History of energy from 1800 to 1850

Summary: The first half of the 19th century saw new technologies and improved transportation powered by the consumption of coal at an unprecedented scale, although the majority of the world continued to consume traditional plant fuels, such as wood and peat, for energy.

The period between 1800 and 1850 can best be described as one of increasing contrast between industrializing regions, which burned ever-larger amounts of coal, and the majority of places, which were still consuming traditional fuels. The biggest encouragements to coal consumption were an increasing population that was difficult to supply with other energy sources and improvements in transportation that allowed coal to be shipped to more people. In Britain, most of the major improvements in river navigation and canals had occurred before 1800, and coal could efficiently reach most parts of the country.

A similar process happened in the eastern United States in the first half of the 19th century. The Schuylkill River was made navigable further inland in the early part of the century, and canals were built connecting it to the Hudson River. These allowed anthracite coal to be shipped to Philadelphia, New York, and other places along the routes. Other canals were built in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, as well as parts of northwestern Europe. These improvements in water transport enabled coal to be shipped to new places while encouraging the expansion of mines and many industries.

The other major development of this period was the first railroads, which allowed coal or wood to replace muscular power in transportation. However, not all places were served by efficient rail transport, so plant fuels continued to be burned in parts of Britain and most communities in Western Europe, America, and much of the rest of the world. It is also worth bearing in mind that populations were expanding rapidly everywhere during this period. This made it difficult for people to find sufficient energy from plant sources, thereby encouraging the use of coal but limiting the amount of energy available to many people for cooking.

Sources of Energy

Coal is the fuel most associated with change in this period of industrialization and transformation. Coal is easier to transport than plant fuels, because it contains more energy for the same mass and large amounts of it are concentrated in a few locations. There was also significantly more total energy available from coal than plant sources, so it could accommodate the needs of growing populations and expanding energy-intensive industries. While there were not any huge advances in its extraction, frequent small improvements occurred in the ventilation of mines and the removal of water from them. This allowed for the exploitation of deeper seams than in previous eras, while it also made it possible to mine for coal under wetland areas. In the early 19th century, the biggest producers of coal were northern England, Wales, Scotland, and southern Belgium. Because of the amounts of cheap energy available, these areas were also at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. However, coal is also present in many other places and began to be mined in parts of northern France, Germany, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio in this period.

Coal was also central to industrial expansion in these regions. Coal was shipped to numerous places in the world for local needs, with British coal even being used for salt making in Bengal. Access to coal as a domestic fuel allowed for urban expansion, since it was very difficult to grow enough wood near large cities to meet their residents’ cooking and heating needs. London became the first European city with more than 1 million people (in 1812), and along with New York and Paris it continued to expand to an unprecedented size. However, coal use in expanding cities created numerous problems with smoke pollution. The industrial cities of northern England were known for being covered with permanent clouds of smoke, and London was frequently engulfed in thick yellow fogs from the mixture of water particles and coal smoke.

Wood remained the most widely used fuel in rural parts of Europe and America and in the rest of the world. Even in coal-rich England, many rural areas in the south did not have easy access to coal and were still burning local wood into the 1830s. After 1840, most of these villages switched over to coal, and traditional English woodland management declined as a result. In continental Europe, this transition occurred later, as France, Germany, and Sweden had much more extensive woodland, while the Mediterranean did not have nearby supplies of coal. Low population density and extensive tree cover in America meant that wood remained the fuel used by rural residents throughout this period. Meanwhile, various bushes, such as furze and gorse, along with peat, turf, and dung, continued to provide fuel for cooking and heating in most of the regions where they had been the local fuel of choice. Unlike coal, these fuels are difficult to transport large distances, and the amount of these generally renewable-energy sources available to local populations could not always increase to meet growing needs. As a result, people in areas of expanding population without access to coal often suffered from shortages of energy available for cooking and heating.

Industrialization

The late 18th and early 19th centuries are often associated with the Industrial Revolution, which involved new technologies and rapid growth in manufacturing. This process had begun on the coalfields of northern England and southern Belgium in previous centuries, but during this period industrial growth continued in those places, along with the northeastern United States, northern France, western Germany, and southern Sweden. Coal had long been essential to manufacturing processes involving heat, such as the production of salt, glass, and ceramics; metalworking; and parts of the cloth-making process. It continued to be used for these purposes, and those industries expanded rapidly. There were frequent improvements in the efficiency with which it was burned in those processes but few major innovations in how it was used.

The big technological breakthroughs in manufacturing were the development of steam engines, which could convert heat into mechanical energy, and the congregation of workers into factories to take advantage of either steam engines or the energy produced by fast-running streams. Steam engines were originally designed in the 18th century for use in pumping water out of coal mines and in the production of wool and cotton textiles. In 1800, steam engines were not used for many purposes in textile manufacturing, being confined mostly to the spinning of cotton or wool. In the first decades of the 19th century, more mills opened that used steam engines to spin thread, while steam engines also became common in weaving those threads into cloth. This process began in the northern English regions of Yorkshire and Lancashire, but large textile factories developed in other places as well, notably Massachusetts. At the same time, there were continued improvements in the efficiency of steam engines, so more energy could be produced with the same coal. As the number of factories increased, most of the new ones were powered by coal, and it became the energy source most associated with industrialization. Cheaper clothes and manufactured goods from these new factories were eventually shipped to other parts of the country and abroad, replacing locally produced ones. Even in industrializing areas, not all processes were transformed, so clothes continued to be sewn by hand, buildings constructed by human muscular power, and fields plowed by animals. With industrialization, manufacturing was increasingly concentrated in areas with cheap fuel, and then exported to areas that did not have sufficient local energy to produce such goods.

Transportation

Railroads were an important development of this period. They involved using steam engines to turn wheels and were the first major application of converting heat into motion for transportation. Wheeled carts had long been pulled along rails in coal mines, and these began to be powered by steam engines in the early 19th century. The big innovation came in the 1820s, as the efficiency of steam engines increased and it became conceivable to pull large carriages. At this time, schemes developed to run railroads between cities in order to transport people. In 1831, the first intercity railroad in Britain, between Manchester and Liverpool, opened. Others were being constructed in the northeastern United States, Britain, and Europe.

Within 20 years, railroads crisscrossed the most heavily industrialized regions of Europe and America. Early railroads required government help in their creation, either for financing (in America) or to ensure the expropriation of private property (in Britain). Railroads contributed to the ever-increasing consumption of coal, both in their manufacture and their use, while also encouraging the development of larger metalworking and machine-building industries. While the rail networks were not complete by 1850, they were well under way and represent a radical shift in the use of energy.

Early railroads were primarily used to transport people, while boats remained the main method of shipping coal, grain, and other bulky commodities. Canal traffic increased in Britain in the 1830s as an expanding population and new industries required ever greater amounts of coal. The first 50 years of the 19th century saw the construction of many new canals and the improvement of river navigation in many places. The most famous of these is the project for straightening the upper Rhine River after 1815. Global and intercontinental trade in manufactured products, grain, timber, and numerous other goods was also increasing during this period. It was generally carried out by sailing ships that continued to use wind power in much the same manner as in previous centuries.

Domestic Uses of Energy

Despite increased manufacturing and the development of railroads, the largest user of energy in almost every community was still domestic cooking and heating. Whatever fuel was consumed, the same fires continued to be used for both purposes in almost all homes worldwide. One thing that changed is that these fires were more likely to burn in stoves, especially in Britain, America, and Sweden. Coal cannot be effectively burned on an indoor open fire, as it requires a constant supply of oxygen and a chimney to remove the smoke. Stoves provided these, while also facilitating the baking of bread and cooking in smaller vessels than was common on an open hearth.

The other major changes in the domestic consumption of fuel in this period related to a rapidly expanding population. In areas of Europe and Asia without access to local coal, growing populations generally meant a decrease in the fuel available to every person. If wood or peat had been purchased on the market and coal could be delivered at a high price, as in coastal northern Europe, the mineral usually became the fuel used in that region.

Another consequence of rapid population growth was that the majority of the population in many regions had to decrease their consumption of fuel. This could take many forms, and in many parts of northwestern Europe in this period people began to have fewer fires in their homes than their parents and grandparents had previously enjoyed. Consequently, they would be colder in the numerous bitter winters of the early 19th century. Another response to fuel shortages was that many people would choose to cook less often. For instance, the majority of households in southern England stopped baking their own bread or brewing their own beer between 1795 and 1815. Instead, they would purchase bread from bakers whose larger ovens and continuous baking used less energy per loaf of bread but did not help to heat homes in the winter. Another example of fuel shortage causing people to cook less often comes from those parts of central France with very little fuel. In these areas, many villages would collectively bake as infrequently as once a year, and residents would eat stale, hard bread for the rest of the time.

We are thus left with the contrasts of a period in which new technology allowed energy to be consumed at unprecedented levels, while in most regions of the world the big change was that population growth decreased the amount of fuel to which people had access.

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