The Age of Coal and Steel

In the first half of the nineteenth century, most of the innovation in English industry was in the production of fabrics, or textiles, especially cotton. Although textiles still accounted for less than 10% of the English economy, the profits made from textiles would be invested to bring innovations to other industries in the second half of the century. The most important of these other industries would be coal and steel.

The first mills were powered by water. While water power drove machines faster than muscle power, these machines could be driven even faster by burning fossil fuels, primarily coal. Burning coal generated much more heat than wood enough heat to melt down metals such as iron, from which impurities could be removed and the molten metal molded into a useful shape. The introduction of the "hot blast" method of smelting iron, in 1829, made it possible for first time to produce great deal of iron relatively cheaply and quickly. In 1850s, the invention of the Bessamer process created a way to convert iron into the stronger, yet more flexible, metal of steel.