The Industrial Revolution or First Industrial Revolution is the process of economic, social, and technological transformation that began in the second half of the 18th century in the Kingdom of Great Britain, which spread a few decades later to much of Western Europe and Anglo-American America and concluded between 1820 and 1840; and which followed the commercial revolution. During this period, the largest set of economic, technological, and social transformations in human history since the Neolithic was experienced, which saw the transition from a rural economy fundamentally based on agriculture and trade to an urban, industrialized economy.