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Article: Industrial Revolution
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
The industrial revolution can be defined as a drastic transformation both of the processes by which American (and European) society produced goods for human consumption, and of the social attitudes surrounding these processes. The first non-ambiguous use of the term is attributed to the French economist Adolphe Blanqui in 1837, but the idea of a "revolution" in the industrial sphere showed up in various forms in the writings of many French and British intellectuals as early as the 1820s. The expression underlines the depth and speed of the changes observed, and the fact that they seemed to derive from the introduction of machine-based ...