This unprecedented technological transformation started in the United Kingdom and immediately spread to other nations of Western Europe and North America. The period is one of the most intensively researched and roughly spans the years 1750-1850.
The liberation of mechanical energy stored in coal, through the invention and development of the steam engine, together with the associated production of great quantities of coal and iron, radically changed and expanded many other technologies, tranforming the economic and demographic structures of society. Because of the magnitude and diversity of these processes historians tend to concentrate on special aspects of these changes, such as the development of the new forms of transportation or the expansion of industries made possible by the use of steam power.
Industrial Enlightenment: science, technology and culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760-1820 by 
A Social History of American Technology by 
Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution by 
