<P> In 1793, Samuel Slater (1768--1835) founded the Slater Mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island . He had learned of the new textile technologies as a boy apprentice in Derbyshire, England, and defied laws against the emigration of skilled workers by leaving for New York in 1789, hoping to make money with his knowledge . After founding Slater's Mill, he went on to own 13 textile mills . Daniel Day established a wool carding mill in the Blackstone Valley at Uxbridge, Massachusetts in 1809, the third woollen mill established in the US (The first was in Hartford, Connecticut, and the second at Watertown, Massachusetts .) The John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor retraces the history of "America's Hardest - Working River', the Blackstone . The Blackstone River and its tributaries, which cover more than 45 miles (72 km) from Worcester, Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island, was the birthplace of America's Industrial Revolution . At its peak over 1100 mills operated in this valley, including Slater's mill, and with it the earliest beginnings of America's Industrial and Technological Development . </P> <P> Merchant Francis Cabot Lowell from Newburyport, Massachusetts memorised the design of textile machines on his tour of British factories in 1810 . Realising that the War of 1812 had ruined his import business but that a demand for domestic finished cloth was emerging in America, on his return to the United States, he set up the Boston Manufacturing Company . Lowell and his partners built America's second cotton - to - cloth textile mill at Waltham, Massachusetts, second to the Beverly Cotton Manufactory . After his death in 1817, his associates built America's first planned factory town, which they named after him . This enterprise was capitalised in a public stock offering, one of the first uses of it in the United States . Lowell, Massachusetts, using 5.6 miles (9.0 km) of canals and 10,000 horsepower delivered by the Merrimack River, is considered by some as a major contributor to the success of the American Industrial Revolution . The short - lived utopia - like Waltham - Lowell system was formed, as a direct response to the poor working conditions in Britain . However, by 1850, especially following the Irish Potato Famine, the system had been replaced by poor immigrant labour . </P> <P> A major U.S. contribution to industrialization was the development of techniques to make interchangeable parts from metal . Precision metal machining techniques were developed by the U.S. Department of War to make interchangeable parts for small firearms . The development work took place at the Federal Arsenals at Springfield Armory and Harpers Ferry Armory . Techniques for precision machining using machine tools included using fixtures to hold the parts in proper position, jigs to guide the cutting tools and precision blocks and gauges to measure the accuracy . The milling machine, a fundamental machine tool, is believed to have been invented by Eli Whitney, who was a government contractor who built firearms as part of this program . Another important invention was the Blanchard lathe, invented by Thomas Blanchard . The Blanchard lathe, or pattern tracing lathe, was actually a shaper that could produce copies of wooden gun stocks . The use of machinery and the techniques for producing standardized and interchangeable parts became known as the American system of manufacturing . </P> <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>

How did iron become the basic building block of the british economy in the nineteenth century