Museum Curator Reaction

My Groups' Project

We were group A and the main topic of our exhibit was to inform people about how the process of spinning cloth was improved and how it affected families. Our first source was a picture of the Almond Loom which was created by John Almond. The Almond Loom was a lot faster then the spinning wheel. The next source was the Spinning Jenny and that was created to over take the Almond Loom because it was faster and more efficient. Next comes a chart on London's growth. This was significant because when more people moved into the city in search of jobs more people were forced into poor living conditions. Fourth, the spinning wheel was one of the first machines used to spine thread and it could be used by almost anyone in a home. Fifth, was the mechanized loom and this was used for mass productions and in factories. Finally, comes the passage about the effect on the families that these machines had. When hand looms stopped being used families lost money because there children could no longer sell their work. As you can see our title was Tearing Down Families and we chose that because we thought that the most significant source we had for this project was by far the passage about how families were effected by the industrialization. Once hand looms were obsolete families had to rely on only the father's money and sometimes that wasn't enough, and that caused the family to suffer. When visitors look at my exhibit I hope they will learn how the machines used to make cloth changed and how that change negatively effected families. One of the most interesting facts that I learned from this museum curator activity was how much child labor was used. It is crazy to think that so many young kids around the age of ten had to work ten hour days with no breaks just to pay off their parents dept. A lot of the time these young kids' health was greatly effected and they ended up being very sickly or some even developed scoliosis. Overall, I felt that the project was a fun and entertaining way to learn about The Industrial Revolution.

Group B I learned that before the locomotive really helped bring people closer together all over the world. Also, I learned that the steam engine used fire to turn water into steam.

Group C I learned that slums were often a product of over industrialization. Also, I learned that the industrialization was the cause of pollution in many rivers.

Group D I learned that population boomed in cities like Manchester because people needed jobs. However this resulted in increased poverty.

Group E I learned child labor was used frequently. Many children became sick and died because of child labor.