Machines, Fossil Fuels and Distance
IntroducedEnergy stored underground
- The development of machines, including steam engines and the internal combustion engine, made it possible to take advantage of both existing and vast newly discovered resources of energy stored in fossil fuels, specifically coal and oil.
- The fossil fuels revolution greatly increased the energy available to human societies.
- This is the largest single change in the unit: before it, energy came from muscle, wind and falling water, all of which are limited by the weather and the day.
Select all the fossil fuels the CED specifies.
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Wood is a renewable fuel and is listed among industrial resources, not fossil fuels.
A second wave of industries
- The "second industrial revolution" led to new methods in the production of steel, chemicals, electricity and precision machinery during the second half of the 19th century.
- The first wave was textiles, iron and steam; the second is heavier, more chemical, and more electrical.
- Precision machinery matters because it lets machines make the parts for other machines — which is how industry accelerates itself.
Select all the second industrial revolution's new methods.
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Cotton spinning belongs to the first wave.
Three technologies that shrank distance
- Railroads, steamships and the telegraph made exploration, development and communication possible in interior regions globally, which led to increased trade and migration.
- Interior regions is the operative phrase: before these, bulk transport meant water, so inland areas stayed out of the world market.
- The telegraph separates a message from a messenger for the first time in history.
Follow the machines to the shrinking of distance
The second industrial revolution is a label until the mechanism is attached.
Railroads, steamships and the telegraph are named for making possible...
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Before them, bulk transport meant water.
Railroads and telegraphs are named for what they opened, not for their speed. The CED says they made exploration, development and communication possible in interior regions globally — before them, bulk transport meant water, and inland areas stayed outside the world market.
The fossil fuels revolution greatly increased the ____ available to human societies.
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Before it, energy came from muscle, wind and falling water.
Technology shaped production
- The objective is how technology shaped economic production over time, so each technology needs a production consequence.
- Steam frees a factory from a riverbank; railways let raw materials come from inland and finished goods go back.
- Electricity and precision machinery raise both the scale and the accuracy of what can be made.
Match each technology to its production consequence.
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Each technology needs a production consequence, not just a description.
Trade and migration follow
- The CED's own sentence ends with increased trade and migration — the technologies are causes, and those are the effects.
- Unit 6 will take that migration and make a whole subtopic of it.
- So 5.5 is where the machinery of the next unit is installed.
A cotton region five hundred miles from any navigable river is worth nothing to a world market until a railway reaches it. Once it does, the same acres feed a factory on another continent — and the people who worked those acres begin to move. Trade and migration are one consequence, not two.
Steam engines and the internal combustion engine unlocked energy stored in fossil fuels — coal and oil — greatly increasing the energy available to human societies. The second industrial revolution brought steel, chemicals, electricity and precision machinery. Railroads, steamships and the telegraph opened interior regions globally, leading to increased trade and migration.
Write from the telegraph's minutes
- A message once took days by horse or ship.
- A telegraph line carried it in minutes.
How did the telegraph change distance?
Wires carried messages far faster than physical travel.
What did the telegraph do to communication time?
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Electrical signals outran horses and ships.