(^136) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
steel industry. Later, demand increased even further as steam engines devoured mass
quantities of coal for fuel. Wherever there were natural deposits of coal, huge mining
industries grew up around them; agricultural production in these areas was largely
abandoned, and the peasants were drawn by the thousands to subterranean work in
the mines.
Steam
The perfection of the steam engine increased both the scale and the pace of heavy
industry by replacing human muscle and hydropower. The steam engine was first used
in the early eighteenth century to pump water out of coal mines. It was perfected and
made more efficient by Thomas Newcomen and James Watt. The improved version
was used to drive machinery as diverse as the bellows of iron forges, looms for textile
manufacture, and mills for processing grain. The shift to steam power allowed entrepre-
neurs to relocate their mills away from water sources. During the 1820s, entrepreneurs
began to exploit the potential of the steam engine as a source of locomotive power; its
first use in this way was to power ships. In the 1830s, it was adapted to power railway
locomotives.
Electricity
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Second Industrial Revolution received
another boost from the widespread application of electrical power. More versatile and more
easily transported than steam engines, electrical generators were used to power a wide vari-
ety of small- and large-scale factories and mills. By 1881, the first large-scale public power
plant was constructed in Great Britain, and over the next two decades, plants were built
and lines were run to illuminate houses across Europe.
Petroleum and the Internal Combustion Engine
In 1886, two German engineers, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz, perfected the internal
combustion engine, which burned petroleum as fuel, and mounted it on a carriage to
create the first automobile. The early German automobiles were luxury items, but in 1908,
the American Henry Ford produced the “Model T,” an automobile for the common man,
which he began to mass-produce, creating yet another large factory-based industry. The
internal combustion engine, along with its cousin the diesel engine, made transportation
and travel cheaper and, therefore, more widely available.
The Railway Boom
In the 1820s, the British inventor George Stephenson developed a railway line with trains
pulled by steam-powered locomotives. The Stockton and Darlington Line opened in 1825,
and by 1830, another major line traveled between Liverpool and Manchester. The speed
and reliability of the new locomotives made them a huge success, which led to what would
come to be known as the Railway Boom of the 1830s and 1840s, as competitors quickly
developed their own systems. The development of railway systems further spurred the
development of heavy industry, as railroads facilitated the speedy transportation of iron and
steel while simultaneously consuming large quantities of both.17_Bartolini_Ch17_133-142.indd 136 27/04/18 1:55 PM