Richard Arkwright's water frame (1769)
James Hargreaves (1765)'s spinning jenny
Automated thread spinning
Cartwright's power loom (1787)
First steam-powered mill (1779)
Crompton's "mule" + Spinning jenny and water frame fully automated weaving process. Yeah.
James Brindley (1761)'s Bridgewater Canal
Allowed for barges to carry coal from Worsely to Manchester
Thomas Newcomen (1712)'s steam engine
First commercially successful (though kind of clumsy) steam engine, used to pump water out of coal mines. Big deal, since we've just unlocked a new power source.
William Murdock's cool thing he did (1792)
Lit his home using coal gas. Also, he was James Watt's assistant.
First skyscraper (10 stories tall) (in Chicago)
1883
Singer's first practical sewing machine (1851)
Allowed for more sewing, including at-home
Alexander Graham Bell's telephone (1876)
Made communicating across long distances much easier, but such conversations still had to be done in public, etc.,
Marc Brunel's first underwater tunnel (1826-1842)
Eiffel Tower (1889)
For the World Exposition in Paris
This would allow for long-distance communication
Reinforced Concrete
Helped plant crops
Michael Faraday (1831)'s discovery of electromagnetic currents
Thomas Alva Edison's phonograph (1877)
John Kay (1733)'s flying shuttle
Tremendously helped with making weaving easier, used in the putting-out industry at first.
Invented the incandescent lamp. Though he was, in general, prone to rude tendencies.
Gugliemo Marconi (1901) transatlantic radio message
Eli Whitney (1793)'s cotton gin
This separated the useful raw cotton from its seeds, making the cotton industry much more profitable. It had mixed effects — remember how a lot of cotton was farmed using slave labor.
First transatlantic cable completed
Large suspension bridge, "triumph of engineering."
Daguerre's daguerrotype (1838)
Early form of photography
Alfred Nobel's dynamite (1867)
cars go vroom
Gugliemo Marconi (1896)'s wireless telegraph patent
Useful for, like, ship distress calls. Say, for example, the one the Titanic sent out.
Cathode rays discovered
1858
Charles Babbage (1834)'s analytic engine
Hiram Maxim's machine gun (1884)
Mass slaughter is now possible, begins mechanization of warfare. Unfortunately, as some predicted, his machine gun did not prevent war — people still fought, despite these monsters being on the battlefield.
