Industrial Revolution Jeopardy

Steam, textiles, factories, and the reformers who pushed back - a free Industrial Revolution board for history class, played with phones as buzzers.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

For the classroom

Copies all 30 clues into an editor of your own. Free, no account needed.

Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

Why Britain First

$200
Britain had rich deposits of coal and of this metal, needed for machines and rails.
What is iron?
$400
Britain's rivers and these man-made waterways made shipping heavy goods cheap.
What are canals?
$600
Jethro Tull's invention of this machine planted seeds in neat rows and helped boost farm output.
What is the seed drill?
$800
This movement fenced off common village lands, pushing many small farmers toward the cities.
What is the enclosure movement?
$1,000
This British lord earned the nickname Turnip for promoting the vegetable in crop rotation.
Who was Charles Townshend?

Textiles and the Factory

$200
James Hargreaves's machine, invented in the 1760s, let one worker spin several threads at once.
What is the spinning jenny?
$400
Richard Arkwright's spinning machine was powered by a waterwheel and named for its power source.
What is the water frame?
$600
John Kay's 1733 invention let weavers send the thread across the loom far faster.
What is the flying shuttle?
$800
Edmund Cartwright invented this machine in 1785 to weave cloth mechanically.
What is the power loom?
$1,000
Samuel Crompton's 1779 spinning machine, which combined two earlier inventions, was named for a hybrid animal.
What is the spinning mule?

Steam and Railroads

$200
This Scottish inventor greatly improved the steam engine by adding a separate condenser.
Who was James Watt?
$400
In 1807, Robert Fulton's steamboat Clermont carried passengers up this New York river.
What is the Hudson River?
$600
George Stephenson and his son Robert built this locomotive, winner of the 1829 Rainhill Trials.
What is the Rocket?
$800
Thomas Newcomen's early steam engine of 1712 was built to do this job in mines.
What is pumping out water?
$1,000
The US transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 when a golden spike was driven at this place in Utah.
What is Promontory Summit?

Inventors and Inventions

$200
Samuel Morse's invention sent coded messages along wires.
What is the telegraph?
$400
Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for this device in 1876.
What is the telephone?
$600
Henry Bessemer's 1850s process made this strong alloy cheap enough for rails and skyscrapers.
What is steel?
$800
Cyrus McCormick's horse-drawn machine cut grain much faster than workers with scythes.
What is the mechanical reaper?
$1,000
Thomas Edison's famous research lab was in this New Jersey community.
What is Menlo Park?

Factory Life and Child Labor

$200
The rapid growth of cities as people moved in to work in factories is called this.
What is urbanization?
$400
Small boys were sent up narrow chimneys to clean out soot, working as these.
What are chimney sweeps?
$600
Many city workers lived in these crowded, poorly built apartment buildings.
What are tenements?
$800
This 1833 British law limited the hours children could work in textile mills.
What is the Factory Act?
$1,000
Young women from New England farms worked in the textile mills of this Massachusetts city.
What is Lowell?

Reformers and New Ideas

$200
Workers formed these organizations to bargain for better wages and shorter hours.
What are labor unions?
$400
This Scottish economist's The Wealth of Nations argued for free markets and the division of labor.
Who was Adam Smith?
$600
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published this pamphlet in 1848.
What is The Communist Manifesto?
$800
This Welsh mill owner built a model community for his workers at New Lanark in Scotland.
Who was Robert Owen?
$1,000
Jacob Riis exposed life in New York's slums in this 1890 book of photographs and reporting.
What is How the Other Half Lives?

Final Jeopardy — Cotton Is King

Patented in 1794, this machine by Eli Whitney quickly separated cotton fibers from their seeds and helped expand plantation slavery in the American South.

What is the cotton gin?

How to run this board

The board starts in the textile mills of northern England and follows industrialization through steam power, railroads, and the growth of factory cities, then turns to working conditions, child labor, and the reform movements and new economic ideas that grew out of them.

Invention clues invite quick guesses, so require the full name of the inventor rather than a surname alone - it slows the buzzer race just enough to reward the students who actually studied.

For discussion, pause after the Factory Life column and ask each team which reform they would have fought for first. Then play Final Jeopardy with written wagers to close the period.

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