The Second Industrial Revolution
This revolution would not have been possible without inventors,
innovators, great captains of industry and the common man.
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Nicolas Cugnot
Charles and Frank Duryea
Henry Ford
Cornelius and William Vanderbilt
James J. Hill
Leland Stanford
Orville and Wilbur Wright
Edwin Drake
John Davison Rockefeller
Elijah McCoy
Henry Bessemer
Andrew Carnegie
Henry Clay Frick
J.P. Morgan
Samuel Morse
Alexander Graham Bell
Christopher Sholes
George Westinghouse
Thomas Edison
The Great Age of Invention and Innovation
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Transportation
Oil
Steel
Communications
General Industrial and Technological
Advances
Transportation
• Nicholas Cugnot, a
French army officer is
generally given credit
for developing the
three wheeled, steam
driven horseless
carriage in 1769. The
carriage was later used
in 1770.
Charles and Frank Duryea built the first successful gasoline powered
automobile in the United States. The auto was tested in September 1893.
Charles Duryea (1893)
Frank Duryea (1945)
link to: autohistory
Henry Ford and eleven other investors launched the Ford Motor Company in 1903. In
1913 Ford introduced the moving assembly line to mass produce his automobiles. By
1918 half of all cars in America were the Ford Model T. Ford employed tens of
thousands of workers and used innovative business techniques to make his company an
automotive giant.
The innovations in automobile manufacturing gave Americans jobs,
greater mobility, and a sense of freedom that many had never
experienced before.
1965 Ford Mustang
1913 Ford Model T
Ford Country Squire Station Wagon
Railroads ruled the land in the mid and late 1800s and on into the
1900s. People such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, James Hill, Leland
Stanford and many others built thousands of miles of track and
linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by using the iron horse.
Linking a nation – The Transcontinental Railroad
link to: transconrr
Wilbur and Orville Wright
December 17, 1903
Orville Wright flies 120 feet in 12 seconds
The work of the Wright Brothers continued….
• After the first flight
the brothers continued
the development of the
airplane. On
November 16, 1904
the Wright Flyer II
flew 1760 feet in 40
seconds.
and continued.
• The Wright Flyer III.
The brothers did not
mind pictures of their
planes in flight, but
they feared close ups
due to the fact that
others may steal their
ideas.
Crude oil was known to have existed for hundreds of years. By the mid-1800s demand
for oil was increasing greatly. The demand had to be met. Enterprising businessmen
began to drill. Oil wells popped up in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and
California.
Link to: Black Gold-Texas Tea-Oil
Edwin L. Drake and oil driller “Uncle Billy” Smith kicked
off the oil boom in the U.S. in Titusville, PA in 1859.
Link to: Drake Well Museum
John Davison Rockefeller exemplified the capitalist spirit of the day. His
Standard Oil Company dominated the oil industry. The business practices of
vertical and horizontal integration were used to almost wholly monopolize the
oil industry.
Innovators and inventors like Elijah McCoy saw the rising demand for the
industrial use of oil. Before his invention of the oiling cup, moving machinery
had to be shut down to be oiled. The oiling cup solved that problem by oiling
moving machinery. His is the “Real McCoy.”
Sir Henry Bessemer patented a process in 1855-1866 that was called the Bessemer
process. The process rapidly changed molten iron into steel. Steel could now be
produced more quickly and cheaply. The process was later adopted in the United
States where it would be responsible for changing the landscape of the nation.
The egg-shaped container, usually lined with clay or dolomite (calcium magnesium
carbonate), was tilted down to pour molten iron into the top and then returned to a
vertical position. Air was then forced through channels in the bottom of the converter
causing a spectacular shower of flames to burst from the top. After the burn, the
converter was tilted and the steel was poured out.
Andrew Carnegie:The King of Steel
Carnegie,pictured in 1878, opened his first steel plant on August 22, 1875. The Edgar Thomson
plant, which operates today, sits beside the Monongahela River in Braddock, PA. The plant was
named after the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Carnegie’s first order – 2000 steel rails
for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Link to: Historic Steel
The Duquesne Works were once part of Carnegie Steel.
A closed mill in Youngstown, Ohio
The roots of Bethlehem Steel trace to 1857 when iron was the main product. As time
progressed, both iron and steel were produced. After the company changed names several
times, it finally became the Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1904. Charles Schwab and
Joseph Wharton formed what would become one of the most prominent steel corporations
in the world.
Charles Schwab
Joseph Wharton
The Bethlehem Steel Works
Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2001. In 2003 the remnants of the company were
acquired by the International Steel Group. An industrial giant was slain.
Long distance communication was greatly improved in the 1830s. A five wire
telegraph was developed in Europe in 1834. Samuel Morse unveiled his one
wire telegraph in 1837. A system of dot and dashes, called Morse Code, was
used to instantly communicate with others over long distances.
Early Morse telegraph and receiver
Link to: Message Received
The invention of the typewriter revolutionized communication.
Christopher Sholes was an inventor and innovator who helped to
transform American society.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison.htm
http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC051872/historyofcars.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Hill
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h845.html
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/stanford.htm
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/inventors.htm
http://www.newyorkrailroads.com/FavoriteSteam/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promontory_Summit
http://www.wright-brothers.org/
http://www.drilshop.com/hallfame/drakewel.html
http://www.150.si.edu/150trav/remember/r819.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morse
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~nph126/selected.php?id=59
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=3218