Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 18th century, and later spread to continental Europe, North America, and Japan, was based on the availability of coal to power steam engines. International trade expanded exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships in the 1810-1840 Victorian era. Coal was cheaper and much more efficient than wood fuel in most steam engines. As central and Northern England contains an abundance of coal, many mines were situated in these areas as well as the South Wales coalfield and Scotland. The small-scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand, with extraction moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial Revolution progressed.
Read more about this topic: History Of Coal Mining
Famous quotes containing the words industrial and/or revolution:
“The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)