and many things that didn't were measured including rainfall, deaths and electric charge, an age of scientific curiosity and instrumentation. However, this was enlightenment for the few not the many - an important shift in intellectual thinking but with limited impact on the poor and disadvantaged. 12.9.2 Manufacture by Machine 1800 to 186010 The era in which 'machines to make machines' produced the looms and spinning machines that powered the industrial revolution destroying the Indian cotton spinning industry in the process. The industrial revolution resulted in a process of intense urbanisation and rural social deprivation. The net wealth of the nation increased but SO did social and economic inequality. In parallel, the traditional education system failed to respond to the need for engineers. This was to SOW the seeds of Britain's industrial decline in the twentieth century. 12.9.3 Age of the Engineer 1820 to 188011 This underlying problem was hidden by a small group of Victorian engineering superstars, James Watt, Robert Stephenson and Brunel. 12.9.4 Industrial Town12 Between 1800 and 1900 Britain's population more than quadrupled and became predominantly urban. Production machinery made it possible for factories to employ hundreds of people. Towns with high-density working populations created new problems of housing, health and transport. 12.9.5 Second Industrial Revolution13 The first Industrial Revolution had been based on steam power, factories and railways. The second was based on new kinds of power - electricity, new chemicals, new plastics and new drugs - particularly from recently industrialised nations like Germany and the USA. The USA introduced mass-production techniques into the weapons industry - a change which was to have a profound influence on the world's-twentieth century political order. 10 http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/stories/manufacture_by_machine/02.ST.01/ 11 http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/stories/the_age_of_the_engineer/03.ST.03/ http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/