Industry is a polysemic term covering most human activities. Historically, the term "being able to do something". Then the meaning has spread to a form of profitable activity, and not only that producing material goods. (This last sense has aged, but it dominates recovery in English). From the turn of the seventeenth century and the nineteenth century, industry intensified, repositioning new sources of energy, place of the phenomenon called industrial revolution, and concomitant appearance of capitalism. The industrial revolution has accompanied the profound social changes. From that time, therefore, the industry includes all the socio-economic activities of the tournaments towards the creation of goods through the change of the raw materials or the materials which have already undergone one or more modifications and the exploitation of the sources of 'energy; it implies:

a certain division of labor, coordination in the craft industry where the same person theoretically guarantees all the processes: study, creation, marketing, management; an idea of ​​scale, we speak of "industrial industries" when the number of identical pieces reaches a certain number; the use of machines, and manual and automated, which change the very nature of the work. Several commands are possible. In addition to the opposing cooperatives: manufacturing industry (machinery, equipment, etc.) to mining companies (mining, oil, etc.)