The Industrial Revolution did not occur in Britain merely because Britain had the most advanced technology, but because this technology was situated in a country with a secure financial system, global trade networks, lots of raw materials, including coal, a relatively stable political system with the capacity to direct economic development, and a skilled workforce augmented by skilled foreign labour. — Conor Farrington in the Times Literary Supplement of September 18, 2015

This sense that something revolutionary had happened, that they were living in a new world with infinite and unrealized possibilities for good or evil was very strong among those who lived in Britain in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. . . . [T]o contemporaries who saw one revolutionary change follow another in rapid succession, who saw industry drawing each year a larger section of the life of the nation into its grip, the change seemed portentous. And it was portentous, if a portent is the foreshadowing of notable and terrible things to come. —  G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England (1971)

General

Innovation and Tradition

The Preconditions for Industrial Revolution

The First Phase: Textiles

The Second Phase: Railroads, Steam, and Steel

The Third Phase: Electricity and Chemicals

The Fourth Phase: Digital Information Technologies, Miniaturization

Mechanization, Industrialization, and Culture


Victorian
Web

Technology

Industrial
Revolution

Last modified 13 June 2025