American Science and Invention:
A Pictorial History
Summary by David E. Goldberg
Department of General Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801
Text
• Wilson, M. (195x). American science and
invention. New York, NY: Bonanza Books.
• Author novelist and assistant to Enrico
Fermi.
Organization
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Giants in the wilderness:
The shock of freedom:
Bright dream—dark fulfillment
The tools of war
The new era
Last individualists
The new dimension
Boundaries of America
• Awareness of the wilderness.
• Common thread throughout the colonies.
• English laws against manufacture.
Trades
• American trades no where as skilled as
European.
• Jack of all trades because of extent of the
market.
• Yankee ingenuity unknown in colonies.
• Fishing/Whaling
• Ship and sailmaking: 2000
privateers/90,000men
American Men of Science
• Franklin: Electrical work known worldwide.
• Ben Thompson: Lord Rumford, modern
fireplace.
• Joseph Priestley: Oxygen.
Surveyors of Land and Sea
• Lewis and Clark
– 1803: Ratification of
Louisiana Purchase.
– Collected specimens
but lost
• Nathaniel Bowditch
– New practical
navigator (1802)
– Lunar navigation
Engineers & Inventors
• Military meaning: men who erected engines
of war, catapults, storming towers,
fortifications.
• Mechanical philosophy & mechanics
• Craftsmen respected.
• Inventors considered lunatics
Fitch before Fulton
• Oar driven steamboat
in 1790s: John Fitch of
CT
– Tried sidewheels,
screw.
– Died in despair.
• Fulton: Katherine of
Clermont
Oliver Evans
• Developed reduced
size steam engine in
which steam pushed
(rather than condensed
as in Newcomen
engine).
Stevens Dynasty
• John Stevens and
Robert Livingston
(brother-in-law)
• Worked on railroad
and improved steam
engines.
• Fulton’s folly:
Clermont, 150ft long,
18 ft beam, 100 tons
Erie Canal
•
•
•
•
Doomed by railroad.
Wealth of New York as harbor to inland.
First engineering school of US.
Profession of Civil Engineering born in
states
• Canvass White found hydraulic cement:
concrete for use in canal.
Eli Whitney
• Cotton gin: spurred
growth of cotton and
reinvigorated slavery.
• Slave price doubled
after gin.
• Whitney not
compensated.
Mass Production
• Whitney
–
–
–
–
Rifle assembly from standardized parts.
First milling machine.
8 years to fill order for 10,000 rifles.
Order for 15,000 more (1811) in two years
• Samuel Slater
– Imported English textile factory
– Reproduced machinery from memory.
Long & Morton: Anasthesia
• Crawford Long discovered anasthetic use of
ether in 1840s.
• Did not publish
• William Thomas Green Morton, 1846.
Joseph Henry:
• Induction of electricity in wire caused by
moving magnetic field.
• First electric motor, telegraph (ahead of
Morse) 1831
• Understood electromagnetics as wave
phenomenon.
• Director of Smithsonian.
Yankee Ingenuity
• New heroes: men of inventiveness.
• Patent law of 1838, notion of patent search.
• Legend grew after 1830s or so.
Telegraph Takes Off
• Samuel Morse: Early demo 1837, 1700 feet
of wire.
• Backer Stephen Vail, $2000, if son Alfred
could be assistant.
• Vail worked out many of Morse’s details.
• DC to Baltimore test case.
Early 1800s Hall of Fame
• Charles Goodyear: Vulcanization of rubber.
• Walter Hunt sewing machine and safety pin.
• Elias Howe’s & Isaac Singer reinvented the
sewing machine.
Agriculture Equipment
• John Deere, 1833, first steel plow.
• Robert & Cyrus McCormick: demo of
reaper machine in 1831
• Sold first two machine 1841, 1000 in 1851.
• Legal problems. Widespread copying.
Transportation
• The railroads. Stevens
family.
• Clipper ships:
American ships held
most speed records.
John Griffiths.
• Lightning record to
Liverpool in 19.5
hours (18.5 knots)
1854.
Forge, Pan, and Derrick
• Iron: Henry Bessemer and William Kelly
(Kentucky). Air bubbled through, results in
high grade steel.
• Kelly perfected process in 1851, 6 years
before Bessemer.
• Kelly assigned patent to father-in-law, wife
withheld it for his own good.
Gold
• James Marshall building sawmill noticed
yellow mineral in 1848.
• Gold rush was on.
• Clipper ships and wagon trains brought new
people to west.
Oil
•
•
•
•
Needed a substitute for expensive whale oil.
E. L. Drake partner of Bissell and Eveleth.
Invented modern method of drilling.
Struck oil in 1859.
War Tools
•
•
•
•
•
•
Telegraph
Balloons
Gatling gun
Iron ships
Torpedoes
Submarines
Big Business Cometh
• George Pullman dining and sleeping cars
1858, after raising Chicago..
• Refrigerator Cars: George Henry Hammond
had a car built in 1867.
• Farm equipment revisited:
• Machine tools.
More, more, more
• Typewriter, C. L. Sholes 1867, to
Remington in 1873.
• Air brakes: widespread collisions, George
Westinghouse, at age 23.
• Photography: George Eastman
Invention of the R&D Lab
•
•
•
•
•
•
Thomas A. Edison,
Newark (1870)
Menlo Park 1876)
Phone improvements
Lightbulb
Phonograph
Invention of the Assembly Line
Triodes before Transistors
• Lee De Forest 1873• Triode or audion
• Oscillators and
amplifiers depended
on it.
Bell and the Telephone
• 1875 accident on
harmonic telegraph.
• Bell lived 1847-1922