Industrial Revolution Trivia

1. In what century did the Industrial Revolution begin?

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: 18th

It started during the 18th century and in the 19th century spread rapidly across much of the world. It was a time of technological advancement and without this revolution many inventions we may take for granted may never have been invented. However, it also opened a large gap in prosperity between the industrialized countries and those that relied on basic agriculture.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: The seed drill

Jethro Tull (1674-1742) invented the seed drill. This led to greater efficiency in planting and it improved food production. Due to enhanced productivity it became possible to feed more people than before, using the same acreage. Not to be confused with the British rock group which adopted his name!

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: England

In 1740, the first factories started to appear in England. However, industrialization did not 'take off' in England till about 1780. In the early stages it was on a small scale. The second country to industrialize is generally held to be France (shortly after 1815) together with Southern Belgium.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: 16,000

Robert Peel made his fortune as an industrialist. He employed 16,000 people, many of whom would have been children. It was sometimes the case that entire families worked for the same employer. Very young children were also routinely employed. (The total of 16,000 made the firm one of the largest employers in the country after the government). Due to the profits resulting from his endeavours his son, the more famous Sir Robert Peel, was able to get an excellent education, gain the first ever Double First at Oxford (Literae Humaniores [Classical Literature] and Mathematics) and pursue a political career.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: Eli Whitney

Invented in 1793, this allowed the fine cotton seeds to be separated from the cotton much more easily than when they were previously picked out by hand. Therefore it gave a new boost to the cotton industry of the Southern states of the USA, and so indirectly kept slavery alive.

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: Britain

It began in Britain, because Britain at the time was a prosperous country with extensive trading networks. It had also colonised other countries which meant they could have access to resources from those countries.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: Turnip

'Turnip' Townshend was initially ridiculed for his desire to improve his estates. He also replaced the three-field system by the four-field system in agriculture by adding root crops to the standard cycle. This meant that less land had to lie fallow at any given time. Without the agricultural revolution, which 'freed up' labour in agriculture (or drove many off the land, depending on your point of view), the industrial revolution would have been checked in its progress.

From Quiz Remember Those Huge Floppy Disks?

Answer: Helium

While the exact cause of ignition of the 1937 Hindenburg explosion will likely remain unknown, the hydrogen used for fuel on the airship was highly flammable as can be seen on newsreels of the time. Later airships used helium, an inert gas much less likely to cause such a disaster. There were later dirigible-type airships using helium that crashed but none of them caught fire or exploded. There were also some dirigibles flying at the same time that did use helium but it was hard to obtain and thus hydrogen was used with fatal results.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: Luddites

From 1811 to 1817 Luddites caused serious property damage. The organization is said to have been created in March 1811, in Nottingham and lead by Ned Ludd (after which they were named). The last significant Luddite attack was at Loughborough lace factory in February 1817. After that there were minor incidents, but the movement then largely died. (Deliberate machine-breaking was made a capital (!) crime in the UK in 1817).

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: Regulated working hours

The Factory Act (1819) limited the work hours of children a day to a maximum of 12 hours per day; the Factory Act (1833) limited the working day to 8 hours for 10-13 year olds and restricted them to a maximum of 48 hours per week. The Factory Act (1844) provided for a maximum working day of 12 hours for women and forbade their employment in factories between 7pm and 7 am. The Factory Act (1847) provided that women and children could only work a maximum of 10 hours a day. The Factory Act (1850) increased working hours of women and children to 10 and a half hours per day and couldn't work before 6am or after 6pm and in 1874 they made it so no one could work more than 56.5 hours per week.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood started his apprenticeship early. He founded his own pottery and, using classical themes reminiscent of the Grand Tour of the aristocracy in his works, he familiarised more people with those classical themes.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: Pumping water out of mine shafts

One of the major problems of mining was the water. Until the steam engine mining could not be done very deep. However, Newcomen's invention was very weak, but was improved on later.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: Ironbridge

Abraham Darby was smelting iron ore at Ironbridge in Shropshire. Early industrial operations were sited close to water for the following reasons, ease of transportation and a source of power. (Efficient steam power only came later in the 18th century). Some of the earliest industrial enterprises in Britain were located in areas that later came to be regarded as overwhelmingly rural, such as Shropshire and the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: At the University of Glasgow

Watt was the University's official scientific instrument-maker. He was asked to repair Newcomen's engine and while doing so he learned a lot about its mechanics.

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: Open doors in the mine to let coal go through

Most trappers in the Industrial Revolution were young children working in the mines to open doors and let coal go through tunnels. Trappers or anyone working in the mine were in danger because avalanches: these are falls of rock and debris. They could of course cause injury and death. Inhaling coal dust was also a serious danger.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: James Brindley

Bridgewater had substantial coal deposits on his land. As transport by road was extremely costly he sought to reduce those costs. Before the building of the railways, transport by water was the speediest and least expensive method. The early stages of the industrial revolution saw the construction of several canals, built by very cheap labour. After the 1830s many were superseded by the development of the railways. Brindley (1716-72) is particularly famous for the construction of the Barton Aqueduct, which carries the Bridgewater Canal over the River Irwell at Barton-upon-Irwell, near Manchester. At the time it was the first navigable aqueduct in Britain. Within a year of the completion of the Bridgewater Canal, the price of coal fell in Manchester by about half!

From Quiz Remember Those Huge Floppy Disks?

Answer: Iron lung

The iron lung was invented in the very early 20th century and was first used by doctors for cases of coal gas poisoning. They were used as a temporary measure until the patient recovered. In the middle part of the century a large outbreak of polio resulted in thousands of people being put into the apparatus when their diaphragm as well as their other muscles became paralyzed. The iron lung was a large full body size ventilator into which a patient was put, with only their head outside of the apparatus. Most people recovered and were taken out of the machine but there were those who spent up to 60 years in an iron lung. While use of the iron lung almost disappeared during the 1960's as new and better treatments were developed it was estimated that between 25-30 people in the US were being kept alive in an iron lung at the turn of the 21st century.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: Combination Act

People found guilty of this law could be sentenced to jail for three months.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: flying shuttle & fly shuttle & fly-shuttle

The flying shuttle allowed one weaver to take the place of two and it also made the job faster. One would expect such an invention to make a person rich. However, John Kay suffered more than prospered. He created so many enemies by putting people out of work that he was eventually forced to flee to France.

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: Scrotum Cancer

Warts would grow by the irritation of the soot particles that would then develop into cancer.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: Manchester

Friedrich Engels wrote about the condition of the labouring classes. His observations appeared in 1845 in 'The Condition of the Working Class in England [in 1844]' - a Marxist classic. He also co-authored 'The Communist Manifesto' with Karl Marx and economically supported Marx.

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: c. 1890 onwards

Despite this Russia remained a backward nation in the early twentieth century.

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: The water was able to power machinery

However, now many rivers were polluted due to the factories during the industrial Revolution. Eventually factories didn't need to be near rivers because they could use coal to power the machinery. However they still stuck close to waterways until railways were invented because it wasn't cheap or practical to transport coal by road over anything other than very short distances.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: Mrs Gaskell

Mrs Gaskell was married to a Unitarian minister. Often 'chapels' (that is, non-conformist denominations) appealed to those lower down the social scale. Concern may have been activated by proximity. Her output includes 'North and South', 'Mary Barton' and depicts the stresses, strains and tensions of a society in flux from workmen's and employers' viewpoints .

From Quiz Industrial Revolution

Answer: 1844

Factory Act of 1844. The law was originally only meant for women and children but since (in many factories) men's work was also linked to with these, their hours were also cut.

From Quiz Inventors & Industrialists History c. 1750-1830

Answer: Mining

The 1842 Commission on Mining led to the total exclusion of women and girls from working in coal mines. Boys under 10 years were also prohibited. Prior to this it was common for whole families to engage in the same occupation, with children as young as 3 being left to open and close entrances within the mines. An exchange between a Commissioner and Boy went thus:- Age: 7 sir. Length of time working in mine? Since I was 3 sir. Do you get scared? Yes sir. What do you do then? I smoke my pipe sir!

From Quiz Jobs for the Boys and Girls

Answer: 1847

This was a great step forward, especially as five years earlier 1842, another act had been passed which made it illegal to employ either women or children in the mines. These acts also stipulated that children were to be provided with some basic education. Moreover, for the first time an inspectorate was created to enforce the acts.

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: Work on bobbins

They children who worked in textile factories would work on bobbins and would often have to wear aprons.

From Quiz The Industrial Revolution

Answer: The inventions of that revolution led up to today's inventions

Without this revolution many of the inventions we have today might never have come into existence, such as the railway. Note that there was at least one further Industrial Revolution, based on the internal combustion engine and electricity.

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Last Updated Nov 01 2025 5:45 AM

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