Chapter 14: The Age Of Innovation And Industry

Chapter 14: The Age of Innovation and IndustryIntroductionIn September 1878, a young inventor from Menlo Park, New Jersey, wentto see a set of experimental arc lights. The lights were too hot and brightfor practical use, but they fascinated him. The more he studied the lightsand the generator that powered them, the more excited he became.The inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, knew he could invent a better lightingsystem, one that could be used anywhere. At the age of 31, he wasalready known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park." Among his manyinventions were the phonograph and a highly efficient automatedtelegraph system. Now Edison vowed to invent a practical incandescentlamp—what we would call a light bulb.Edison and his team of scientists andmechanics set to work. Other inventors hadtried for decades to produce a practical lightbulb. The main problem was finding afilament—a thin fiber or wire—that would heatto a bright glow when electric current passedthrough it, but would not melt. Edison triedthousands of materials, from platinum totwine to human hair. Finally, around 1879, hetried bamboo fibers that he had pulled from aJapanese fan. After carbonization—theprocess of converting a fiber to purecarbon—the bamboo filament burned andburned without melting. Edison finally had hislight bulb.That major success did not end Edison'squest. He was already hard at work on othercomponents of a complete electric lightingsystem. He and his team were designinggenerators, meters, and cables. They weremaking plans for distributing electricity. They were installing lighting displays to promote the benefits ofthe electric lamp. Edison did not simply invent the light bulb. He envisioned the future of electricity, and heacted to make his vision a reality.

Inventions like Edison's light bulb helped spur a new age of innovation and industry after the Civil War.This period also saw the rise of big businesses that created great wealth. This chapter explores howindustrialization affected the nation as a whole. The next chapter examines its effects on workers.Photo Captions:Photo 1: Thomas Edison set up his first laboratory when he was just 10 years old. He would eventuallybecome the most productive inventor in American history, with more than 1,000 inventions to his name.Photo 2: Edison’s laboratory in New Jersey, around 1900

Section 2: New Inventions and TechnologiesEdison was one of thousands of ingenious inventors, mechanics, and scientists working to create newproducts and machines in the late 1800s. Thanks in part to their work, American life changeddramatically. The United States evolved from a largely agricultural nation into a complex industrial society.This shift brought modern conveniences to many consumers. In 1865, Americans still lived in the "horseand buggy" era. They lit their homes with candles or oil lamps. They kept fresh foods in an icebox, acabinet cooled by a large block of ice. And they waited a month or more for letters to cross thecountry. By 1900, many Americans illuminated their homes with electric lights. They kept foods cold in anelectric refrigerator. They could send news across the continent in an instant by telegraph or telephone. Afew could even afford to replace their horse and buggy with a new automobile.Americans Invest in New TechnologyThese innovations captured the imaginationof investors who were willing to finance, orfund, the development of newproducts. Without this financial backing,many inventions would never have reachedthe market. Some would never have beenbuilt at all.This willingness to risk money on newbusinesses lies at the heartof capitalism [capitalism: an economicsystem in which factories, equipment, and other means of production are privately owned ratherthan controlled by government]. Capitalism is an economic system in which factories, equipment, andother means of production are privately owned rather than being controlled by government. Capitalists inthe late 1800s provided the funds to build railroads and factories and furnish them with machinery andsupplies. They put money into new technology and scientific research. In return for risking their money,they hoped to reap rewards if the new business proved profitable.Edison, for example, received generous financial support from a group of capitalists led by the wealthybanker J. P. Morgan. Together they formed the Edison Electric Light Company. In 1880 alone, this groupprovided the inventor with 150,000. In return, Edison gave the company the rights to his lightinginventions for a five-year period. The investors helped Edison pursue his vision, and they profitedhandsomely as a result.Financial backers often protected their investments by making sure inventors acquired patents. A patentgives an inventor the sole legal right to make or sell an invention for a specified period of time. Thefederal government began issuing patents in 1790. By 1860, only 36,000 had been granted. Between1860 and 1900, the number skyrocketed to more than 600,000. Edison holds the record for patentsissued to one person, with 1,093 in all.

Revolutionary Changes in Communication and Transportation The use of electricity had broughtdramatic progress in communications even before the Civil War. Artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morsecreated the first practical telegraph by 1837. To send messages by electrical signal, he used a dot-anddash system later known as Morse code. In 1843, Morse set up an experimental telegraph line linkingWashington, D.C., with Baltimore, Maryland. He opened this line to commercial use the following year.Telegraph lines soon crisscrossed thecountryside, mainly following railroadtracks. The railroads relied on thetelegraph to keep track of theirtrains. Newspapers also used thetelegraph to gather information and sendstories to local newspapers. Severalcompanies established telegraphnetworks. By the 1870s, however, theWestern Union Telegraph Companydominated the industry. By 1900, nearlya million miles of telegraph wires werecarrying more than 60 million messagesa year.The next revolution in communications came with the telephone. For nearly 12 years, the inventorAlexander Graham Bell had pursued the idea of sending speech over wires. He finally succeeded onMarch 10, 1876. According to popular legend, the first telephone message was the result of anemergency—with Bell calling out to his lab assistant, Watson, after accidentally spilling acid. However, ina letter to his father, Bell made no mention of any accident:I was in one room at the Transmitting Instrument and Mr. Watson at the Receiving Instrument in anotherroom—out of ear shot. I called out into the Transmitting Instrument, "Mr. Watson—come here—I want tosee you"—and he came! He said he had heard each word perfectly . . . I feel that I have at last struck thesolution of a great problem—and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses justlike water or gas—and friends converse with each other without leaving home.Bell's invention attracted plenty of financial support. In 1877, he founded the Bell TelephoneCompany. That same year, the first commercial telephone line was strung in Boston, where Bell lived. By1893, more than 250,000 phones were in use. That year, Bell's patent ran out, allowing others to profitfrom his invention. Independent telephone companies formed across the country, helping create a surgein home use of the new technology. By 1920, the number of telephones had grown to at least 13 million.Two other inventions changed how Americans moved. The first, the automobile, came to the UnitedStates from Europe. The second, the airplane, was home grown. In 1903, the brothers Orville and WilburWright made the first successful powered-airplane flights in history, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Afterthat first success, inventors worked continually to improve airplane design.

“Rock Oil" Provides a New Source of Fuel The development of new fuelsgave rise to another new industry. Before the Civil War, lamps mainlyburned whale oil, which was very expensive. In the mid-1800s, a Canadianscientist discovered how to refine crude oil that seeped out of the groundinto a lamp oil called kerosene. But the supply of surface oil waslimited. Then a former railroad conductor named Edwin Drake made animportant discovery.In 1858, Drake went to Titusville, Pennsylvania, on business. He hadbought stock in the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, which gatheredsurface oil for use in medicine. While in Titusville, Drake studied thetechniques of drilling salt wells. Drake decided to lease land from the company for oil drilling. In August1859, after several weeks of drilling, he struck oil.Countless more wells were drilled in Pennsylvania and 13 other states. Oil drilling and refining became ahuge industry, supplying fuel for lamps, lubricating oils for machinery, and later, gasoline for automobiles.The Bessemer Process Revolutionizes Steelmaking A new technology for turning iron into steel gaverise to another major industry. Iron is a useful metal, but it is brittle and fairly soft. Steel is a purified formof iron mixed with carbon. Engineers prefer steel for most purposes because it is harder, stronger, andlighter than iron. Before the 1850s, however, the process for making steel out of iron was time-consumingand expensive.In 1855, a British inventor named Henry Bessemer patented a new method of makingsteel. The Bessemer process [Bessemer process: a method of steelmaking invented in 1855 thatenabled steel to be made more cheaply and quickly] involved blowing air through molten iron. Theblast of air removed impurities. Using this process, steel could be produced far more cheaply and quicklythan in the past. After seeing the process at work in England, Andrew Carnegie decided to invest heavilyin steel production in the United States. In 1873, he began to form the Carnegie Steel Company, whichlater built the largest and most modern steel mill of its time near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.As the steel industry grew, steel became the metalof choice for heavy construction. Railroadsswitched to steel rails. Builders began using steelto construct longer bridges and taller buildings. In1883, the longest suspension bridge in the worldopened. This towering structure, the BrooklynBridge, stretched for 6,700 feet across the EastRiver in New York City. Two years later, builderserected the world's first skyscraper, a 10-storybuilding in downtown Chicago. Neither of these structures could have been built without the use of steel.