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Victorian inventions and the Industrial Revolution

This Victorian inventions and the Industrial Revolution lesson consists of an engaging PowerPoint and comprehensive worksheet, providing an in-depth exploration of the technological advancements during the Victorian era and their impact on society.

What’s included?

• PowerPoint covering key aspects of the Industrial Revolution and specific Victorian inventions
• Editable or free PDF worksheet with scavenger hunt questions about the inventors and their inventions
• Extension activities to encourage further thought and discussion about the impact of these Victorian inventions

Ideas for teaching KS2 children about the Industrial Revolution

The PowerPoint guides you through the key aspects of the Industrial Revolution, beginning with an overview of the era and progressing to the specific inventions that propelled societal change. The accompanying worksheet provides scavenger hunt questions to encourage active learning, with children identifying the inventors, describing the inventions, and explaining their significance.

You might also be interested in How to be a Victorian millionaire , a game-based activity that explores the entrepreneurs and Victorian inventors making their fortunes during the Industrial Revolution. For KS3 resources, try our Industrial Revolution collection for KS3 history.

What was the Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial Revolution was a transformative period from the late 1700s to the early 1900s that began in Britain. It marked the transition from handmade goods to machine-produced items in factories. This period revolutionised people's lives entirely, with inventions like the steam engine and the telegraph central to these changes.

What were some of the most important Victorian inventions?

The lesson resources cover eight pivotal Victorian inventions, including the steam engine, the telegraph, photography, the sewing machine, dynamite, the internal combustion engine, the phonograph, and the electric light bulb. Each invention is contextualised with information about the inventor, its functionality, and its impact on Victorian life. The worksheet encourages children to delve deeper into these inventions, promoting critical thinking about their importance and the ways they shaped the world we live in today.

The lesson resources conclude with extension activities that promote further thought about the implications of these inventions on everyday life, encouraging children to consider which invention brought about the most significant change and how each invention built upon the previous ones.

Eight significant Victorian inventions featured in this lesson:

• Steam Engine (1781): James Watt made big changes to the steam engine in 1781. This machine helped start the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines helped power trains, ships, and factories, making work faster and easier during the Victorian era.
• Telegraph (1837): Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone invented the telegraph. This amazing invention let people send messages over long distances in a few minutes. Before the telegraph, it took days or even weeks! The telegraph helped businesses, spread news, and let people chat from far away.
• Photography (1839): Louis Daguerre in France and William Henry Fox Talbot in England introduced photography. Now, people could take pictures and see the world in a whole new way. It wasn't so expensive, so lots of people could do it. This had a big effect on how people lived in the Victorian era.
• Sewing Machine (1846): Elias Howe invented the sewing machine. This made making clothes a lot faster and cheaper. This led to the birth of ready-to-wear fashion. Because of this, people in the Victorian era could dress in new and different ways.
• Dynamite (1867): Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. This was a safer and easier way to make things explode compared to what was used before. This invention was really important for building things, mining, and wars during the Victorian era.
• Internal Combustion Engine (1876): Nikolaus Otto made the internal combustion engine, a big improvement over the steam engine. This invention led to the creation of modern cars and changed how people travelled in the Victorian era.
• Phonograph (1877): The phonograph was made by Thomas Edison. This was the first device that could record and play back sound. This invention let people listen to music at home and changed how people lived in the Victorian era.
• Electric Light Bulb (1879): Thomas Edison and Sir Hiram Maxim both made practical electric light bulbs around the same time. These bulbs made it possible for people to do things even when it was dark, made life safer, and changed how cities looked at night during the Victorian era.

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Victorians- Children at Work - Lesson 4 - KS2

Subject: History

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

4 February 2023

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Victorians - Children at Work (KS2)

This lesson focuses on the reason why many poor Victorian children had to work. The lesson introduces the different jobs children worked in chimney sweeps, coal mines, mill work, street selling, mud larks, domestic servants and factories.

This lesson is in PowerPoint format and can be taught as it is or changed to suit individual classes. Detailed PowerPoint Lesson with 19 slides.

This lesson comes with a suggested activity or task that is also attached. The task for this lesson is a differentiated worksheet. Questions to answer.

Learning objectives • To learn about the jobs Victorian children had • To learn about the risks of working in dangerous environments

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Victorian Era - History Unit

With the National Curriculum in mind, I have created a set of high-quality history lessons with tasks attached about the Victorian era. The National Curriculum puts forward that history education should help children gain a chronologically secure knowledge, understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should also inspire children’s curiosity to know more about the past and empower them to be confident historians. Each Lesson Pack Contains: A Fully Editable PowerPoint (Learning Objectives, Variety of Tasks, Video Embedded URL Clips, Engaging Premium Quality Slides). The 15 lessons are broken down into the following: 1. Biography of Queen Victoria 2. Victorians Timeline 3. The Rich and Poor Children and their Differences 4. Children at Work 5. Notable Figures 6. Workhouses 7. The life of Rich Victorians 8. Victorian Schooling 9. Victorian Toys 10. Queen Victoria’s Portrait - Art 11. Victorian Decoupage - Art 12. William Morris - Art 13. Industrial Revolution 14. Victorian Inventions 15. British Empire - Geography Learning Objectives; 1. To learn about the changing power of monarchs 2. To find out about the life of Queen Victoria 3. To Gain an understanding of Queen Victoria 4. To learn about key Victorian dates 5. To order key Victorian dates 6. To understand how these key events affected Victorian Life 7. To learn about the jobs Victorian children had 8. To compare the lifestyles of the poor and rich Victorians 9. To learn about the jobs Victorian children had 10. To learn about the risks of working in dangerous environments 11. To learn about key Victorian figures 12. To continue learning about the risks of working in dangerous environments 13. To learn about Workhouses 14. To compare your daily routine to a child in a workhouse’s 15. To compare lifestyles of the rich and poor Victorians 16. To learn about rich Victorians 17. To learn about Victorian Toys 18. To compare Victorian Toys with modern Toys 19. To analyse Queen Victoria’s Portraits 20. To create Decoupages 21. To learn about William Morris 22. To create art using block stencilling 23. To learn about the Industrial Revolution 24. To learn about Victorian inventions and how they have impacted our lives today. 25. To learn about the British Empire 26. To learn of the benefits and disadvantages of the British colonialism 27. To learn about the Commonwealth Some Key Terms Covered Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Victorians Timeline, Factories Act (1848) Drainage and sewerage systems, Railways, Workshops Act (1872), First FA Cup Final, Alexander Graham Bell, Elementary Education Act (1891) , rich, poor, chimney sweeps, coal mines, factories, work , mill work, street selling, mud larks, domestic servants, notable figures, Britain’s law, Dr Barnardo, Charles Dickens, Lord Shaftesbury, workhouses, uniforms, meals, jobs, rules, punishments, lifestyle, food, diet, schooling, writing slates, bell, blackboard, Eton College and Harrow School, Boris Johnson, Prince William, Victorian toys, train sets, dolls, portrait, setting, materials, posture, decoupage, history, instructions, cut outs, craft, William Morris, symbols, patterns, block printing, block stencil, Industrial Revolution, Victorian society, working conditions, living conditions, Victorian Inventions, inventors, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, James Starley, Sarah Guppy, George Jennings, British Empire, indigenous people, trade, slave trade, India, Canada, Australia and Egypt.

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Life in the Victorian era

Top facts about the Victorian era

Did you know

Victorian era gallery

About life in the Victorian era

Names to know from the Victorian era

Videos about Victorian life

Just for fun

Books about Victorians for children

Find out more about Victorian life

See for yourself

Quick quiz about Victorian life  

What was life like in Victorian times?

Living in the Victorian era was exciting because of all the new inventions and pace of change and progress, but it was a hard time to live in if you didn’t have much money. Even very young children had to work if their family needed them to. However, life had improved a lot for people by the end of the Victorian era. Laws were put in place that made working conditions a bit better in factories and mines, and that stopped young children from working by requiring them to go to school instead. More people were living in cities, but hygiene and sanitation was more important thanks to people like Florence Nightingale . Plus, the Victorians started the Christmas traditions like sending cards and decorating trees that we know and enjoy today!

Top 10 facts

• The inventions of machines in factories replaced jobs that people used to do, but people were needed to look after the machines and keep the factories clean.
• Factories were built in cities, so people ended up moving to the cities to get jobs. Half the population in Britain lived in cities by the end of the Victorian era.
• Cities became crowded, busy and dirty, but discoveries about hygiene and sanitation meant that diseases like cholera were easier to prevent.
• People in the Victorian era started to use electricity for the first time , and to listen to music by playing records on the gramophone.
• Steam trains made travel a lot easier, and rich people started to go on holidays to the seaside in places like Blackpool and Brighton.
• There was a big difference between rich and poor in Victorian times . Rich people could afford lots of treats like holidays, fancy clothes, and even telephones when they were invented.
• Poor people – even children – had to work hard in factories, mines or workhouses. They didn’t get paid very much money.
• By the end of the Victorian era, all children could go to school for free. Victorian schools were very strict – your teacher might even beat you if you didn’t obey the rules.
• The way we celebrate Christmas was begun in Victorian times – they sent the first Christmas cards and made Christmas crackers.
• Charles Dickens was a famous Victorian author who wrote A Christmas Carol , Oliver Twist and other famous novels.

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Did you know?

• At the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837, most people would have used candles and oil or gas lamps to light their homes and streets. By the end of the Victorian era in 1901, electricity was available and rich people could get it in their homes.
• Poor people could work in mines, in mills and factories, or in workhouses . Whole families would sometimes have to work so they’d all have enough money to buy food.
• Children in poor families would have jobs that were best done by people who weren’t very tall. They would have to crawl in small spaces in mines, or underneath machines in textile mills. It was very dangerous!
• Rich people didn’t have dangerous jobs like these. In fact, some didn’t even have to work! They could afford to buy the new inventions coming out like the telephone, the gramophone (for playing music) and electric light bulbs.
• Rich Victorians were the first to go on seaside holidays – some of the places they’d go are spots where we go on holiday too, like Blackpool, Brighton and Southend.
• Victorian children loved it when their mum and dad let them see a magic lantern show. This was a slideshow of pictures that told a story – the machine that showed the pictures was called a magic lantern.
• Almost all families in Victorian times – except for the very poor ones – would pay people to be servants who would do their household chores for them. This included cooking, cleaning, washing and even serving dinner. Women who were servants were called maids, and men were called footmen. The head servant would be a man called a butler.
• There was a rule for everything in Victorian times – even about the sorts of clothes you’d wear in the morning or evening, and when in the city or in the country!
• All men wore hats in Victorian times (rich men wore top hats, poor men wore caps). When a man wanted to say hello to a lady, it was good manners to tip the brim of their hat down, then push their hat back onto their head.
• It was bad manners if a man spoke to a woman he didn’t know without someone else introducing them first.
• Children always had to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to their family members every time the child came in or went out of a room. Try doing that for a day in your home!
• Children were not allowed to shout, complain, interrupt or disagree with anyone . They had to do as they were told, and be cheerful and quiet all the time.

Victorian gallery

• A railway poster advertising Brighton and Volk’s Electric Railway
• Women in a Victorian workhouse
• Clothes that a wealthy Victorian man would have worn
• Victorian dresses with bustles (Credit: Lovelorn Poets via flickr)
• A Victorian hoop skirt
• How children dressed in the Victorian era
• A Victorian magic lantern
• An early Christmas card
• A Victorian living room
• A Victorian kitchen
• A Victorian-style pushchair

Victorian inventions like the steam engine and innovations like steel-making led to machines being made that could produce lots of the same thing at once. Factories were filled with machines like these. While it used to be that one person would be a weaver and make cloth, machines could now do that job instead and make cloth that didn’t cost as much. So, what did people do if machines did all the work? Well, the machines needed looking after, and factory owners wanted people who could do that as well as take care of other little jobs around the factory. Since factories were usually built in large towns and cities, and people needed new jobs, most people moved to where the factories were. By the end of the Victorian era, half of the people living in Britain lived in cities. This meant that cities were crowded and dirty . If you were poor and couldn’t afford to live in a very nice place, it was easy to get sick. There was a large outbreak of cholera in London in 1853-1854 that killed 11,000 people. Most people thought that the disease was coming from areas that just smelled nasty and got passed around through scents in the air, but Dr. John Snow worked out that the disease was actually spreading because of a cesspit that was leaking into a water pump where people drank from. By the end of the Victorian era, London had a better sewage system and sanitation was a bigger concern – plus, people knew more about how diseases are passed from one person to another. Other famous Victorians who believed that proper hygiene and sanitation were needed to be healthy were Florence Nightingale and Dr. Joseph Lister. Dr. Lister was a surgeon who discovered that cleaning wounds and surgical instruments prevented infections. Jobs that people had in Victorian times included usual ones like lawyers, doctors, teachers and vicars, but there were other jobs too:

• Engineers were needed to build bridges, buildings and machines
• Miners to get coal, iron and tin
• Mill workers to keep machines running and produce textiles
• Farm workers to tend and harvest crops
• Railway porters to sort out passengers’ luggage
• Navvies who broke ground for railway tracks to be laid down
• Nightmen to clear out the sewers in crowded cities
• Maids, butlers, cooks and other servants in the home

Steam engines needed coal to run them, so mining coal was very important . Working in coal mines was hard, and sometimes entire families would do it just to earn enough money. There were also mines for iron and tin in different parts of Britain. Only poor people would work in factories and mines, and both were pretty unhealthy places to be. The air would be thick with dust from the mines or from the cotton being spun for cloth, and working hours were long. If someone didn’t have a home (or money to afford a place to live), they could go to a workhouse , which was a place that provided food and beds in exchange for doing work. While this sounds pretty handy, it wasn’t very nice. Men, women and children all had to live separately, so families couldn’t stay together. The food wasn’t very good, and children weren’t taught how to read and write. Everyone had to wear the same uniform, and breaking any rules would mean strict punishment. If you were rich, then life was completely different! Rich Victorians lived in large houses that were well heated and clean. Children got a good education either by going away to school or having a governess who taught them at home (this is usually how girls were educated). Wealthy people could also afford to buy beautiful clothes. All women in Victorian times wore dresses with long skirts, but rich women could get the latest fashions that needed special underclothes to wear properly. They wore dresses that needed hoop skirts underneath to make the dresses spread out in a dome shape around their legs. Or, they wore skirts that lay mostly flat but that poofed out a bit around their bottom – this was called a bustle. All men, whether rich or poor, wore waistcoats. Rich men also wore top hats and carried walking sticks.

Names to know from the Victorian era:

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) – Florence was the founder of modern nursing; she knew it was important to keep hospitals clean and well-run. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) – a famous Victorian author who wrote A Christmas Carol , and many other books about life in Victorian times Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – a Victorian author from Scotland who wrote the famous children’s stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped . Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) – a popular Victorian poet; one of his poems was ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, which was about the Crimean War. Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905) – founded children’s charity Barnardo’s in 1870 as a home for children who were orphaned or didn’t have a place to live, which meant they didn’t have to go to a workhouse Mrs Isabella Beeton (1836-1865) – an author who wrote a famous book about cooking and housekeeping that many people in Victorian times used Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – a Victorian naturalist who wrote On the Origin of Species and came up with the theory of natural selection, which led to scientific research into evolution . Joseph Lister (1827-1912) – Lister was a surgeon who introduced the idea of keeping surgical instruments free from germs, and disinfecting wounds.

Related Videos

Just for fun...

• Take a quiz about Victorian life
• See a map of the British Empire in Victorian times
• Explore a Victorian painting
• What can you learn about life in Victorian times from looking at the census ?
• Organise a Victorian Experience Day in your own school!
• Can you spot what differences there were between homes for rich people and homes for poor people ?
• Find out about Washday Monday and domestic life in a 19th century weaver's cottage
• How to make Victorian Christmas crackers  and  Victorian Christmas tree ornaments.
• Try your hand at Victorian cookery  with recipes like  beef stew with dumplings  (Hodge Podge), roast goose and apple batter pudding
• Learn to play some Victorian parlour games
• Read some Victorian poetry like The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear or The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Sing 'Hurrah, the Nineteenth Century' , a KS1 learning song

Best books about Victorians for children

Find out more about Victorian life:

• Watch a kids' video about Victorian life: BBC History: Day In The Life Victorians
• Details of the household staff at Shibden Hall , including the butler, the housemaid and the under-housemaid
• Watch BBC Bitesize videos about life in Victorian Scotland: school in Victorian Scotland , home life in Victorian Scotland , work in Victorian Scotland and holidays and leisure in Victorian Scotland
• Make your own Victorian Christmas
• See Victorian toys like zoetropes, tiddlywinks and samplers
• Listen to short audio dramas about the lives of children in Victorian times on BBC Schools Radio
• Information about lots of different aspects of Victorian life: health , entertainment , crime and punishment and transport and travel
• Find out about Victorian buildings and houses in an architecture podcast from FunKids
• Children's information about Victorian schooling , Victorian fashion , Victorian workers and Victorian families
• Read facts about health and food in Victorian times
• Immerse yourself in  fiction books set in Victorian times
• Discover life in a Victorian weaver's cottage the interactive way: listen to and watch the looms and imagine living without heating or electricity
• Find out about 7 innovations which changed Victorian England , including central heating
• Find out about how children worked in Victorian mines and Victorian cotton mills
• Information about Victorian homes : workers' housing and upper class houses
• See a photograph of a Victorian swimming costume
• The life of Michael Marks , entrepreneur and founder of M&S!
• See logbooks from a Victorian school , digitised by Year 5 and Year 6 children

Explore lots of places with Victorian history See life as it was more than 100 years ago at  Blists Hill Victorian Town Learn about coal mining in Victorian times at the National Coal Mining Museum for England Visit Tyntesfield , a Victorian stately home in Somerset See writer Thomas Carlyle’s house in Chelsea, decorated as it would have been in Victorian times Explore a Victorian workhouse , and learn about the people who would have lived and worked there Visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to see clothes that upper class Victorians would have worn Take a tour of the Charles Dickens museum , which is in a house where the famous author used to live Embark on a virtual tour of the Crystal Palace, site of the Great Exhibition of 1851 organised by Prince Albert , to see its beautiful and innovative design and discover amazing facts about the exhibition it housed

Quick quiz about Victorian life!

Read this page and answer the questions below:

Q: Why might it have been exciting to live during the Victorian era? 

Q: Why might it have been difficult to live during the Victorian era? 

Q: Name an important invention from the Victorian era

Q: Name a famous Victorian author and at least one of their books. 

Q: What laws changed during the Victorian era? 

Q: What is a work house?

Q: What was Florence Nightingale known for?

Q: Where did poor people work? 

Q: What is a magic lantern show? 

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Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast

Leninsky District is an administrative and municipal district, one of the thirty-six in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It is located in the center of the oblast just south of the federal city of Moscow. The area of the district is 202.83 square kilometers. Its administrative center is the town of Vidnoye. Population: 172,171; 145,251; 74,490. The population of Vidnoye accounts for 33.0% of the district's total population.

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Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninsky_District,_Moscow_Oblast

Coordinates 55°33'25.739" N 37°42'31.371" E

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Geographic coordinates of Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast, Russia

Coordinates of elektrostal in decimal degrees, coordinates of elektrostal in degrees and decimal minutes, utm coordinates of elektrostal, geographic coordinate systems.

WGS 84 coordinate reference system is the latest revision of the World Geodetic System, which is used in mapping and navigation, including GPS satellite navigation system (the Global Positioning System).

Geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) define a position on the Earth’s surface. Coordinates are angular units. The canonical form of latitude and longitude representation uses degrees (°), minutes (′), and seconds (″). GPS systems widely use coordinates in degrees and decimal minutes, or in decimal degrees.

Latitude varies from −90° to 90°. The latitude of the Equator is 0°; the latitude of the South Pole is −90°; the latitude of the North Pole is 90°. Positive latitude values correspond to the geographic locations north of the Equator (abbrev. N). Negative latitude values correspond to the geographic locations south of the Equator (abbrev. S).

Longitude is counted from the prime meridian ( IERS Reference Meridian for WGS 84) and varies from −180° to 180°. Positive longitude values correspond to the geographic locations east of the prime meridian (abbrev. E). Negative longitude values correspond to the geographic locations west of the prime meridian (abbrev. W).

UTM or Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system divides the Earth’s surface into 60 longitudinal zones. The coordinates of a location within each zone are defined as a planar coordinate pair related to the intersection of the equator and the zone’s central meridian, and measured in meters.

Elevation above sea level is a measure of a geographic location’s height. We are using the global digital elevation model GTOPO30 .

Elektrostal , Moscow Oblast, Russia