These Industrial Revolution trivia questions run in four rounds: cotton and the textile machines, iron, steam and chemicals, canals, roads, rails and workers, and the name, the towns and the spread abroad.
Read the full guide
Four rounds, from the loom to the railway
Cotton and the textile machines has John Kay, the water frame and the putting-out system. Iron, steam and chemicals runs from Coalbrookdale to portland cement. Canals, roads, rails and workers asks the Bridgewater Canal, turnpike trusts and Ned Ludd. The last round reaches Belgium, Japan and Pawtucket.
For a history class or a quiz night
The card checks a choice as soon as it is tapped and shows the reason with its source. A teacher can print the questions as a sheet and keep the answer key apart.
Questions and answers
What is a good trivia question on the Industrial Revolution?
Which industry was the first to use modern production methods? Textiles. Two more to open with: after which figure of folklore were the machine breakers named, and which city was nicknamed Cottonopolis? Ned Ludd and Manchester.
Are the spinning jenny and James Watt in the pack?
The jenny is, as the village where it was invented, Oswaldtwistle. Other packs of the site ask who invented it and who built the first piston engine, so this one asks Savery, the Cornish engine and what the first engines pumped.
Where were the answers checked?
All answers were compared on October 3, 2026 with the English Wikipedia article Industrial Revolution, which is linked under each question. Wages, population counts and makers of goods still sold today are left out, and so is child labor.
By 1600, which refugees had begun weaving cotton in English towns?Answer: Flemish refugees. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
By the 1830s, by about what factor had mechanized cotton spinning raised output per worker?Answer: 500. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
By what factor did the power loom increase output?Answer: 40. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
How much cotton did the British textile industry use in 1850?Answer: 588 million pounds. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In 1750 most of the raw cotton imported into Britain was spun and woven by cottage industry in which county?Answer: Lancashire. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In the 1400s, which country began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth?Answer: China. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which Lancashire village was the spinning jenny invented?Answer: Oswaldtwistle. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which town did a factory open in 1743 with five of the spinning machines of Paul and Wyatt?Answer: Northampton. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What did Robert Kay invent in 1760 that made it easier to change thread colors?Answer: The dropbox. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What did the flying shuttle do to the output of a weaver?Answer: Doubled it. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What was the system called in which farmers and townspeople made goods for a market in their homes?Answer: The putting-out system. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which industry was the first to use modern production methods?Answer: Textiles. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who developed the water frame and patented it in 1769?Answer: Richard Arkwright. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who patented the flying shuttle in 1733?Answer: John Kay. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Iron, steam and chemicals 16
By 1750, what had coke replaced in the smelting of copper and lead?Answer: Charcoal. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
By which name were the coal-fired reverberatory furnaces of 1678 known?Answer: Cupolas. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
The engines of Boulton and Watt used how much coal per horsepower-hour, compared with those of Newcomen?Answer: 20 to 25 percent as much. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
For which job were the first piston steam engines installed?Answer: Draining deep mines. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
How many of the early atmospheric engines had been built by 1800?Answer: 1,454. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which city were the first gas lighting utilities set up, between 1812 and 1820?Answer: London. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Machine tools grew out of tools that had been developed in the 18th century by which craftsmen?Answer: Makers of clocks and scientific instruments. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
To which country did the early piston steam engines spread in 1722?Answer: Hungary. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What did the bricklayer turned builder Joseph Aspdin patent in 1824?Answer: A process for making portland cement. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which engine of the 1810s was more efficient than the Watt engine?Answer: The Cornish engine. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which town became the prime hub of copper smelting in the world in the 19th century?Answer: Swansea. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who introduced a method for making soda ash on a large scale in 1791?Answer: Nicolas Leblanc. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who invented the lead chamber process for making sulfuric acid in 1746?Answer: John Roebuck. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who patented a machine in France in 1798 that made paper in a continuous sheet?Answer: Louis-Nicolas Robert. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who patented the first commercially successful industrial use of steam power, in 1698?Answer: Thomas Savery. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who used coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale in 1709?Answer: Abraham Darby. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Canals, roads, rails and workers 12
After which figure of folklore were the machine breakers named?Answer: Ned Ludd. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
From which decade did railways largely take the place of canals?Answer: The 1840s. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
From which village in Dorset came the six men who founded a friendly society of farm laborers in the 1830s?Answer: Tolpuddle. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which English town was the easy running of wagons on an iron tramway shown in 1805, with one horse drawing a great load?Answer: Croydon. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which year did the first attacks of the machine breakers begin?Answer: 1811. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Near which town did the Luddite movement begin, among lace and hosiery workers?Answer: Nottingham. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What were set up from the 1720s to charge tolls and keep up some roads?Answer: Turnpike trusts. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What were the tracks called that had moved coal in mining areas since the 17th century?Answer: Wagonways. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which act of 1799 forbade workers in Britain to form any kind of trade union?Answer: The Combination Act. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which act of 1832 extended the vote in Britain without granting it to all?Answer: The Reform Act. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which British act of 1863 was among the first large modern environmental laws?Answer: The Alkali Act. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which canal in North West England, opened in 1761, was known for its huge commercial success?Answer: The Bridgewater Canal. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
The name, the towns and the spread abroad 14
Around Charleroi and which other Belgian city were coke blast furnaces and rolling mills built from the 1820s?Answer: Liege. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
By about which year had the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States?Answer: 1840. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
How many textile mills did Samuel Slater go on to own?Answer: 13. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In 1800, what share of humans lived in cities?Answer: 3 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which town did Samuel Slater found his mill in 1793?Answer: Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
In which two countries did the Industrial Revolution of continental Europe start?Answer: Belgium and France. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Japan industrialized under the leaders of the Meiji period. From about which year?Answer: About 1870. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What did the division of Germany into three dozen states make difficult in the 1830s?Answer: Building railways. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
What was the group of Japanese politicians called that toured Europe and the United States in 1871?Answer: The Iwakura Mission. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which city was nicknamed Cottonopolis?Answer: Manchester. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Which revolution did the Industrial Revolution follow?Answer: The Second Agricultural Revolution. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who invented an automated flour mill in the mid-1780s?Answer: Oliver Evans. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Who made the earliest recorded use of the words Industrial Revolution, in 1799?Answer: A French envoy, Louis-Guillaume Otto. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution
Whose lectures of 1881 made the term Industrial Revolution popular?Answer: Arnold Toynbee. Source: Wikipedia: Industrial Revolution