Hanging Out in a Museum 3000 Miles Away

Last Friday, we were informed that on Tuesday we would be having a "Google Hangout" in a museum dedicated to the industrialization of mills in Britain. To prepare for this wonderful opportunity, we did a little preparation work. The man with whom we would be speaking, Jamie, had a video prepared giving us a rundown of what we would see n the mill. We first watched this video to ready ourselves for the video chat. The video walked us through the cloth making process. We noted keywords to look up, including robing, sliver, and slubbing. Then, in our groups we looked up the definitions of these words, so we could ask Jamie questions using the proper vocabulary. We then drafted questions to ask Jamie during the video chat.

Jamie, our explainer

Throughout the chat I learned a lot about the industrialization of the textile industry, especially it's evolution from the cottage industry to the factory system. First Jamie told us about the cottage industry. Before the industrial revolution, families would work their cottages in the country to create cloth to sell. The looms were powered with their feet and fibers would be separated by hand using wire brushes. The fibers would then be put on a spinning wheel. Every member of the family was part of the process. All this changed when the water frame was invented in 1775. The water frame allowed four or more bobbins of thread to be made at once, and it was very important in the transition from the cottage industry to the factory system. The industrialization of machines made work much faster, but also louder and more dangerous. People often went deaf from being around a thousand looms, and accidents were very common. Mills were run for profit, and , as Jamie put it, health and safety didn't exist.

In conclusion, I enjoyed our video chat experience. I thought that being able to communicate with a real person directly was much more effective than watching a video. However, there were issues with lag and choppy signal in the beginning, but these issues fixed themselves. I would definitely like to do another video chat with an expert on other topics throughout the school year.