Routledge Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition
industrial revolution (N6)
A discontinuity in the growth of an economy, taking the form of a rapid rate of technical progress leading to a sustained increase in per capita real incomes. This revolution is usually accompanied by a change in the occupational structure as factory replaces handicraft production, and urbanization of the population. Rostow mentions four industrial revolutions.
The first was in the 1780s associated with the textile industry, the second the railway boom of the 1830s and 1840s, the third, based on steel, machine tools and motor vehicles, which came to an end in the 1970s and the fourth, which is now taking place, based on electronics and biology. A disruptive feature of the fourth is the use of robots to replace workers in manufacturing, creating unpredictable and undesired employment effects.
See also: Kondratieff cycle; take-off
References
Deane, P. (1979) The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rostow, W.W. (1971) The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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