Industrial Revolution Flashcards
Grade 5 · Social Studies · Flashcards
Key terms, inventors, and concepts from the Industrial Revolution era.
Flashcards
- Industrial Revolution
- The transition from hand production to machine-based manufacturing in factories, beginning in Britain around the 1760s.
- Steam Engine
- A machine that uses steam pressure to produce mechanical work; improved by James Watt and essential to Industrial Revolution factories and transportation.
- James Watt
- Scottish inventor who greatly improved the steam engine in the 1760s–1780s, making it the power source of the Industrial Revolution.
- Eli Whitney
- American inventor of the cotton gin (1793) and a pioneer of interchangeable parts, both important to industrialization.
- Cotton Gin
- A machine invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 that rapidly separated cotton fibers from seeds, greatly increasing Southern cotton production.
- Textile Mill
- A factory using machines to spin thread and weave cloth; one of the first major industries of the Industrial Revolution.
- Urbanization
- The growth of cities as large numbers of people move from rural areas to urban centers, often to find factory work.
- Factory System
- The organization of manufacturing in which workers and machines are concentrated in a central facility to mass-produce goods.
- Labor Movement
- The organized effort by workers to improve wages, reduce working hours, and establish safe working conditions.
- Child Labor
- The employment of children in factories, mines, and other industrial workplaces — common during the Industrial Revolution.
- Gilded Age
- The period of rapid U.S. industrialization after the Civil War (c. 1870–1900), marked by great wealth for industrialists and poverty for many workers.
- Transcontinental Railroad
- The railroad completed in 1869 that connected the eastern United States to California, enabling rapid transport of goods and people across the country.
- Interchangeable Parts
- Identical, standardized components that can replace each other in a machine — pioneered by Eli Whitney and essential to mass production.
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