How Did The Industrial Revolution Affect Society

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Life today without the Industrial Revolution would have meant that it would have taken months for basic messages to be sent or years for people to travel to a part of a world. Before the extraordinary innovations of the Industrial Revolution, society was unproductive compared to modern standards due to very slow communication and transportation. It would be impossible to industrialize on Western Frontier of the United States in the early 19th century because the necessary supplies were hard to transport The most complicated modes of transportation were also limited to using natural powers such as animals or the wind. Communication was equally primitive as developments in transportation and was limited to speech and writing. However, the Industrial …show more content…

By the 1850s, “the Northeast had daily or weekly steamship runs carrying cargo or passengers. The first major advancement in steam based transportation was the steamboat, which traveled on canals or bodies of water and was more advanced than other modes of transportation” (“Transportation”). A steamboat was a vehicle which was propelled by a steam engine and ran under the operation of entrepreneurs like Cornelius Vanderbilt. Previously, boat travel was restricted to sails and big bodies of waters that could hold sailboats. However, steamboats were able to travel on small rivers without the need to use the wind. The steamboat improved society because it sped up the flow of life in industrializing parts of America such as New York by traveling through canals. While factories and businesses were thriving, steamboats assisted in the massive progress by transporting cargo such as agricultural items, coal, and steel, and, more importantly, people rapidly to keep up with the needs of society. However, the innovation of the steamboat also impacted society because it showed people in the nation that there was great potential to create new inventions; that there was more to be done with steam engines improving transportation. This was true because the steamboat set up the innovation of the

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