Name: ______________________________________ Date: _________________________ New Inventions Bring Changes to American Lives In the late 1800’s, Americans began thinking of new ways to make their lives easier. They were tired of using horses and wagons to get around. People lived very far away from each other now, from California all the way to New York. New ways of communicating was also a priority to inventors in the country. New inventions made life easier and better for people. Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone. He was a Scottish immigrant who wanted to make a machine for people to communicate over long distances. In 1876, his machine was tested and had been successful. In a few years, cities all over the country were using them. Thomas Edison was another inventor. He invented the light bulb in 1879. It gave off light for a short period of time using electricity instead of candle light fire or oil lanterns that were used in the past. Eventually, his bulbs were able to glow for a long period of time and homes and streets were brightened with them in the night. By 1885, new buildings were being built in cities like New York City called skyscrapers. These are very tall buildings with about 10 floors. No other building, at the time, was this tall. These buildings were held up with the new invention of steel, because it was strong enough to hold the weight of all of the floors. The elevator, invented by Elisha Graves Otis, moved people from floor to floor, making it easier to travel to higher floors in the skyscraper. These buildings also made it cheaper for people to build because they were able to provide more available space in the building, for a small amount of property. Orville and Wilbur Wright proved that people can fly with their invention of the airplane. They took their plane for its first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. People were amazed that they can fly through the sky! Even though the flight only lasted about one minute, people began making bigger and better planes that could fly for hours. In 1896, Henry Ford changed the way the new invention of an automobile was made. He opened up Ford Motor Company in 1903 and reinvented the way factories produced their products. He invented the assembly line to make his cars. The cars would move on a conveyor belt and each factory worker has an individualized job to work on as the car moved past them. The worker would stand around and repeat his/her job all day at work. This allowed for mass production. They also used standardized parts, which can be used interchangeably in various parts of the car, to make things easier to produce as well. Cars were being produced very quickly and as the supply for the cars grew, the prices came down. This enabled many people to purchase them because they were more affordable to the average worker. Being able to travel faster once a car was bought, allowed people to move out of the city. They relocated outside the city to suburbs. Questions: 1. How has the invention of the light bulb changed America? 2. How has the invention of the telephone changed America? Every year, more Americans bought cars. In 1915, a car cost about $440 dollars. Millions of Ford’s cars were being sold. But this started to turn into a problem. There were so many cars on the streets and no rules to follow that people were all over the place! Police officers directed traffic when they could, but they would often get busy doing other things too. In 1923, Garrett Morgan, an African American inventor, solved this problem. He invented the first traffic light. This is even used today to make driving a much safer experience for drivers. 3. How has the invention of the moving assembly line changed America? 4. Why is the assembly line an important invention? 5. Why did builders save money on purchasing land because of the invention of the skyscraper? Many people today have much better lives than they did before because of the new inventions of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. New ways of communication and transportation were invented which made things easier for Americans. New ways of production were also used to make factory products more affordable to consumers. And cities were ever changing with huge buildings that reached to the sky and elevators to carry people to the top. 6. Why was steel an important part of the invention of the skyscraper?
