The Industrial Age
Explore the Industrial Age — the era of steam, steel, and factories that transformed human society from agrarian to industrial between 1760 and 1914.
The Industrial Age (c. 1760–1914) encompasses the First and Second Industrial Revolutions — the period when humanity transitioned from agrarian economies to industrial ones, fundamentally transforming how people lived, worked, traveled, and understood their world.
The first phase (c. 1760–1870) was centered in Britain and driven by steam power, textile mills, coal mining, and railways. The second phase (c. 1870–1914) was led by the United States and Germany, driven by electricity, steel, chemicals, and petroleum. Together, they produced the greatest increase in material wealth in human history, but also unprecedented social upheaval, environmental transformation, and new forms of inequality.
The Industrial Age created the modern world: factories, cities, railways, mass media, consumer culture, and the global economy. It also created the modern social conflicts: capital versus labor, urban poverty, environmental degradation, and the imperial competition for resources and markets that produced two world wars.
Lessons covering this topic
Browse all lessons →The Industrial Revolution Begins
Steam, iron, and the transformation of Britain.
Urbanization & the Working Class
Factory life, child labor, and the new industrial cities.
Capitalism & Its Critics
Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and the debate that defined modernity.
The Second Industrial Revolution
Steel, electricity, and the age of invention.