preview

The Impact Of Technological Change On The British Industrial Revolution

Better Essays

Technological change was at the heart of driving the British Industrial Revolution over the late 18th and early 19th century. A series of significant inventions such as steam engines, spinning jenny and water frame had precipitated British economy’s evolution from pre-modern to sustained economic growth. To explain the radical change in technology, two competing factors are highlighted in literature. Economists like Sir John R.Hicks outlined that “the real reason for the predominance of labour-saving inventions is surely that … a change in the relative prices of the factors of production is itself a spur to innovation and to inventions” (). In contrast, Joel Mokyr argued that it was the right combination of useful knowledge generated by scientists, engineers and inventors to be exploited by a supply of skilled craftsmen in an institutional environment that produced the correct incentives for entrepreneurs (Crafts, 2010, p155-156). By comparing the impacts of factor prices and institutions on technological change in Industrial Revolution, the former is evidently more important than the latter.
Britain’s peculiar wage and price structure was decisive in motivating dramatic technological change over industrial revolution. The abundance of coal’s supply made energy very cheap (Allen, 2009, p82). Other than that, the relative price of labour to capital and energy had been surging from the mid-17th century (Allen, 2009, pp171-172). Due to the factor price structure of British

Get Access