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Course: World History Project - Origins to the Present > Unit 6
Lesson 6: Other Materials- WATCH: The Lives of Nailers in Industrial England
- WATCH: Cleaning Water Pollution in the Industrial Revolution
- WATCH: A Victorian Laundry Room and Washing Machine
- READ: The Rise of the West?
- READ: European States and Empires
- READ: Qing Dynasty
- READ: Ottoman Empire
- READ: Mughal Empire
- READ: Tokugawa Shogunate
- READ: Sub-Saharan Africa
- READ: Americas in 1750
- READ: Oceania and the Pacific in 1750
- READ: Italian Nationalism - A Point of View
- READ: Bismarck and German Nationalism
- READ: Economic and Material Causes of Revolt
- READ: Capitalism and Slavery
- READ: Imperialism and De-Industrialization in India
- READ: Industrialization and Migration
- READ: Meiji Restoration
- READ: The Emergence of Industrial Capitalism
- READ: Appraising Napoleon
- READ: African Resistance to Colonialism
- READ: The Berlin Conference
- READ: Innovations and Innovators of the Industrial Revolution
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WATCH: Cleaning Water Pollution in the Industrial Revolution
You might take it for granted today, but clean water was a fantasy for most people during the Industrial Revolution. Everything from sewage to dead bodies polluted Britain’s water. In this short video, Peter Griffin explains how steam engines helped filter foreign bodies from our drinking water. Like what you see? This video is part of a comprehensive social studies curriculum from OER Project, a family of free, online social studies courses. OER Project aims to empower teachers by offering free and fully supported social studies courses for middle- and high-school students. Your account is the key to accessing our standards-aligned courses that are designed with built-in supports like leveled readings, audio recordings of texts, video transcripts, and more. Register today at oerproject.com!
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Website: https://www.oerproject.com/World-History
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OERProject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oerproject. Created by World History Project.
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Video transcript
NICK: I'm here with Peter Griffin to talk
about the problem with water during the Industrial Revolution. So Peter, what
was the issue with water? PETER: Basically, as the population grew and became more densely compact, the sewage was contaminating the drinking water, and obviously was a major health
issue. Some people had cess pits in their
cellars, and this could lead, obviously, to production of Methane gas in the cellar, which could then explode or asphyxiate people. Most of the public wells were in churchyards, very contaminated by rotting bodies, and the water supply, it
was absolutely terrible. So, Thomas Hawksley pioneered the use of a system. The first one he built was at Trentbridge in Nottingham, and it's unique
in that he kept the water pressure on 24/7, so you didn't get contaminated
water going back into the main. He built it on the side of the river. He built brink line chambers with gravel in them to filter the river water. It then went through
cast-iron pipes to a steam-powered pumping station. Pump the water through
cast-iron pipes to a totally enclosed brick built reservoir. So there's no
possibility of contamination, and the water then ran down by cast-iron pipes
to the streets, and finally to lead pipes into people's houses or standpipes. This is what's called a rotated beam
engine, operating on the Cornish cycle. In 1712, Thomas Newcomen invented the
first practical, usable steam engine. But it worked on the vacuum system, they put
steam into the cylinder, followed by a jet of cold water, which condensed the
steam, creating a vacuum, which sucked the piston down. It's deliberately designed so
that the pumping end was heavier, and that would then pull the piston up, you
then put more steam in, put a jet of water in, that condensed the steam, create a vacuum, pull the piston down. Steam piston went
down, water piston came up top. NICK: So what kind of machinery did this power? PETER: This powered water pumps. Over here you can see two
rods, parallel rods. They drove a pump that was 110 feet underground, about 35 meters in metric - there's a well drill down into the bunter
of sandstone which underlies Nottingham - so rainwater fell in the hills outside
the town, filtered through the rock, and was clean, totally uncontaminated. This
pump pulled the water up to the surface, and you can see the design of these rods - they're parallel. Before his waterworks came into use, there was a major cholera
outbreak, part of the globalization post the Napoleonic war, spread cholera and typhoid from all over Europe and North America. And the outbreak before
Hawksley's clean water supply caused heavy casualties throughout Europe, particularly around the UK. There was another outbreak after his water supply came into use, and
the casualties in Nottingham then were notably less than in the first outbreak and less than the rest of the country. So thousands of people at that time owed
their lives to Hawksley producing clean drinking water, available 24/7,
which is a world first.