The Victorian era saw some of the biggest changes to life in any period of history. Society and technology was changing quickly and as new ideas and new ways of life came to the fore, this saw some huge changes and paved the way for many modern ideas and how we operate as a society in the UK.
The Victorian people saw people move around a lot more – thanks to James Watt and George Stephenson, two inventors who created the steam engine and the trains and railways accordingly, people and goods were able to move around the country faster than ever before. This meant people could live elsewhere for the first time and life changed as most of the jobs became available in the cities rather than the countryside.
Technological advances like the railways meant that industry changed too. William George Armstrong invented many hydraulic machines, and is considered the father of hydraulic power, with many machines based on his original ones still in use widely today, such as this hydraulic power unit https://www.hydraproducts.co.uk/Hydraulic-Power-Units. Electricity started to also be used for many things from communications to power and this meant that working was revolutionised as machines made jobs easier.
Because of all these advances in the sciences, inevitably social changes occurred. This paved the way for ideas and campaigns for many things which we now take for granted – healthcare reforms, women’s rights groups and of course workers’ rights were all put in the spotlight in Victorian Britain.