啟蒙運動(英文版)

2024年3月25日發(作者：我爸是李剛)

Bank of England, their supremacy was effectivel y challenged. Capitalism appeared on a large scale, and a new type of

commercial entrepr eneur developed from the old class of merchant adventurers. Many machines were already known, and

there were sizable factories using them, but the were the exceptions rather than the rule. Wood was the only fuel, water

and wind the power of the early factorie s. As the 18th cent. began, an expanding and wealthier population demanded

more and be tter goods. In the productive process, coal came to replace wood. Early-model steam engin es were introduced

to drain water and rai coal from the mines. The crucial development of the Industrial Revolution was the u of steam for

power, and the greatly improved e ngine (1769) of James Watt marked the high point in this development. Cotton textiles w

as the key industry early in the Industrial Revolution. John Kay's fly shuttle (1733), Jame s Hargreaves's spinning jenny

(patented 1770), Richard Arkwright's water frame (1769), Sa muel Crompton's mule (1779), which combined the features of

the jenny and the frame, a nd Edmund Cartwright's power loom (patented 1783) facilitated a tremendous increa in output.

The prence of large quantities of coal and iron in clo proximity in Britain was a decisive factor in its rapid industrial

growth. The u of coke in iron production had f ar-reaching effects. The coal mines from the early 1700s had become

paramount in import ance, and the Black Country appeared in England at the same time that Lancashire and Y orkshire were

being transformed into the greatest textile centers of the world. Factories an d industrial towns sprang up. Canals and roads

were built, and the advent of the railroad and the steamship widened the market for manufactured goods. The Besmer

process mad e a gigantic contribution, for it was largely responsible for the extension of the u of ste am and steel that were

the two chief features of industry in the middle of the 19th cent. Chemical innovations and, most important of all, perhaps,

machines for making machines

played an important part in the vast changes. The Industrial Revolution did not in fact en d in Britain in the mid-1800s. New

periods came in with electricity and the gasoline engi ne. By 1850, however, the transformation wrought by the revolution

was accomplished, in that industry had become a dominant factor in the nation's life.