<P> GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per - capita economic growth in capitalist economies . Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants . </P> <P> Although the structural change from agriculture to industry is widely associated with Industrial Revolution, in United Kingdom it was already almost complete by 1760 . </P> <P> The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes . Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T.S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 . Rapid industrialization first began in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s, with high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring after 1800 . Mechanized textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France . </P> <P> An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to the early 1840s when the adoption of the original innovations of the Industrial Revolution, such as mechanized spinning and weaving, slowed and their markets matured . Innovations developed late in the period, such as the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, hot blast iron smelting and new technologies, such as the electrical telegraph, widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of growth . Rapid economic growth began to occur after 1870, springing from a new group of innovations in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution . These new innovations included new steel making processes, the large - scale manufacture of machine tools and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam - powered factories . </P>

The origins of the industrial revolution in england