Grade 6 – Social Science 1st to 4th industrial revolution z z 1st Industrial Revolution – The Age of Mechanical Production As it turns out, when you heat up WATER you get STEAM! And beginning around 1700s, through the introduction of the steam engine, steam was powering everything from agriculture to textile manufacturing. Society used to be largely agricultural, which is a fancy way of saying that life used to be centered around farming. But with steam power, those farming societies gave way to urbanization. The world began to rely on steam power and machine tools, while steamships and railroads revolutionized how people got from A to B. And what emerged as the new center of community life? THE FACTORY! z 2nd Industrial Revolution – The Age of Science & Mass Production Things started to speed up with a number of key inventions. Think airplanes, chemical fertilizer. All inventions that helped us go faster and do more. That’s science, folks. It works. Scientific principles were brought right into the factories. Most notably, the assembly line, which effectively powered mass production. By the early part of the 20th century, Henry Ford’s company was mass producing the groundbreaking Ford Model T car. People follow the jobs, and the early 1900s saw workers leaving their rural homes behind to move to urban areas and factory jobs. Along with increasing urbanization, inventions such as electric lighting, radio, and telephones transformed the way people lived and communicated. When you stop and think about it, it was this industrial revolution, the second one, that ushered in the modern world. z 3rd Industrial Revolution – The Digital Revolution So, if you’re reading this, you’re experiencing some of the wonders of the digital revolution RIGHT NOW. You’re enjoying the cloud, the Internet, and some kind of handy device that lets you access both. You can even be reading this on your phone HELLO THERE. Welcome to the DIGITAL REVOLUTION! Beginning in the 1950s, the third industrial revolution brought computing, personal and the Internet—the digital revolution. Things that used to be analog moved to digital technologies. z 4th Industrial Revolution – The Age of Technology Starting Now !!! Each of these first three industrial revolutions represented profound change. We’re talking major societal transformation. Life went from being all about the farm to all about the factory, and people moved from the country into town with the introduction of mechanical production. How people lived and worked fundamentally changed with the discovery of electricity and mass production. And most recently, the digital revolution altered nearly every industry, once again transforming how people live, work, and communicate. So where are we now? Well, at this moment, many of the technologies people dreamed of in the 1950s and 60s have become a REALITY! Maybe we don’t have flying cars yet, but we’ve got robots! Plus there’s genetic sequencing and editing, artificial intelligence, miniaturized sensors, and 3D printing, to name a few. And when you put some of these technologies together, well, let’s just say the innovations are unexpected and SURPRISING. This is the beginning of the next great industrial revolution: The FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION