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Hello in 1842 a German businessman sent his 22-year-old son abroad to work in the Manchester office of the family textile firm

This young man Frederick Engels spent much of the next two years exploring the slums and factories of the city

Horrified by the poverty, disease and overcrowding here witness Engels documented his experiences in a book entitled the condition of the working class in England in 1844

Engels recognized that the introduction of steam power and new manufacturing technologies had changed Britain forever

These inventions he wrote gave rise to an industrial revolution a revolution which altered the whole civil society

One the historical importance of which is only now beginning to be recognized the consequences of the industrial revolution were certainly profound

The economy social structures housing education and public health were all affected many of these effects at a human cost

But in other ways society was changed for the better

With me to discuss the legacy of the industrial revolution I Jane Humphreys professor of economic history and fellow of all souls college Oxford

Emma Griffin senior lecturing history at the University of East Anglia and Lawrence Golden

fellow and tutoring history at St Peter's College, Oxford Jane Humphreys

The industrial revolution is sought to take place between about 1750 and 1830

Can you give us an overall sense of the transformation it brought on the

Radio Society well as the label industrial revolution

Suggests economic historians used to think that this was an era of seismic change in the economy

Reflected in an upwards jump in the growth rate of output particularly industrial output and of productivity

So the pioneer quantifiers for his dean and max coal thought that the rate of growth of industrial output

Jumped from about less than half a percent per annum in the middle of the 18th century to a whacking three and a half percent by its closing decays

This vision of the industrial revolution was also a this upward leap in growth rates was associated with a host of other changes

The application of science to a production

...