In the 1800s, the world entered into the first industrial revolution. Industries were growing enormously due to new inventions and innovations. Since 1800s, the world has gone through four phases of industrial revolutions (Pozdnyakova et al., 2019). Each revolution affected the way of earning livelihood, movement, and communication. The purpose of this paper is to compare the life during the 1800s and now based on the fact that the two eras coincide with two epochs of industrialization.
People’s life started changing in 1800s following a series of inventions and innovations which appeared in industrial revolution. The era created brilliant opportunities for society, such as the realization of mass production, cost reduction, and quality products through technological innovation. People started getting jobs, and their living standards improved. The discovery of new products made it easier for people to live a healthier life. The life expectancy increased due to invention of medicine. It is also during this time that transport and mobility improved. Nicolaus Otto invented an internal combustion engine that used petroleum as an energy source (Popkova et al., 2019). In 1877, Daimler inherited the technology and obtained a patent (Popkova et al., 2019). Internal combustion engines, which have higher thermal efficiency and are easier to miniaturize than steam engines, have promoted innovation in industrial machinery and enabled the invention of automobiles and aircraft. With the spread industries, mass production of the manufacturing industry has greatly advanced, and capitalists have gained enormous wealth. Additionally, during 1800s, people could use electricity for the first time. Edison put an incandescent light bulb into practical use in 1879 (Pozdnyakova et al., 2019). In 1882, the world’s first power plant began operations on Pearl Street in New York to promote electricity (Pozdnyakova et al., 2019). Edison’s inventions became widespread around the world in the 1880s. In addition, the war of the currents with Nikola Tesla revitalized the industry. It was also during this period that electrical communication technology was born, such as the invention of the telephone by Bell in 1876.
Today’s life is much different from what happened in 1800s. The world is like a global village as mobility has become even much better. A person in Africa can do business with a person in Europe without any geographical barrier. People can access efficient services due to higher degree of automation of intellectual activities brought about by technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (Popkova et al., 2019). The developed AI not only works according to human programming, but also learns autonomously and can perform advanced tasks such as stock price fluctuation prediction and car driving. In the world after the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is said that robots will be able to perform in areas such as production control and design that only humans could do in the past. Furthermore, by utilizing internet of things (IoT) and big data, it is possible to deliver custom-made products according to current customer needs.
To conclude, it is clear that the life of citizens started improving since 1800s when the world experienced first industrial revolution. Today, the world is going through the fourth industrial revolution and the life of people is becoming even better and more convenient. People can work at the comfort of their homes using laptops. Citizens from one continent can do business with citizens from another continent. A university in the United States can offer lectures to students in Asia.
References
Pozdnyakova, U. A., Golikov, V. V., Peters, I. A., & Morozova, I. A. (2019). Genesis of the revolutionary transition to industry 4.0 in the 21st century and overview of previous industrial revolutions. In Industry 4.0: Industrial Revolution of the 21st Century (pp. 11-19). Springer.
Popkova, E. G., Ragulina, Y. V., & Bogoviz, A. V. (2019). Fundamental differences of transition to industry 4.0 from previous industrial revolutions. In Industry 4.0: Industrial Revolution of the 21st Century (pp. 21-29). Springer.