1、england before the industrial revolutionthe country was a place where men worked from dawn to dark，and the laborer lived not in the sun，but in poverty and darkness. what aids there were to lighten labor were immemorial，like the mill, which was already ancient in chaucers time. the industrial revolut

2、ion began with such machines；the millwrights were the engineers of the coming age. james brindley of staffordshire started his selfmade career in l733 by working at mill wheels，at the age of seventeen，having been born poor in a village.brindleys improvements were practical：to sharpen and step up the

3、 performance of the water wheel as a machine. that was the first multi-purpose machine for the new industries. bindley worked, for example, to improve the grinding of flints, which were used in the rising pottery industry.yet there was a bigger movement in the air by l750. water had become the engin

4、eers element, and men like brindley were possessed by it. water was gushing and fanning out all over the countryside. it was not simply a source of power，it was a new wave of movement. james brindley was a pioneer in the art of building canals or, as it was then called, navigation'.brindley had

5、begun on his own account, out of interest, to survey the waterways that he travelled as he went about his engineering projects for mills and mines. the duke of bridgewater then got him to build a canal to carry coal from the duke's pits at worsley to the rising town of manchester brindley went o

6、n to connect manchester with liverpool in an even bolder manner, and in all laid out almost four hundred miles of canals in a network all over england.two things are outstanding in the creation of the english system of canals, and they characterize all the industrial revolution. one is that the men

7、who made the revolution were practical men. like brindley, they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind. the grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded. the universities also （there

8、 were only two, at oxford and cambridge） took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the church of england.the other outstanding feature is that the new inventions were for everyday use. the canals were arteries of communication: they we

9、re not made to carry pleasure boats, but barges. and the barges were not made to carry luxuries, but pots and pans and bales of cloth, boxes of ribbon, and all the common things that people buy by the pennyworth. these things had been manufactured in villages which were growing into towns now, away

10、from london; it was a country-wide trade.工業革命前的英格蘭這個國家是一個人們從黎明到夜晚都在不斷工作的地方，勞動者不是生活在陽光下，而是在貧困和黑暗中掙扎。在這個國家里協助人們生產的工具非常古老，比如在喬叟時代就早已存在的碾磨機。工業革命是從這些機器開始;碾磨機的匠人就是開創新時代的工程師。1733年，斯塔福德郡的詹姆斯·布林德利在磨坊工作時開始了他自制工具的生涯，其時他年僅17歲，生于鄉村，素來貧寒。 布林德利對磨輪的改進是切實可用的：加上水輪，從而提高水磨的效能，使其成為一種機器。這是新型工業的第一臺多用途機器。例如，布林德利的工作改進了

11、對燧石的研磨，原先這種研磨用于正在興起的制陶工業中。 然而，到了1750年，一場更大的運動已經在醞釀中。水已成為工程師手中的元素，和布林德利一樣的人都在思考如何利用水力。在鄉村，流水潺潺、四處可見。它不是簡單的一種能源，而是是新一波的運動。詹姆斯·布林德利是一位運河建設藝術的先驅，或者如當時那樣稱之為“導航”。布林德利在為他的磨坊和礦井建筑工程到處奔走的時候,出于自愿和興趣,對沿途經過的河道進行了勘察。隨后，布里奇沃特公爵讓布林德利在自己處于沃斯利的礦井和正在興起的曼徹斯特鎮之間修建一條運河，方便運煤.布林德利開始以一種更大膽的方式連接利物浦與曼徹斯特，并且奠定了整個英格蘭總計近四百英里運河網絡的基礎。 在修建英國運河網絡的過程中,有兩點是非常突出的,它們也正是整個工業革命的特點。特點之一是，進行變革的人都是實用主義者。和布林德利一樣，他們往往幾乎沒有接受教育，而實際上當時的學校教育只會使創造性的頭腦變得笨拙。合法的文法學校只能教他們早已成立的古典科目。各大