David Macaulay: Mill Times (2001)

From the visionary award-winning author and illustrator David Macaulay (People, How Things Work, Cathedral) comes the animated PBS special Mill Times. Travel back to late 18th century Lowell, MA, now infamous for its textile mills and its "Lowell Girls," the poor, barely-educated waifs who helped turn those mills into sweatshops. Macaulay opens with Francis Cabot Lowell, who journeyed to Manchester, England in the early 19th century to study its textile production system, and carried that technology back to his planned (eponymous) community of Lowell, MA circa 1826. Through vivid animated illustrations, Macaulay brings to life the mill technology that Lowell spread across the Atlantic, helping to ignite the Industrial Revolution on two continents and forever changing how textiles are produced.