom
The flying shuttle loom uses a horizontal guide bar on which the lower warp threads rest. The shuttle slides along these threads, resting on the bar and moving through the shed. At each end of the rail there is a mechanism that grabs the shuttle at the end of its journey and gives the shuttle momentum to move in the opposite direction. Simply put, a brake to stop and a pusher to reverse. The ends of the shuttle are bullet-shaped and have a metal cap, and the shuttle body has rollers to reduce friction. The pushers were driven by a sharp blow of the drive handle.
Thus, after each change in the position of the warp threads, the shuttle “flighted” across the fabric. The movement of the shuttle became so fast that it was difficult to keep track of it. Therefore, the name is “flying”.
This invention made it possible to abandon several workers on one machine, increase the width of the web, and speed up work. Data on productivity growth in different sources vary - from 4 to 8 times. In addition, it became possible to lead the process to one mechanical drive, which was done somewhat later. In 1747, John Kay traveled to Paris and for a year negotiated with the French government to sell them his technology. The huge lump sum requested could not be obtained, and Cay eventually agreed to 3 livres plus a pension of 000 livres (annually from 2) in exchange for his patent and instructions for using it.
In the process of further development of these machines, an important role was played by the Englishman Edmund Cartwright. In 1785 he created the first, and in 1792 the second design of the loom. The whole process of weaving was mechanized: hooking the shuttle, raising the shaft, breaking the weft thread with a reed, unwinding the spare warp threads and winding the finished fabric. These machines could be powered by a steam engine, which in turn increased productivity again.
It is impossible to ignore another loom - a loom for making patterned fabrics (known as a jacquard loom). It is an example of a computer controlled machine. Its inventor, Joseph Marie Jacquard (sometimes Jacquard; French Joseph Marie Jacquard; July 7, 1752 - August 7, 1834) was a French merchant and weaver. Cardboard punched card carried information about the upper or lower position of each main thread (whether or not there is a hole in the corresponding position on the punched card). As a result, a two-sided ornament is formed on the fabric, where one side is a color or texture negative of the other.
Loom for patterned fabrics (Jacquard loom)
Punched cards could control up to 100 threads. They were sewn into one working tape and changed as needed by the machine operator. The warp threads are stretched in the lower part of the device in a horizontal direction. To obtain a patterned fabric, it is sufficient to omit not all the even or all odd warp threads alternately in order to pass the hook with the weft thread into the shed, but only omit some of them.
A certain order of these threads, calculated for each shuttle pass, implements a given pattern. Any warp thread passes in the weaving mill through a special thread ring connected to a vertical holder. If there was a hole in the punched card, the holder corresponding to this position was raised, which means that the warp thread was also raised, in the absence of a hole, the thread remained at the bottom. A special mechanism moves the punched card strip automatically after each shuttle pass.
The fate of the inventor and his relationship with the state is interesting. Jacquard worked on the machine tool in Paris at the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts*. Here, in 1804, he created his loom, which weaved patterned silk. On April 15, 1805, Emperor Napoleon granted the city of Lyon a patent for a jacquard loom. In return, Jacquard was rewarded with a pension of three thousand francs and a fee of fifty francs for each loom that was bought and used between 1805 and 1811. By 1812 there were 11 jacquard looms in operation in France. In 000, the inventor was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
*The "Conservatory of Arts and Crafts" was established on October 10, 1794, on the initiative of Abbé Henri Grégoire in Paris, who proposed to the National Convention a project to create an institution whose purpose would be "to improve the national industry, study and preserve machines and tools, drawings and models, books and various documentation of all existing arts and crafts. The private collections confiscated during the French Revolution were transferred to the jurisdiction of the new institution. To date, the museum keeps one of the most outstanding technical collections in Europe.
Conclusions
Machines and mechanisms, their structure and principles of operation attract the attention of the reader, but the analysis of their overall impact on industry, the economy, and society as a whole is also very important. Let's try to note some of them, dividing conditionally into several groups for convenience of consideration. Although, of course, all these phenomena are inextricably linked with each other.
social impact
New technologies required new workers. The transition from the skill of a craftsman to the skills of a machine park operator and equipment adjuster. This led to social tension.
All the mentioned inventors suffered from the Luddites (protests of the old technological order against the new market demands).
The cotton purifier gave slavery a "second wind" altogether.
New ratios of prices for products and wages of workers. Those who have a job began to live better.
Technique
The need to update the machine park of light industry gave impetus to the development of mechanical engineering, metallurgy, mining, transport, the construction of steam engines, etc.
Not automation yet, but mechanization of processes.
Moving away from the use of human power and water to steam energy.
Economy
Explosive growth in the volume of production, first in light industry, and then in heavy industry.
The state financially (grants) and institutionally (by creating organizations and departments) supported the development of modern technologies and technical inventions.
The birth of a new world - the economy. Division of labor, unification of markets, price management. The division into a metropolis with leading technologies, non-sovereign vassal states with mid-level technologies (markets and products of an incomplete production cycle) and disenfranchised colonies as sources of raw materials. Economic management through the dictates of prices, due to which the metropolis becomes the center of profit.
The economy and production are becoming powerful enough to clothe and shoe hundreds of thousands of soldiers, arm them, provide them with gunpowder and cannonballs, sails and ropes. In the end, bring everyone and everything to the battlefield. At the same time, we must try not to go bankrupt during the first months of the war. Everything is ready for the era of the Napoleonic Wars.
State and politics
Patent law has been developed, records of equipment manufactured under a patent have been established and payments are made for this.
Inventors move from country to country with key technologies, despite the intense political rivalry between France and Britain.
Formation of new decisions in relations with colonies and vassal countries. For example, the requirements for increasing the output of cotton fiber were decided as follows. Light industry products (including fabrics) were sent to Africa, where they were exchanged for slaves, they were taken to America, where they were exchanged (bought / sold) for cotton.
At the same time, the southern states received expensive technological goods from Britain. From Africa (the colonies in general) came raw materials in exchange for consumer goods. Not a single voyage of merchant ships was empty.
Trade wars with customs barriers. Competition of economic systems. Wars are approaching, if not engines, then artillery, armor and logistics.
Conclusion
There is a surprising amount of significant information about the development of technology in the period 1750-1800. The rapid growth of industry is closely connected with politics, finance, and economics. After looking at just a few devices, they saw the birth of that same industrial revolution.
Unfortunately, in the first part, it was not possible to come close to discussing Monge's work on the manufacture of cannons. But let's leave that for the next part.
Industrial production is related processes in various industries. Some solutions were used both in the manufacture of tools and in the manufacture of steam engines. It would probably not be very correct to tear one technical process out of the general technological context.
Information