Professor Jeremy Black:
Look at this, this is a really impressive piece, massive piece of sea coal from the beach here at Seaton Carew, in the north east of England, and that comes from the north sea from the seams at the bottom, Britain is very fortune much of it is on top of this stuff, and the seams of it are very close to the surface and easily worked. Thanks to that coal kicked started a revolution in 18th century Britain, a revolution that transformed not only the country, but the world itself.
Until then wood had been the main source of energy in Britain. But it was running out and it was expensive. Britain needed a new source of fuel - Coal.
It increasingly became clear that coal was a much more potent form of power providing up to three times more energy than wood.
For the first time in human history we began to harness the planet’s mineral wealth for fuel and power on a massive scale.
In Britain coal was abundant and easily mined. It could also be dug up near the sea so ships could carry coal cheaply to the most important market- London.
The demand for coal led to deeper and deeper mines being dug, but the problem was that the deeper you went the more likely it was that the mines would flood.
Whoever could produce an effective way to extract this coal was going to make a lot of money.
And it was the desire to get rich which drove many of the the great inventors, engineers, businessmen and workers who created the Industrial Revolution.
It motivated practical men, like Devon iron monger Thomas Newcomen, to try to solve the problem of flooding mines. In 1712 he designed an engine which could harness the power of coal to make steam and drive a water pump. And this is it: the world’s first commercially successful steam engine. It did the work of 20 horses and pumped water from hundreds of feet below the ground.
This made it possible to mine more coal, drastically altering our use of energy, freeing Britain’s growing industry and firing the Industrial Revolution and beyond.
Video summary
The Industrial Revolution changed Britain and the world fundamentally. It began in Britain, and in this short film Professor Jeremy Black asks why this happened.
Coal was a key factor.
Britain was well supplied with coal and this wonder fuel was powerful and much cheaper than wood.
Demand for coal led to expansion of mining, but as they mined deeper they encountered the problem of flooding.
The profit motive led to furious activity to solve this problem.
Thomas Newcomen helped to resolve this. He invented a pump which harnessed steam power to pump water out of mines.
Further developments included James Watt’s engine which improved on Newcomen’s pump.
A key factor, along with the profit motive, in all this change was the intellectual climate of the time in which scientists were examining the world around them and trying to explain what they saw and harness it for business purposes.
This short film is from the BBC series, Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here.
Teacher Notes
Ask students to draw a Venn diagram with circles labelled: coal; steam power; profit motive.
In pairs or small groups ask them to draw the diagram so that the size of each circle represents the importance of each factor and also to use overlaps between the circles to show how different factors (e.g. coal and steam) were interlinked.
These overlapping areas can be labelled with notes explaining how the factors were connected.
This short film is suitable for teaching history at Key Stage 3 and GCSE, Third Level and National 4 & 5, in particular units on the Victorians and the Industrial Revolution.
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