Transcript Introduction and Inventions

Chapter 9
Section 1
The Rise of Industry
Industrialization
• Industrial Revolution begins in early 1800s but rapidly
expands after Civil War
• By the early 1900s, Americans had transformed the United
States into the worlds leading industrial nation
• Gross National Product (GNP) – the total value of all goods
and services produced by a country
• GNP was 8 times greater than it had been when the Civil War
ended
Natural Resources
• Natural resources contribute to U.S.’s industrial success
• This meant the US did not have to buy them from other
countries
• Even before the invention of the automobile, petroleum
was in high demand because it could be turned into
kerosene
• The American oil industry was built on the demand for
Kerosene
Natural Resources
• Edwin Drake – drilled the first oil well in 1859 near
Titusville, PA
• By 1900 oil fields from PA to TX had been opened
• As oil production rose, it fueled economic expansion
A Large Workforce
• Population triples between 1860-1910, adding
to workforce
• Population growth stemmed from 2 causes –
1. large families and 2. flood of immigrants
• 20 million people immigrate to U.S. between
1860 and 1900
Question 1
• How did the oil production affect
the American Economy?
–Fueled economic expansion
Free Enterprise
• Laissez-faire embraced by Americans
– A French phrase meaning “let people do as they choose.”
– “Hands off approach to business”
– Supporters believed that government should not interfere
in the economy other than to protect private property
rights and maintain peace
– Relies on the idea of supply and demand, not government
regulations of prices and wages
Government’s Role in
Industrialization
• Laissez-faire economics practiced
• Struggle between Northeastern & Southern
states
• US raised tariffs against foreign goods
– Morrill Tariff – reversed years of declining tariffs
– Hurts farmers the most, ironically this helped
speed up industrialization
– Farmers left rural America and moved to the cities
to take jobs in factories
New Inventions
• 1865: no electric lighting, ice was expensive,
mail took weeks to get from east to west
• New inventions led to the founding of new
corporations, which produced new wealth and
new jobs
• Between 1860-1890 Patent and Trademark
Office issued 500,000 patents for inventions
Advances in Communications
• Telegraph: perfected by Samuel F.B. Morse
– Morse code – short impulses to represent letters
of the alphabet
• Telephone: Alexander Graham Bell, 1874
– By 1877 Bell and others organized Bell Telephone
Co. – which eventfully became AT&T
– By 1900 1.5 million telephones in use
Electric Power
• Thomas A. Edison
– Perhaps most famous inventor of the late 1800s
– “Wizard of Menlo Park”, inventor of phonograph,
electric lighting, electric generator
– 1882 -Transformed American society by supplying
electric power to customers in NYC
– 1889 – Edison General Electric Company
• GE
Electric Power
• Thaddeus Lowe - invented the ice machine,
the basis of the refrigerator.
• This lead to the development of a refrigerated
railroad car in 1877
• Created new jobs, reduce food spoilage and
risk of disease from food poisoning
Inventions Continue
• Bessemer Process – made it easier and
cheaper to remove impurities from iron to
make steel
• Allowed for construction of new buildings
• Brooklyn Bridge – designed by John A.
Roebling: Longest bridge in the world
Question
• How did the use of electric power
affect the economic development
of the United States?
–Revolutionized business by
opening up entirely new markets
for inventions and goods to sell