The Industrial Revolutions

Creating the world’s first vessels of powered transportation was no joke. Several competitive inventors put everything on the line to be the first to build profitable steamboats. For most of them, the pursuit ended in failure. It was the most unlikely one – an American painter – who got the job done, and in the process, changed the course of world history.In this episode we’ll cover Denis Papin’s destroyed steamboat, the Marque de Jouffroy d'Abbans and his Pyroscaphe, William Symington and his Charlotte Dundas, the patent war between John Fitch and James Rumsey, and the life and times of Robert Fulton.

From the 1760s to the 1830s, Great Britain went crazy for canals. America did too. These waterways helped speed up trade and fuel industrialization in the age before trains and highways. In the process, they created all kinds of new jobs and opportunities.Characters covered in this chapter include: Thomas Steers, the engineer who modernized river navigation in Lancashire; The Duke of Bridgewater, who built Britain’s first modern canal; James Brindley, who engineered the Bridgewater Canal and the Trent & Mersey Canal; Thomas Telford, the architect who built a huge iron aqueduct in Wales and “Neptune’s Staircase” in Scotland; William Weston, a British civil engineer who helped build the first canals in America; and Benjamin Henry Latrobe, a British architect who emigrated to the U.S. and helped build the new capital.

This week we discuss the life and times of the Father of Economics, including his native Scotland, his early years and education, his intellectual influences, his career, and his magnum opus: The Wealth of Nations.

Explore the birth of economics as a field, tracing ideas from ancient Greece with thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Discover the evolution from Scholasticism's morality to the self-interested principles of Mercantilism. Delve into the transition from the gold standard to currency as a social construct. Uncover how physiocrats shifted perspectives on agriculture versus trade and examine Malthus' critiques surrounding welfare and labor post-Black Death, setting the scene for the rise of manufacturing in modern economies.

Nearly half the world’s population today lives in an urban area. Before the first Industrial Revolution, only about 3% did. Industrialization created urbanization. Not only did it create incentives for people to pack themselves into dense cities, it also created the means to overcome the challenges of density.What’s most amazing about this process is that many new metropolises were seemingly created from thin air. Some old cities did become big cities and some old big cities did become megacities, yes. But more amazingly, some villages that barely existed 500 years ago are now some of the world’s major population centers. In this episode, we’ll discuss the impact of the first Industrial Revolution on the British cities of Birmingham, Manchester, and London, and the ways the British government had to adapt.

The steam engine was the product of centuries of experimentation, economic necessities, strong business acumen, and colorful personalities. This is how it happened.

During the 18th Century, the British came up with many innovations that allowed them to get more out of the land. Not only did the increased production of food, iron, and coal make the first industrial revolution possible, but many innovations had indirect applications for new technologies.In this episode, we’ll cover: Jethro Tull’s seed drill; Turnip Townshend’s crop rotations; The resistance of agricultural laborers; Abraham Darby’s coke smelting process; Henry Cort’s puddling process; The legacy of John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson; The use of iron in cotton mills; Britain’s falling timber resources; New mine ventilation techniques; Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety lamp; and the evolution of rail tracks.Follow along on social media:https://facebook.com/indrevpodhttps://twitter.com/indrevpodhttps://instagram.com/indrevpod

We’ll never know the names of the first farmers of the Neolithic Revolution, but we do know the names of the inventors who kick-started the Industrial Revolutions. Their simple innovations gave us a new world of nearly constant, explosive economic growth and a total restructuring of society everywhere and forever. This is how it happened.In this episode, we’ll cover: The growth of the global cotton trade in the 17th and 18th centuries; The flying shuttle; The spinning jenny; The water-frame; The spinning mule; The first cotton mills of northern England; The impact of the first industrial revolution in the new United States.

Are we living in Thomas More’s Utopia? In this chapter, we’ll explore his book and his life to chart the path toward the industrialized world we inhabit today, including: The rise of cottage industry; Mechanical innovations; Increasing specialization; The war industry’s impact on mass production; The impact of the Protestant Reformation.

Beginning in the 1300s, a rivalry between two kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula led to a whole lot of exploring, trading, and conquering. Before long, other European powers were getting in on the action. Not only did it transfer the gravity of the world’s political and economic power toward Europe, it set Europe on a path toward industrialization.In this episode, we’ll explore:The early days of European naval explorationPortuguese trade in the EastSpanish conquest in the WestThe mountain of silver at PotosiHow plantation commodities changed the world economyThe foundations of the transatlantic slave tradeThe development of joint stock corporations, modern banking, and insurance