We still measure things in horsepower but obviously the IR led directly to alternatives for travel. Rural Electrification completely changed farming and much else.
People did not generally eat canned food until it became reliable and widely marketed. I suspect the IR greatly increased marketing and advertising in general. Before that, brands were more related to individuals.
You were no longer in control of your own schedule. When you worked on the farm or you were a skilled craftsman, you decided when you worked and how you did that work. With industrialization your schedule revolves around a clock or the needs of some machine.
You could no longer drink on the job. Americans drank a staggering amount of alcohol in the early 19th century with someone like John Adams, a moderate drinker, pounding down a hard cider with his breakfast every morning. If you worked on a farm, you probably had some whisky around, and there’s a good chance you took sips throughout the day. You weren’t staggering drunk, but there’s a good chance you had a buzz going. This was an untenable situation on the factory floor. Not only was it dangerous working while impaired around these fast moving machines, but you had a schedule to keep.
One topic I’ve never come across—it seems like under the putting-out system, women could still earn some money if they had very young children at home, too young to work. Seems like the factory system would have created a real child care problem.
To the point where clothing was a highly visible status or even class symbol, especially “fine” (= high thread count) clothing. It’s why generals, admirals and high government officials wore what we’d now consider elaborate costumes.
The sheer convenience of being able to instantly make a room brilliantly lit with the flick of a switch cannot be overstated. Even gaslighting, vast an advance as it was, cannot compare.
Like every time the power goes out, I tour a vacant place or construction site, I unconsciously flick the light switch on entering a room. So dumb, I’ll use my flashlight to locate the switch in the dark, walk to it and click it. “Oh, riiight. No power. I remember that from the bathroom, 15 seconds ago. And the kitchen, 40 seconds before that. Now why is it so dark in here?”
I know you asked about the mid 19th century, but all the labor saving devices of the industrial revolution of the early/mid 20th century is what enabled feminism. Once women had access to appliances that could make it much easier to maintain a household like washer/dryer, electric stoves, vacuums, refrigeration, running water, etc it became much easier for women to focus on their human and civil rights since they had surplus time and energy.
As we’ve discussed in quite a few other threads, the phenomenon of Cost Disease aka the Baumol Effect, is a result of industrialization. It has for example priced domestic servants out of the reach of all but the wealthiest.
Alluded to by various posts since its such a fundamental of life is the regularisation and regulation of time measurement. Local time was usually fixed to the latitude so your noon ran a few minutes before the next big town to the west, but that did not matter until railways meant that the 9.05 train that took exactly 28 minutes to get there was arriving at 9.30, not 9.33. Telegraphy allowed time-matching between remote locations and the creation of consistent time-zones.
The railroad networks, and the Sears catalog, enabled people in far-flung rural areas to obtain goods that had been mass-produced in industrial factories.
It also provided a good source of toilet paper. When the catalog switched to glossy paper, it sparked widespread outrage.
That used to be the prevailing theory, but a lot of people have argued the existence of these devices put even greater pressure on women to maintain the home. i.e. While the vacuum cleaning made it easier to clean carpets, there was more pressure to make sure the carpets were clean at all times. The truth is that during the 19th century many feminist were able to engage in political activities because they exploited the labor of working class women. i.e. They were able to hire lower class women as domestic workers freeing middle class women to engage in politics.