Edison had over  patents filed during his lifetime. While he did invent a part to improve the telegraph in the late 1800's, he did not invent the telegraph. 

Crop Rotation was meant to help farmers improve their yield each year. This process consisted of changing which field farmers grew each crop in each year. This meant that since each crop took certain nutrients out of the soil, the soil had a chance to recover before growing that same plant again.

The seed drill was not a new invention; however, until the mid 1800's the seed drill had never been a practical or effective machine. This changed in the Industrial Revolution when inventing hit a new high. The newly made seed drill could effectively plant seeds in the ground and cover them up, saving farmers countless hours.

The Industrial Revolution saw many major advancements that helped to improve the day-to-day lives of people the world over. These changes also helped to extend the average lifespan of people, thus making the population grow tremendously. There was, however, no downturn in the amount or scale of warfare during the period of the Industrial Revolution.

Tesla was constantly at odds with his former mentor, Thomas Edison. It is fitting that his most famous invention would do the same. While Edison had pioneered DC, or direct current, as a form of electricity, Tesla championed the idea of AC, or alternating current. At the time Edison's system was by far the more popular and accepted, but today Tesla's AC current is the standard the world relies on.

While all major periods of change in and around this era, the Industrial Revolution is the one that left the most wide reaching mark on this time, and as such is synonymous with the period. The Industrial Revolution reached nearly all the people of the Western world at the time.

The spinning wheel was the precursor to the Spinning Jenny. The primary difference was that a spinning wheel could only spin one spool of thread at any given time, but the spinning jenny could spin several thread spools at once. This significantly accelerated the work process for textile factories.

James Watt is known as the father of the steam engine. As such the steam engine became known as the Watt engine. His design created the first usable and practical steam engines. This design became commonly used in no small part due to the efforts of his business partner Matthew Boulton, who sold the engine as the way of the future.

Richard Trevithick created what was at the time the first ever steam powered locomotive. He was a miner and the son of a miner. He created the steam powered rail car so that it could be used pulling rock and coal up from mines easier and more safely.

If Dante had been alive to witness these factories and the conditions people worked in them, he may have used them for inspiration when writing his famed book "Inferno." The chemicals that people breathed in while working  hour days were borderline deadly. Add this to the extremely low pay and the high risk of being maimed by the machinery and these factories become terrible places to work.