Natural Resources
Natural resources were very important to the Industrial Revolution. All the machines and inventions of the Industrial Revolution used natural resources to run. Water, wood, coal, iron, natural harbors, and fast flowing rivers all were extremely important to the success and powering of the industrial age.
Water, wood, and natural harbors became the first natural resources to be used in the Industrial Revolution. Water, in the form of fast flowing rivers, powered the water wheels at the very beginning of the age of the Industrial Revolution. Later, water was used in the steam engines to power trains, boats, looms, spinners, weavers, and other machines. Natural harbors were needed to import and export raw materials around the world so that countries could get the necessary raw materials or make a profit by shipping surplus resources away. Wood, however, had been used for simple machines for many, many years. But, in the Industrial Revolution, wood, in the form of charcoal, heated the early blast furnaces to smelt iron, powered the steam engines, and formed many of the parts of the machines. The huge forests of countries such as Great Britain were rapidly cut down to feed the rising need for wood. As the forests disappeared, people turned to other things such as iron and coal to build and fuel their machines.
Iron was essential to the Industrial Revolution. The trains, machines, and tools of this time all needed iron. Before iron can be used, impurities must be separated from the iron ore by a process called smelting. The raw iron ore was put into a blast furnace that lacked enough oxygen to burn well. The fire would then take the oxygen out of the ore. Next, the molten iron was pored into pigs, which were small molds that were later hammered into sheets. The Industrial Revolution demanded such a large quantity of iron that the amount of charcoal needed to fuel the blast furnaces became too great and too expensive to be cost effective. So, many ironworkers turned to using a substance called coke instead, which is made by roasting coal in a sealed furnace. Other advances in iron-making techniques such as a grooved rolling mills and puddling furnaces further increased iron production. Soon, iron parts replaced wooden machines as the Industrial Revolution progressed (Staff Pages).
Another important natural resource in the Industrial Revolution was coal. Coal is found in large deposits around the world. Coal could be used to power the steam engines and was used in smelting iron. Coal burned at a higher temperature than wood, so that more heat could be gained from the same amount of the resource. Because of this, coal mining soon became an important industry. Before the Industrial Revolution, shafts could not be dug too far into the earth because water in the ground would flood the shafts. Only shallow ditches or shafts into a hill could be dug where gravity could be used to make the water run off. But, the invention of the steam engine allowed miners to pump water out of the shafts, allowing them to dig deeper and farther than they ever had before. This enabled them to dig more coal to fuel more machines so that the Industrial Revolution could continue to spread and grow at a rapid pace (Staff Pages, Ecology).
Natural resources were essential to the Industrial Revolution. Without them, machines could not be built, powered, or distributed. There could not have been an Industrial Revolution without a bounty of natural resources on hand.
References:
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Outman, James L., Elizabeth M. Outman. "The Revolution Begins: Steam Engines, Railroads, and Steamboats." The Industrial Revolution: Almanac. Thomson Gale: Farmington Hills, MI, 2003.
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World History: Connections To Today. Pearson Education, Inc: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005.
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