Read Aloud — History

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain during the late eighteenth century, transformed economies that had been based on agriculture and handicrafts into ones dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. Its consequences reshaped not only production methods but also family structures, working conditions, and patterns of urban settlement.

Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient civilisations in the Indus Valley developed sophisticated urban planning, including grid-pattern streets and advanced drainage systems, as early as twenty-five hundred years before the Common Era. These achievements challenge the assumption that technological progress followed a simple west-to-east trajectory.

The printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg around fourteen-fifty, revolutionised the spread of knowledge across Europe. By making books affordable and widely available for the first time, it accelerated literacy, fuelled the Protestant Reformation, and laid the groundwork for the scientific revolution that followed in subsequent centuries.