![]() ![]() Mapping the transitionīishop and Lucas initiated this project after determining that almost no attention had been paid to the roles that climate and physical geography played in Britain’s transition to steam power. ![]() “We have found that neither of these claims is credible,” Jonell says. This is significant, says Jonell, because the prevailing narrative has been that the British textile industry largely abandoned water power either because steam power became cheaper, or because existing water resources had been exhausted. The team, which includes principal investigators Adam Lucas and the late Paul Bishop, also found indications that Scotland continued using water power longer than England did. ![]() “Most of the literature has focused on the role of steam power driving the Industrial Revolution, but our team has found further evidence supporting previous scholarship arguing that water provided most of the power during the revolution’s first four to six decades.” “The causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution have remained a hot topic of scholarly debate since the term was popularized in the 1880s,” says Tara Jonell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences. Instead, historical precipitation records suggest that low stream flows caused by periodic drought may have played a much more important role in the country’s shift toward steam power. Now new research to be presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of The Geological Society of America indicates that the potential stream power of only a few English river basins had been fully tapped by the mid-19th century. One long-held argument for this move “away from the water” has been that Britain no longer had sufficient water resources to satisfy the increasing power demands of its textile mills. Britain’s transition from water power to coal-based steam power set the stage for the 19th century Industrial Revolution, which transformed much of Europe and North America into predominantly urban and industrialized societies. ![]()
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