Second Industrial Revolution - Britain

Britain

New products and services were introduced which greatly increased international trade. Improvements in steam engine design and the wide availability of cheap steel meant that slow, sailing ships were replaced with faster steamship, which could handle more trade with smaller crews. The chemical industries also moved to the forefront. Britain invested less in technological research than the U.S. and Germany, which caught up.

Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, and his inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology. In 1880, pioneer of electric light Sir Joseph Swan began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England, with the Savoy in London electrically lit in 1881. The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process named after its inventor Sir Henry Bessemer, revolutionized steel manufacture by decreasing its cost, from £40 per long ton to £6-7 per long ton during its introduction, along with greatly increasing the scale and speed of production of this vital raw material. The process also decreased the labor requirements for steel-making. After the introduction of the Bessemer process, steel and wrought iron became similarly priced, and most manufacturers turned to steel. The availability of cheap steel allowed large bridges to be built and enabled the construction of railroads, skyscrapers, and large ships. Other important steel products—also made using the open hearth process—were steel cable, steel rod and sheet steel which enabled large, high-pressure boilers and high-tensile strength steel for machinery which enabled much more powerful engines, gears and axles than were possible previously. With large amounts of steel it became possible to build much more powerful guns and carriages, tanks, armored fighting vehicles and naval ships. Industrial steel also made possible the building of giant turbines and generators thus making the harnessing of water and steam power possible. The steam turbine invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884, has almost completely replaced the reciprocating piston steam engine primarily because of its greater thermal efficiency and higher power-to-weight ratio. As the turbine generates rotary motion, it is particularly suited to be used to drive an electrical generator – about 80% of all electricity generation in the world is by use of steam turbines. The introduction of the large scale steel production process perfected by Henry Bessemer, paved the way to mass industrialization as observed in the 19th-20th centuries.

The development of more intricate and efficient machines along with mass production techniques (after 1910) greatly expanded output and lowered production costs. As a result, production often exceeded domestic demand. Among the new conditions, more markedly evident in Britain, the forerunner of Europe's industrial states, were the long-term effects of the severe Long Depression of 1873–1896, which had followed fifteen years of great economic instability. Businesses in practically every industry suffered from lengthy periods of low — and falling — profit rates and price deflation after 1873.