Industrial Revolution

Question 1

The Industrial Revolution

Answer 1

A period of global transition of the economy towards efficient manufacturing processes that followed the Agricultural Revolution. It started in Great Britain, then went into continental Europe and USA and began from around 1760

Question 2

Agriculture

Answer 2

The practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool and other products.

Question 3

Cotton industry

Answer 3

A small manufacturing business that often operates in the home of the craftsperson. This was the main system of manufacture of goods in Britain before the Industrial Revolution.

Question 4

The enclosure movement

Answer 4

The process whereby landowners in Britain closed off previously “common” land to the use of commoners, many of whom often had to thus migrate into the cities to find new jobs in factories as a consequence of no longer being able to live off the land.

Question 5

Agricultural revolution

Answer 5

An unprecedented increase in food production in Britain arising from increases in labor and land productivity (thanks to new tools and innovations in growing practices) occurring between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries.

Question 6

Crop rotation

Answer 6

The practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons. In Britain during the agricultural revolution, this was done by growing clover and turnips on fields that had previously been left fallow, which boosted overall food production.

Question 7

Selective breeding

Answer 7

The process by which humans use animal breeding to selectively develop particular, desirable traits, such as meat mass or milk production in the case of cattle and wool production in the case of sheep.

Question 8

Textiles

Answer 8

An umbrella term that includes various fibre-based materials and their manufacture, including wool, cotton, linen, silk, hemp and newer, synthetic fibres.

Question 9

Cotton

Answer 9

The white, fluffy substance that surrounds the seeds of a specific pant native to India and which is used in the production of a specific kind of textile.

Question 10

Loom

Answer 10

An apparatus for making fabric by weaving yarn

Question 11

Silver

Answer 11

In textiles (and especially cotton), this refers to the fluffy tubes of mostly unprocessed fibre following the carding process

Question 12

Yarn

Answer 12

In textiles, this refers to the fine, twisted and coiled lengths of fibre resulting from the spinning process.

Question 13

Fabric

Answer 13

In textiles, this refers to the cloth produced after the weaving process where yarn is interwoven in a criss-cross pattern.

Question 14

Carding, spinning, weaving

Answer 14

The three major processes in the manufacturing of textiles, especially cotton.

Question 15

Invention

Answer 15

The action of creating something especially new, typically a process or device

Question 16

Innovation

Answer 16

The action of creating something especially new, although it is not confined to merely processes and devices and could also refer to ideas.

Question 17

The spinning jenny

Answer 17

A multi-spindle spinning frame, one of the key developments in the industrialisation of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution, invented in 1764-1765 by James Hargreaves.

Question 18

The water frame

Answer 18

Invented by Richard Arkwright, it was a machine powered by water and which enabled the automatic production of spun textile, known as yarn.

Question 19

Richard Arkwrite

Answer 19

An English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution, he invented the water frame.

Question 20

Water power

Answer 20

The use of falling or fast-running water to produce energy to power machines. This type of power was used extensively in Britain and America just before the emergence of steam power.

Question 21

Mechanisation

Answer 21

The introduction of machines or automatic devices into the manufacturing process of products.

Question 22

Assembly line manufacturing

Answer 22

A production process that breaks up the manufacture of a product into steps that are completed in a pre-defined and repetitive way.

Question 23

Economics

Answer 23

A field that studies the production, distribution, and use of goods and services.

Question 24

Capital

Answer 24

In economics, this term refers to “those durably produced goods that are in turn used as further production” of goods and services. A typical example is the machinery used in a factory.

Question 25

Capitalism

Answer 25

An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, like factories, and their operation for profit.

Question 26

Profit

Answer 26

The extra value, most often in the form of money gained, which is attained once the revenue received from a sold product exceeds the costs involved in producing it.

Question 27

Free enterprise

Answer 27

The system of economic behaviour whereby people are allowed to start a business with the view to selling a good or service for profit.

Question 28

Unskilled labour

Answer 28

Used to describe a type of worker with a limited skill set or minimal economic value for the work performed.

Question 29

Abraham Derby

Answer 29

A British ironmaster and foundryman who developed a method of creating cast iron in a blast furnace using coke as fuel.

Question 30

Blast furnace

Answer 30

A site used for smelting on a large scale to produce industrial metals, generally cast iron.