The term “Industrial Revolution” was coined almost 150 years ago to describe the technological, economic, and social transformations that took place first in Great Britain and then elsewhere in Europe and the United States. Between 1780 and 1850, traditional English society, in which the overwhelming majority of the population worked in agriculture, gave way to an industrial society wherein the majority lived in urban settings and worked in the manufacturing or service sectors. These changes gave rise to similarly momentous alterations in patterns of work, social hierarchies, material culture, and the regional and global balance of power. In the short run, working and living conditions for ordinary Europeans worsened. In the long run, industrialization led to a vast expansion in the economy, providing jobs and goods for a rapidly growing population, and fueling the West’s global pre-eminence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historians still debate whether “revolution” is an apt description for changes that took place over many decades, but there is little doubt that the consequences of those changes were profound. ■