Editing Industrial Revolution (section)

==Notes==
*This was the era where Europeans, and the nations descended from them, truly and unquestionably ruled the world. Their head-start in industrialization, advanced military and civilian technology, the vast accumulated wealth from previous centuries, and advanced medicine and agriculture gave them an advantage that any other culture at the time was incapable of overcoming. With that came a lot of nastiness. You see, the notion that people not born with a silver spoon up their arses were worth more than their value as meatshields or manual laborers hadn't caught on yet, and this went double for foreigners. The ruthlessness and blatant disregard for human life with which the imperial powers of the time exploited the people they ruled over caused widespread resentment and led to a long series of uprisings, some more successful than others. Later down the line this exploitation triggered the decolonization movement and the brutal struggle of the underclasses for equal rights and humane treatment (which continue to this day). 
*The agricultural revolution, where machines and other modern technology were applied to farming, accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the former fed the latter by allowing enough food to be produced that the majority of workers could take factory jobs instead of agricultural work. Additionally, the invention of the Haber-Bosch-process made the large-scale production of anorganic fertilizer from atmopheric nitrogen possible, turning landscapes that were previously thought of as unsuitable for any kind of farming into lush gardens. This earned Fritz Haber, its inventor, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1919 (at the time a very controversial decision, as Haber also provided his expertise to the German war effort and among other things invented ammonium nitrate as a substitute for TNT and the first chemical weapons to be used in WWI.)
* Several technologies supported the process of industrialization. Steam power helped kick things off by revolutionizing manufacturing and transportation, but two others were also important. Large machinery and tall buildings required steel to become cheap enough that it could be made on a massive scale. Historically, making good-quality steel was a time-consuming process that needed the careful attention of expert craftsmen. This changed with the invention of the Bessemer process, wherein bellows would be used to blast hot air directly into the molten iron to get it hot enough to smelt out impurities. Electricity also helped tremendously, allowing for much longer working cycles through lightbulbs and improved communications through telegraph and radio.
*The invention of vapor-compression cycle cooling was also a major innovation of this era, although until electricity became widely available its use was mostly constrained to steam-powered dairies in cities. This allowed for much denser and heavily mechanized industrial centers, as well greater population in warmer areas. The flush toilet and toilet paper also originated at this time.
*Vulcanized rubber arose during this era. While important for sealing and tires, one major change this facilitated was in clothing. The elastic waistband brought about modern undergarments among other things. The first plastics were invented in the 1860s, but these early plastics were brittle and had few practical uses, so the true rise of plastics would not be till the era of [[The World Wars]] and [[The Cold War|and beyond]].  
*Food preservation made large advances. For most of human history, food preservation had been limited to drying (through methods including salt, smoke and/or sugar), pickling and (in climates that allowed it) freezing, all of which originated in the [[Bronze Age]] at the latest. Now methods like jarring and canning food emerged (though early sealing methods turned out to be toxic themselves), along with serious improvements to old methods like like quick freezing, the electric icemaker/freezer/refrigerator (domestic versions won't appear till the interwar period though), freeze-drying, and spray-drying, led to food that took up much less space while having lifespans measured in ''years''. These methods continue to be refined in [[Post-Cold War|the current era]], largely through new materials and understanding of microscopic organisms.
**To add to that, the invention of beef extract by the German chemist Justus von Liebig revolutionized the way food could be produced at larger scales at lower cost. It served as the catalyst for the invention of most modern processed foods and the birth of large scale food factories, where cheap food could be produced to feed an ever increasing amount of mouths, further accelerating the population boom that coincided with the improvement of healthcare as outlined below. 
*The invention of modern medicine, which arguably started with the Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis' research into childbed fever (a dangerous infection of the uterus through bacteria that enter the body after giving birth), delivered the modern template of how medical research is conducted (i.e. You make an observation, formulate an hypothesis based on that observation and employ a study with standardized sets of probands to prove or disprove your hypothesis). Combined with the with the first proof of how bacteria cause sickness through the German doctor Robert Koch and the subsequent triumph of medical hygiene, this newfound understanding of illnesses and plagues that had decimated entire civilizations in the millennia before led to a huge increase in birth rates and life expectancy for every human on the planet. As a result, the world population increased rapidly, starting in the 1850s, a trend that peaked in the 1960s and is continuously decreasing ever since (not that bad of a thing as one might think, with climate change, limited resources and all) 
*The Scramble for Africa begins in 1881 and ends in 1914. Almost all modern "explorer" cliches and imagery began here; think Theodore Roosevelt's misadventures, Dr. Stanley Livingston of "I presume?" fame, or the Indiana Jones movies. The two main exceptions, the American frontiersman in his coonskin cap and breastplate-clad Spanish conquistador, are both strongly linked to a specific type and time instead of explorers in general. The stereotype of the great white hunter/explorer wearing a pith helmet, binoculars, and khaki overalls while hacking his way through the jungle with a big-ass knife in one hand and an elephant gun in the other started here.
*Human flight was first achieved in this era. In 1783 the first air balloon flight took place, and was first put to military use in 1794. The Wright Flyer took flight in late 1903, marking the first heavier than air flying machine. Zeppelins became practical just before World War I.
* Naval technology went through multiple revolutions. The wooden sailing ships of the Napoleonic Wars gave way to ironclad tallships with steam and sail propulsion, only to be replaced in turn by warships built entirely from steel. The famous duel of the ''Merrimack'' and the ''Monitor'' marked the end of wooden warships, the appearance of the steam launch ''Turbinia'' led to a transition to turbine engines, and HMS ''Dreadnought'' heralded the modern battleship. The first military submarines appeared in the American Revolution and Civil War, although the concept wouldn't be perfected until the Great War.
* The beginnings of feminism started in the 19th century, as women began to lobby for more access to their countries' social, political, and economic spheres. They scored some notable successes. In 1861, property-owning women in Victoria Australia could vote in local elections. In 1890 women gained the full franchise (but could not run for office) in New Zealand, while in 1893 full female suffrage was permitted in Colorado and 1902 saw federal suffrage in the new Commonwealth of Australia. By the late 19th century, the academic profession was opened up to women. It was still pretty damn sexist, but things were in motion.
* The Victorians (or at least those who could afford to do so) went in for elaborate periods of mourning. Not just a wake, funeral, and a catered lunch in formal wear while a funeral home gouges the family, or even sitting shiva for a week. A widow mourning her dear departed hubby was expected to wear black clothing and a veil, put up black ornamentation and wear black jewelry, and act reserved and solemn and so forth for a year. A lot of what we associate with death, mourning and similar subjects has its origins here and the Goths got a lot from it.
* Holiday travel and mass tourism also became a thing here. Though medieval peasants had gotten lots of days off for religious reasons, they typically didn't have much to do or anywhere to go on those days off, being as they were medieval peasants and more often than not used their free time to plow the land they actually owned themselves to prepare for winter. Rich people, of course, had always been able to travel pretty much anywhere they liked, which had led to the rise of the "Grand Tour", wherein young men (and occasionally women) of means would dick around Europe for a few months or years while receiving a classical education, taking in the local culture, and getting laid. The proliferation of railways, steamships, and middle-class jobs made travel a practicable concept for the masses for the first time, so that by the 1870s an average middle-class family could go to the country or the seaside for a vacation or even travel abroad on a package tour. The Grand Tour persisted for a while after this, thanks to ''nouveau riche'' Americans taking up the practice, but ultimately it fell out of favor as enthusiasm for classical culture declined.