<P> Precision manufacturing techniques made it possible to build machines that mechanized the shoe industry . and the watch industry . The industrialisation of the watch industry started 1854 also in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the Waltham Watch Company, with the development of machine tools, gauges and assembling methods adapted to the micro precision required for watches . </P> <P> Steel is often cited as the first of several new areas for industrial mass - production, which are said to characterise a "Second Industrial Revolution", beginning around 1850, although a method for mass manufacture of steel was not invented until the 1860s, when Sir Henry Bessemer invented a new furnace which could convert molten pig iron into steel in large quantities . However, it only became widely available in the 1870s after the process was modified to produce more uniform quality . Bessemer steel was being displaced by the open hearth furnace near the end of the 19th century . </P> <P> This Second Industrial Revolution gradually grew to include chemicals, mainly the chemical industries, petroleum (refining and distribution), and, in the 20th century, the automotive industry, and was marked by a transition of technological leadership from Britain to the United States and Germany . </P> <P> The increasing availability of economical petroleum products also reduced the importance of coal and further widened the potential for industrialisation . </P>

Which best describes work in the early stages of the industrial revolution