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The modern factory -

Richard Arkwright became known as the "father of the modern industrial factory system" after he constructed Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, England in 1771. It was the world's first water-powered cotton spinning mill.

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Newcomen steam engine -

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen invented the atmospheric engine: the world's first steam engine. Known simply as the Newcomen engine, it was used principally to pump water out of mines. Hundreds were constructed through the 18th century.

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Watt steam engine -

An improvement on the Newcomen engine, Scottish engineer James Watt's design was introduced commercially in 1776. The Watt steam engine swiftly became one of the driving forces of the Industrial Revolution.

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The spinning jenny -

Invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves, the spinning jenny was a spinning engine that allowed workers to spin more wool at any one time. It was a key development in the industrialization of weaving.

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Spinning mule -

The spinning mule, devised by Samuel Crompton in 1775, built upon features found in the earlier spinning jenny and was used to spin cotton and other fabrics–in particular, muslin. Originally hand-operated, later versions ran on steam. The mule was the most common spinning machine from 1790 until about 1900, and was still used for fine yarns until the early 1980s.

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Power loom -

Another one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution, the power loom was introduced in 1784 by English inventor Edmund Cartwright. By 1850, there were around 260,000 power looms installed in factories all over England.

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Screw-cutting lathe -

Machine tool technology flourished during the Industrial Revolution. Among the most important inventions was the screw-cutting lathe, developed by Henry Maudslay. His 1800 invention enabled the mass production of standard screw thread sizes across England and beyond.

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The Iron Bridge -

Opened in 1781, the Iron Bridge is a cast iron arch bridge that crosses the River Severn in Shropshire, England. It was the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron, and today is lauded as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution.

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Road works -

In the pre-Industrial Revolution era, the condition of Britain's roads was lamentable, being poorly maintained and of inferior quality. So Scottish civil engineer John McAdam developed a new road-building technique that would revolutionize road construction forever. He called it "macadamisation," an effective and economical method of road construction in which single-sized crushed stone layers of small angular stones are leveled out under a binding layer of stone dust, as illustrated in this photograph from 1800.

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The locomotive -

On February 21, 1804, Richard Trevithick's "Pen-y-darren" locomotive made the world's first recorded railway journey in south Wales. But it's George Stephenson and his son Robert that took the credit for building the most advanced steam engine of its day, the "Rocket." Designed in 1829, its smoke chimney at the front and a separate fire box in the rear became the template for future steam locomotives for the next 150 years. It's pictured decommissioned in 1876.

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The first inter-city railway in the world -

Railways were made practical by the widespread introduction of inexpensive iron after 1800, and in England in 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830—the first inter-city railway in the world!

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Gas lighting -

The advent of commercial gas lighting cast a new light across Europe and the United States after it was first developed and introduced in 1792 by Scottish engineer William Murdoch. It remained the standard method of street lighting until well into the 1930s. Pictured: a New York City street on a wet 1885 winter night lit by gas street lights.

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The arc lamp -

Eminent chemist and inventor Humphry Davy built the world's first arc lamp in 1807, and by doing so invented the new field of electrochemistry. Pictured: workers assemble arc lamps at the West Lynn General Electric plant in Massachusetts.

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The spectrometer -

German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer invented the optical spectrometer in 1814, which was devised to enable the chemical analysis of glowing objects. An early success using the instrument was finding out what the sun is made of.

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The friction match -

The first modern matches—matches that produced ignition through friction—were invented by English chemist John Walker in 1826.

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The electric generator -

The electric generator was invented by English scientist Michael Faraday in 1831. His breakthrough came during a series of groundbreaking experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. He went on to build the Faraday Disc (pictured), the world's first electric generator.

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The dynamo -

Expanding the basic principles of electromagnetic generators discovered by Michael Faraday, French instrument maker Hippolyte Pixii built an early form of alternating current electrical generator, essentially the first dynamo, in 1832.

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The tin can -

The first patent for the idea of preserving food using tin cans was registered in 1810 by English merchant Peter Durand. His idea would have an immeasurable impact on food preservation and transportation, right up to the present day.

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The Mackintosh raincoat -

In 1823, Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh invented waterproof fabric. The following year, the first Mackintosh raincoat was sold (the variant spelling of "Mackintosh" quickly became standard).

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Portland cement -

The world has one Joseph Aspdin to thank for the invention of concrete. In 1824, the Englishman devised and patented a chemical process for making Portland cement. It was one of the most important inventions to come out of the Industrial Revolution, and remains the most common type of cement in general use around the world today. Pictured: a Portland cement kiln in Northfleet, England in 1848.

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The electromagnet -

English physicist William Sturgeon developed theories put forward by fellow scientists Hans Christian Ørsted, André-Marie Ampère, and François Arago to invent the first artificial electromagnet in 1824.

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The photograph -

Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce  is generally regarded as the inventor of photography. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene, the view from a window of his house in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes.

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The typewriter -

American William Austin Burt is the man who invented the typewriter, which he patented in 1829 and called a "typographer." Though he's regarded as the "father of the typewriter," it was only in 1867 that the first modern typewriter was invented by Christopher Sholes.

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Telegraph communications -

The first commercial electrical telegraph was the Cooke and Wheatstone system, successfully demonstrated in 1837 by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. Pictured are the two telegraph machines used on the railway line between Paddington and Slough, in England.

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Morse code -

Another esteemed figure in the advancement of telegraph communications was the American Samuel Morse. He developed the Morse code, first used around 1844 and which became the primary language of telegraphy in the world, and is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.

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The hydrogen fuel cell -

In 1838, Welsh physicist and barrister William Grove described his development of a crude fuel cell that combined sheet iron, copper, and porcelain plates and a solution of copper sulfate and dilute acid. German physicist Christian Friedrich Schönbein is also credited with developing the first fuel cells, when he highlighted the current generated from hydrogen and oxygen dissolved in water. Today's phosphoric acid fuel cell is based on these methods and materials.

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The Bessemer process -

The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron. Named after its inventor, the Englishman Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1856, the process would prove to be one of the greatest inventions of the Industrial Revolution, the key principle being the removal of impurities from iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. Pictured: a 19th-century steel works in Pittsburgh.

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Voltaic pile -

Otherwise known as an electric battery, the voltaic pile was invented in 1880 by Italian physicist Alessandro Volta. The battery made by Volta is credited as the world's first.

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Blueprints -

British scientist John Herschel is credited with inventing the process of reproducing a technical drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets—the blueprint. He introduced the technique in 1842, which was further developed by French chemist Alphonse Louis Poitevin in 1861.

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Dynamite -

Invented by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in the 1860s, dynamite swiftly superseded black powder as the explosive of choice to shatter rocks and demolish buildings and fortifications. Safer and more powerful, dynamite rapidly gained wide-scale use around the world.

See also: The world's worst industrial disasters.

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