Technology in industrialization

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The technology in the industrialization made great progress through the use of coal , steam engines , textile machinery , machine tools , locomotives and -schiffen . However, the industrial revolution was not only characterized by numerous technical innovations, it also led to numerous economic and social changes.

Textile technology

The two most important process steps in the manufacture of cloth in industrialization were spinning the wool into yarn and weaving the yarn into cloth .

Weaving with the step loom had been an independent profession since the High Middle Ages , which was practiced by men. Spinning with the spinning wheel or the hand spindle was practiced by women in the country as a sideline. Production often took place in the publishing system , where a publisher procured the raw materials and delivered them to the spinners. They were paid a fixed price for a certain amount of yarn. In the course of the 19th century, the demand for cloth increased further. The bottleneck in production was spinning. Therefore, simple spinning machines with four spindles per machine were initially created . Once there was enough yarn, the new bottleneck was weaving, so looms were created. Now spinning was the bottleneck again, which led to spinning machines with significantly more spindles. Ultimately, spinning machines with over 100 spindles per machine were created.

The early spinning and weaving machines were largely made of wood, especially the frame. Only a few parts were made of copper or iron . It was initially driven by water wheels , which is reflected in the name of the first spinning machine, the Waterframe ("water frame") by Richard Arkwright from 1771. Numerous professional groups worked together to build it. Mill builders dealt with the construction of windmills and water mills in pre-industrial times and were therefore familiar with various elements of power transmission such as shafts and gears . They preferred to use wood; Metals only if it could not be avoided. The gear transmission came from watchmakers and precision mechanics ; these trades had centuries of experience in the manufacture of measurement technology and copper gears. Joiners or joiners supplied wooden parts; iron parts came from blacksmiths.

As the spinning machines got bigger and bigger and got more spindles, more and more iron was used instead of wood, which can transmit forces and torques better and generates less friction. This created a great need for identical iron parts such as screws, spindles and gears, which had an impact on numerous other industries and their technology. Since the performance of the water wheels was no longer sufficient, they were replaced by steam engines and the first textile factories were founded.

Hard coal and mining

Hard coal was already known in antiquity , but was hardly used. Instead, wood is used as fuel or charcoal is made from it. It was used for heating buildings and in numerous trades; of pottery , of the glass - and porcelain production , for the manufacture of bricks and in metal recovery. When wood, and thus also charcoal, became more expensive, people slowly switched to hard coal. It has about twice as high an energy density , which leads to lower transport costs, since one load of wagon or ship could carry twice the amount of energy than one load of charcoal. You could also use it to reach higher temperatures. Hard coal became more important as a fuel for steam engines and in metallurgy; but only after the invention of the coke oven and the puddling process .

The mining was since ancient times a particularly innovative area. In particular, the problem of drainage could often only be solved with technical means. As soon as the shafts reached below the water table, water seeped in that had to be pumped out in order to be able to penetrate further. In ancient times, Archimedes' screws were used for this , which were operated by slaves. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, hoists powered by wind and water wheels were used instead. As mining was of great economic importance and the problem of dewatering became more and more urgent, natural scientists began to deal with it and made progress in pneumatics , hydraulics and other areas to improve pumps. In addition, mining schools were established for the training of miners and mining academies for engineers , which had a level of training roughly equivalent to that of a university.

Technical innovations in mining related to the transition from tunnel to civil engineering , the steam engine to pumping water and improved transport options. At the beginning of the 19th century, Germany began to build Seiger shafts instead of tunnels . These were deeper (vertical) shafts with which one could penetrate into greater depths in order to develop more productive deposits. However, this aggravated the drainage problem. That is why the first Newcomen steam engine was used in England to pump out the water since the beginning of the 18th century. With increasing pumping depths and quantities, the usual hemp ropes reached their load limits and were replaced by wire ropes thanks to the steel industry. In order to simplify the transport of the rocks, wooden and later iron rails were laid on which wagons were moved. For days they were pulled by horses until they were replaced by the steam train.

Iron extraction

The extraction of malleable iron from iron ores has taken place in three stages since the beginning of the Iron Age . First the metallic iron was melted out of the ores. The pig iron obtained in this way was still heavily contaminated with undesirable elements. In a second step, freshening , the iron was cleaned of these elements. Then it was worked under the forge hammer to get a uniform material and to drive out the last impurities. However, the details at each of these levels changed several times in the course of industrialization. This applies to the use of coke obtained from hard coal instead of charcoal in the blast furnace and for refining, rolling instead of forging , better furnaces and a better supply of oxygen that improved the quality of ferrous materials such as wrought iron , cast iron and cast steel , allowed larger production quantities and were at the same time cheaper.

Iron extraction in pre-industrial times

During the Renaissance, iron ore was placed in blast furnaces along with charcoal . Bellows driven by water wheels blew air into the furnace and thus supplied additional oxygen. In the blast furnace, solid pig iron was finally formed at low combustion temperatures of around 1100 ° C, which contained almost no carbon and was therefore soft and malleable. To improve its hardness and strength, it was annealed together with charcoal. At temperatures around 1600 ° C, liquid pig iron was produced which contained 4 to 5% carbon and was very hard. Liquid pig iron was excellent for casting, but it was not malleable, which is why it was refined. To do this, it was melted down again together with slag, which reduced the carbon content.

Coke oven

Since charcoal was becoming increasingly scarce and expensive, some hut owners tried to use hard coal instead. However, it is heavily contaminated with sulfur and other elements that make the iron hard, brittle and therefore unusable. Abraham Darby came up with the idea of ​​coking hard coal - i.e. heating it in the absence of oxygen - and helped the coke oven achieve its breakthrough. However, numerous detailed problems had to be solved on the way to a functioning coke oven. The coke clumped together much faster and clogged the furnaces. In addition, it still contained impurities that required a different lining of the furnace and special additives that had to be matched to the exact chemical composition of the ores.

Refining, forging and rolling

Henry Cort's puddling process made it possible to use coal for freshening. The pig iron lies on a stove under which a coal fire burns. This separates the pig iron from the sulfur in the hard coal. On the stove, the carbon in the pig iron burned with the oxygen in the air in several hours. As the carbon content falls, so does the iron's melting temperature, so that solid iron lumps - the lumps - slowly formed. These were constantly turned and turned by a worker to ensure that the carbon content in all parts of the metal sank evenly, which required a lot of strength and experience. Then they were sold as semi-finished products such as ingots to the metalworking industry or rolled into rails, which made up the majority of production.

Bulk steel process

The bottleneck in the production chain from the ore to the finished material was puddling, which could not be machined. The size of the ovens was limited by the strength of the workers. Bessemer succeeded in making the decisive improvement. He filled the pig iron in a converter and blew air through nozzles from below, so that the carbon in the pig iron was burned with the oxygen in the air within just 20 minutes. The Bessemer process did not require coal, it even generated heat when it was burned instead of consuming it, and it could be machined. A process variant that is well suited for phosphorus-containing ores, which were common in Germany, is the Thomas process . There was also the Siemens-Martin process , in which temperatures are generated through combustion in a special furnace that are above the melting temperature of steel. This made it possible to produce steels that were qualitatively superior to Bessemer and Thomas steel. Siemens-Martin steel, however, was somewhat more expensive because of the more complex furnaces, so that all three processes competed with one another until they were replaced by the LD process in the middle of the 20th century .

Metal processing

A large part of the steel from heavy industry was processed in mechanical engineering into steam engines, machine tools such as milling, drilling and lathes or machine hammers, as well as steam locomotives, railroad cars, spinning and weaving machines. For the early mechanical engineering factories, it was typical to produce several of these machine types in smaller numbers. It was not until 1900 that serial production began. The most important advances in mechanical engineering relate to the machine tools that are needed to build the other machines and are therefore of particular importance. The high demand for the same iron parts for the textile industry promoted their development, since only with them iron parts could be produced precisely and in large numbers at the same time.

Boring mills

In the Renaissance cannons were made by pouring bronze into a mold. The barrel was then drilled out on a boring mill. The cylinders of the first steam engines were manufactured with the resulting boring mills. However, they were made of the much harder cast iron and had a significantly larger diameter of about one meter, which made it difficult to manufacture with the required accuracy. It took James Watt ten years after his decisive invention until he found a manufacturer in John Wilkinson who could manufacture the cylinders. The drill used was driven by a water wheel and the drill itself was stored both in front of and behind the horizontal cylinder in order to avoid vibrations. In the course of the 19th century, drills powered by steam engines were added. The main types are the pillar drilling machine , the column drilling machine and the radial drilling machine .

Lathes

The lathe is required for screws, shafts, spindles, axes and flanges and is therefore of particular importance for industrialization. Their preliminary work comes from two different areas: the lathes for woodworking and the lathes for watchmakers and precision mechanics. Two different types were used for woodworking, which themselves were made of wood. The rocker lathe, which could be operated alone, and the crank-driven lathe that was important for further development. Here an assistant turned a crank while the master could hold the tool with both hands to machine the workpiece. In the course of industrialization, the crank and the assistant were replaced by a drive with steam engines. In watchmaking and precision mechanics, lathes were made of metal and were used to process copper materials such as brass. The tool was integrated into the machine and was moved via wheels, which enabled higher levels of accuracy. In addition, the lead screw lathe was developed for the production of screws and threads . The lead screw ensures that the tool moves a constant distance per revolution of the workpiece, so that a uniform thread is created.

Henry Maudslay integrated the various structural details in a machine with which one could machine the stronger iron just as precisely as brass. His lathe consisted of an iron frame, was powered by steam engines, and had a tool holder and a lead screw.

Planers and milling machines

For a long time planing machines were used for machining flat parts such as machine beds and guides, which developed similarly to the lathe. They were also powered by machines and had a tool holder. From the 19th century they were replaced by milling machines that had no predecessors but were completely new.

Development from 1850

Up to the middle of the 19th century there were machine tools for all important manufacturing processes. Towards the end of the century many were given electrical controls . Important products in mechanical engineering were now sewing machines and bicycles . At the beginning of the 20th century, people started to equip each machine with its own electric motor instead of several with a single steam engine. New products were cars , internal combustion engines and airplanes . From the 1950s onwards, the CNC controls that made more complex components possible.

Power engineering and power machines

In pre-industrial times, wind and water mills were the most widely used drive machines. Watermills have been known since late antiquity and spread across Europe in the early Middle Ages. Windmills have supplemented them since the 12th century, especially in coastal regions. They were used not only to grind grain, but also in mining to pump water, to move forging hammers and bellows, to mill cloth and as drives for the first textile and machine tools. Even after the invention of the steam engine, water power was further expanded. In Germany, the use of watermills did not reach its peak until 1880.

Steam engines

In the Renaissance there were numerous attempts to build a machine that could do mechanical work through combustion. Thomas Newcomen succeeded in building a functioning steam engine for the first time in 1712 , which was initially used in mining. With her, a boiler was fired with coal to generate water vapor which condensed under the cylinder. The resulting negative pressure in relation to the surroundings led to the air pressure of the surroundings pushing the piston in the cylinder downwards. Because of its low efficiency, the Newcomen steam engine spread relatively slowly. James Watt improved the construction in the second half of the century and decisively increased the efficiency. He used the steam to create an overpressure above the piston and no longer let the steam condense directly under the cylinder, but in a separate container, the condenser. When his patent expired in 1800, the steam engine spread throughout Europe and was used as a drive machine in numerous trades. The most important applications outside of mining were the drive for textile machines as well as for ships and locomotives. In the course of the 19th century, the boiler pressure was continuously increased, which led to higher speeds and more power.

Electric motor and internal combustion engines

The steam engines were replaced by electric and internal combustion engines .

The electric motor was developed in the middle of the 19th century and converted electrical energy into mechanical energy. By reversing its operating principle, the generator that generates electrical energy was created. Since electrical energy can be transmitted much faster, further and with less loss than mechanical energy, the electric motor prevailed over the steam engine in the industry.

In contrast, the diesel and gasoline engines , which emerged at the turn of the 20th century, prevailed as drives for vehicles and replaced steam locomotives and ships.

See also

literature

  • Günter Spur: Production technology in transition. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, Vienna, 1979, ISBN 3-446-12757-7 .
  • Christian Kleinschmidt: Technology and Economy in the 19th and 20th Century. Oldenbourg, Munich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58030-3 .
  • Ulrich Wengenroth (Hrsg.): Technology and economy. Volume 8 by Armin Hermann, Wilhelm Dettmering (Ed.): Technology and Culture , Düsseldorf, VDI-Verlag 1993, ISBN 3-18-400868-1 .
  • Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaea history of technology. Propylaea, Berlin 1997.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Akos Paulinyi: The upheavals of technology in the industrial revolution between 1750 and 1840 in: Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaen Technikgeschichte - Volume 3. Propylaen, Berlin 1997, pp. 286f., 299f.
  2. ↑ Akos Paulinyi: The upheavals of technology in the industrial revolution between 1750 and 1840 in: Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaen Technikgeschichte - Volume 3. Propylaen, Berlin 1997, p. 369f.
  3. ↑ Akos Paulinyi: The upheavals of technology in the industrial revolution between 1750 and 1840 in: Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaen Technikgeschichte - Volume 3. Propylaen, Berlin 1997, pp. 389, 397, 402.
  4. ↑ Wolfhardt Weber: Shortening of time and space - techniques without balance between 1840 and 1880 in: Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaen Technikgeschichte - Volume 3. Propylaen, Berlin 1997, pp. 65, 71, 78.
  5. ↑ Günter Spur: Production technology in transition. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, Vienna, 1979, pp. 145, 160, 174, 343, 504.
  6. ↑ Akos Paulinyi: The upheavals of technology in the industrial revolution between 1750 and 1840 in: Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaen Technikgeschichte - Volume 3. Propylaen, Berlin 1997, p. 359f.
  7. ↑ Wolfhardt Weber: Shortening of time and space - techniques without balance between 1840 and 1880 in: Wolfgang König (Hrsg.): Propylaen Technikgeschichte - Volume 3. Propylaen, Berlin 1997, pp. 44, 53.