United States technological and industrial history

The technological and industrial history of the United States describes the United States' emergence as one of the largest nations in the world as well as the most technologically powerful nation in the world. The availability of land and labor, the diversity of climate, the ample presence of navigable canals, rivers, and coastal waterways, and the abundance of natural resources facilitating the cheap extraction of energy, fast transport, and the availability of capital all contributed to America's rapid industrialization.

Most historians agree that the period in which the greatest economic and technological progress occurred was between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th. During this period the nation was transformed from an agricultural economy to the foremost industrial power in the world, with more than a third of the global industrial output. This can be illustrated by the index of total industrial production, which increased from 4.29 in 1790 to 1975.00 in 1913, an increase of 460 times (base year 1850 - 100).

American colonies gained independence

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

in 1783 just as profound changes in industrial production and coordination were beginning to shift production from artisans to factories. Growth of the nation's transportation infrastructure with internal improvements

Internal improvements

Internal improvements is the term used historically in the United States for public works from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century, mainly for the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, canals, harbors and navigation improvements...

and a confluence of technological innovations before the Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

facilitated an expansion in organization, coordination, and scale of industrial production

Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of the larger Industrial Revolution corresponding to the latter half of the 19th century until World War I...

. Around the turn of the 20th century, American industry had superseded its European counterparts economically and the nation began to assert its military power

Military history of the United States

The military history of the United States spans a period of over two centuries. During the course of those years, the United States evolved from a new nation fighting the British Empire for independence without a professional military , through a monumental American Civil War to the world's sole...

. Although the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

challenged its technological momentum

Technological momentum

Technological momentum is a theory about the relationship between technology and society over time. The term was originally developed by the historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes....

, America emerged from it and World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

as one of two global superpower

Superpower

A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...

s. In the second half of the 20th century, as the United States was drawn into competition with the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

for political, economic, and military primacy

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

, the government invested heavily in scientific research and technological development which spawned advances in spaceflight

Spaceflight

Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...

, computing

Computing

Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...

, and biotechnology

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...

.

Science, technology, and industry have not only profoundly shaped America's economic success, but have also contributed to its distinct political institutions, social structure, educational system, and cultural identity. American values of meritocracy, entrepreneurship, and self-sufficiency are drawn from its legacy of pioneering technical advances.

Pre-European technology

North America has been inhabited continuously since approximately 10,000 BC. The earliest inhabitants were nomad

Nomad

Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...

ic, big-game hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

s who crossed the Bering land bridge

Bering land bridge

The Bering land bridge was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles wide at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Like most of Siberia and all of Manchuria, Beringia was not glaciated because snowfall was extremely light...

. These first Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

relied upon chipped stone spearhead

Spearhead

A spearhead is the sharpened tip of a spear.Spearhead may also refer to:-Armed conflict:* Armoured spearhead, a tactical formation* Spearhead, nickname of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division in the U.S...

s, rudimentary harpoon

Harpoon

A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument used in fishing to catch fish or large marine mammals such as whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the target animal, allowing the fishermen to use a rope or chain attached to the butt of the projectile to catch the animal...

s, and boats clad in animal-hides for hunting in the Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

. As they dispersed within the continent, they encountered the varied temperate climates in the Pacific northwest, central plains, Appalachian woodlands, and arid southwest where they began to make permanent settlements. The peoples living in the Pacific northwest built wooden houses, used net

Net (device)

A net, in its primary meaning, comprises fibers woven in a grid-like structure, and is very infrequently mentioned in discussions of philosophy. It blocks the passage of large items, while letting small items and fluids pass...

s and weir

Fishing weir

A fishing weir, or fish weir, is an obstruction placed in tidal waters or wholly or partially across a river, which is designed to hinder the passage of fish. Traditionally they were built from wood or stones. They can be used to trap fish...

s to catch fish, and practiced food preservation

Food preservation

Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or slow down spoilage and thus allow for longer storage....

, although substantial agriculture was not developed. Peoples living on the plains remained largely nomadic (some practiced agriculture for parts of the year) and became adept leather worker

Leather

Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...

s as they hunted buffalo

American Bison

The American bison , also commonly known as the American buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds...

while people living in the arid southwest built adobe

Adobe

Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material , which the builders shape into bricks using frames and dry in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and mudbrick buildings. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for...

buildings, fired pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

, domesticated cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

, and wove cloth

Loom

A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads...

. Tribes in the eastern woodlands and Mississippian Valley

Mississippian culture

The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....

developed extensive trade networks, built pyramid-like mounds, and practiced substantial agriculture while the peoples living in the Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

and coastal Atlantic practiced highly sustainable forest agriculture and were expert woodworkers. However, the populations of these peoples were small and their rate of technological change was very low. Indigenous peoples did not domesticate

Domestication

Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...

animals for drafting or husbandry, develop writing systems, or create bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

or iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

-based tools like their European/Asian counterparts.

European exploration and settlement

The discovery of the "New World" by Europeans explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries and subsequent Columbian Exchange

Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange was a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations , communicable disease, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres . It was one of the most significant events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in all of human history...

profoundly changed the direction of technological development in North America. State-sponsored explorers like the Spanish Conquistador

Conquistador

Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...

s arrived in the New World with technology unknown to the native inhabitants—caravel

Caravel

A caravel is a small, highly maneuverable sailing ship developed in the 15th century by the Portuguese to explore along the West African coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. The lateen sails gave her speed and the capacity for sailing to windward...

s, domesticated horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

s, iron armour

Armour

Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...

and sword

Sword

A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...

Agriculture

In the 17th century, Pilgrims, Puritans, and Quakers fleeing religious persecution in Europe brought with them plowshare

Plowshare

In agriculture, a plowshare is a component of a plow . It is the cutting or leading edge of a moldboard which closely follows the coulter when plowing....

s, gun

Gun

A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol,...

s, and domesticated animals like cows and pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

s. These immigrants and other European colonists initially farmed subsistence crops like corn

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

, wheat

Wheat

Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...

, rye

Rye

Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain and as a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe and is closely related to barley and wheat. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder...

, and oats

OATS

OATS - Open Source Assistive Technology Software - is a source code repository or "forge" for assistive technology software. It was launched in 2006 with the goal to provide a one-stop “shop” for end users, clinicians and open-source developers to promote and develop open source assistive...

as well as rendering potash

Potash

Potash is the common name for various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form. In some rare cases, potash can be formed with traces of organic materials such as plant remains, and this was the major historical source for it before the industrial era...

and maple syrup

Maple syrup

Maple syrup is a syrup usually made from the xylem sap of sugar maple, red maple, or black maple trees, although it can also be made from other maple species such as the bigleaf maple. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then...

for trade. In the more temperate southern climates, large-scale plantations grew labor-intensive cash crops like sugarcane

Sugarcane

Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...

, rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

, cotton

Cotton

, and tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

requiring native and imported African slave labor to maintain. Early American farmers were not self-sufficient; they relied upon other farmers, specialized craftsman, and merchants to provide tools, process their harvests, and bring them to market.

Artisanship

Colonial artisanship emerged slowly as harsh travel and living conditions in America discouraged skilled craftsman from crossing the Atlantic and bringing their tools with them. However, because of this, American craftsmen were unencumbered by the various long-standing allegiances of European craft guilds that sometimes stifled advances in technology out of economic self-interest. American artisans developed their own apprenticeship system for educating and employing the young. Despite the fact that mercantilist, export-heavy economy impaired the emergence of a robust self-sustaining economy, these craftsman and merchants developed a growing interdependence on each other for their trades. In the mid-18th century, attempts by the British to subdue or control the colonies by means of taxation sowed increased discontent among these artisan and merchants in urban Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, New York, and Philadelphia who increasingly advocated independence from British rule.

Early industrialization

American industrialization was facilitated by a unique confluence of geographical, social, and economic factors. The post-Revolution American population remained low relative to its European counterparts and the demand for manual labor created strong incentives to mechanize labor-intensive tasks. The eastern seaboard of the United States, with a great number of rivers and streams along the Atlantic seaboard, provided many potential sites for constructing mills and infrastructure necessary for early industrialization. A vast supply of natural resources along with a large labor supply consisting of surplus domestic rural workers and massive immigration from European nations enabled industrialization. The ready supply of labor was an advantage American industrialism had over European.

After the close of the American Revolution

American Revolution

in 1783, the new government provided strong property rights and a nonrigid class structure. The idea of issuing patents was brought to North America by English, French, and Dutch settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries and adopted into Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

authorizing Congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Factories and mills

In the mid 1780s, Oliver Evans

Oliver Evans

Oliver Evans was an American inventor. Evans was born in Newport, Delaware to a family of Welsh settlers. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a wheelwright....

invented an automated flour mill that included a grain elevator

Grain elevator

A grain elevator is a tower containing a bucket elevator, which scoops up, elevates, and then uses gravity to deposit grain in a silo or other storage facility...

and hopper boy

Hopper

Hopper may refer to:-Mechanical parts:* A general term for a chute with additional width and depth for temporary storage* Hopper , a large container used for dust collection* Part of a combine harvester...

. Evans' design eventually displaced the traditional gristmill

Gristmill

The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...

s. By the turn of the century, Evans also developed one of the first high-pressure steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

s and began establishing a network of machine workshops to manufacture and repair these popular inventions. In 1789, the widow of Nathanael Greene

Nathanael Greene

Nathanael Greene was a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. When the war began, Greene was a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United...

recruited Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...

to develop a machine to separate the seeds of short fibered cotton

Cotton

from the fibers. The resulting cotton gin

Cotton gin

A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...

could be made with basic carpentry skills but reduced the necessary labor by a factor of 50 and generated huge profits for cotton growers in the South. While Whitney did not realize financial success from his invention, he moved on to manufacturing rifles and other armaments under government contract that could be made with "expedition, uniformity, and exactness"—the foundational ideas for interchangeable parts

Interchangeable parts

Interchangeable parts are parts that are, for practical purposes, identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any device of the same type. One such part can freely replace another, without any custom fitting...

. However, Whitney's vision of interchangeable parts

Interchangeable parts

would not be achieved for four decades.

Between 1800 and 1820, new industrial tools that rapidly increased the quality and efficiency of manufacturing emerged. Simeon North

Simeon North

Simeon North was a Middletown, Connecticut, gun manufacturer, who developed one of America's first milling machines in 1818 and played an important role in the development of interchangeable parts manufacturing.North was born in Berlin, Connecticut, into a prosperous family able to provide all...

suggested using division of labor to increase the speed with which a complete pistol

Pistol

When distinguished as a subset of handguns, a pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, as opposed to a revolver, wherein the chamber is separate from the barrel as a revolving cylinder. Typically, pistols have an effective range of about 100 feet.-History:The pistol...

could be manufactured which led to the development of a milling machine

Milling machine

A milling machine is a machine tool used to machine solid materials. Milling machines are often classed in two basic forms, horizontal and vertical, which refers to the orientation of the main spindle. Both types range in size from small, bench-mounted devices to room-sized machines...

in 1798. In 1819, Thomas Blanchard

Thomas Blanchard

Thomas Blanchard was an American inventor who lived much of his life in Springfield, Massachusetts, where in 1819, he pioneered the assembly line style of mass production in America, and also invented the major technological innovation known as interchangeable parts. Blanchard worked, for much of...

created a lathe

Lathe

A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.Lathes are used in woodturning,...

that could reliably cut irregular shapes, like those needed for arms manufacture. By 1822, Captain John H. Hall

Captain John H. Hall

John Harris Hall was the inventor of the M1819 Hall breech-loading rifle, and a mass production innovator.-Early life:Hall was born in 1781 in Portland, Maine. He worked in his father's tannery until setting up his own woodworking and boat building shop in 1810 where he tinkered with guns in his...

had developed a system using machine tool

Machine tool

A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...

s, division of labor, and an unskilled workforce to produce a breech-loading rifle—a process that came to be known as "Armory practice" in the U.S. and the American system of manufacturing
American system of manufacturing
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. It involved semi-skilled labor using machine tools and jigs to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance, which could be assembled with a minimum of time...

in England.

The textile industry

Textile industry

The textile industry is primarily concerned with the production of yarn, and cloth and the subsequent design or manufacture of clothing and their distribution. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry....

, which had previously relied upon labor-intensive production methods, was also rife with potential for mechanization. In the late 18th century, the English textile industry had adopted the spinning jenny

Spinning jenny

The spinning jenny is a multi-spool spinning frame. It was invented c. 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England. The device reduced the amount of work needed to produce yarn, with a worker able to work eight or more spools at once. This grew to 120 as technology...

, water frame

Water frame

The water frame is the name given to the spinning frame, when water power is used to drive it. Both are credited to Richard Arkwright who patented the technology in 1768. It was based on an invention by Thomas Highs and the patent was later overturned...

, and spinning mule

Spinning mule

The spinning mule was a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer...

which greatly improved the efficiency and quality of textile manufacture, but were closely guarded by the British government which forbade their export or the emigration of those who were familiar with the technology. The 1787 Beverly Cotton Manufactory

Beverly Cotton Manufactory

The Beverly Cotton Manufactory was the first cotton mill to be built in America, and the largest cotton mill to be built during its era. It was built hoping for economic success, but reached a downturn due to technical limitations of the then early production process and limitations of the machines...

was the first cotton mill

Cotton mill

A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....

in the United States, but it relied on horse power. Samuel Slater

Samuel Slater

Samuel Slater was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution", or the "Father of the American Factory System" because he brought British textile technology to America. He learned textile machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British...

, an apprentice in one of the largest textile factories in England, immigrated to the United States in 1789 upon learning that American states were paying bounties to British expatriates with a knowledge of textile machinery. With the help of Moses Brown of Providence, Slater established America's oldest currently existing cotton-spinning mill with a fully mechanized water power system at the Slater Mill

Slater Mill

A National Historic Landmark, the Slater Mill is located next to the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Modeled after cotton spinning mills first established in England, the Slater Mill is the first water-powered cotton spinning mill in North America to utilize the Arkwright system of...

in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Pawtucket is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 71,148 at the 2010 census. It is the fourth largest city in the state.-History:...

in 1793. Slater went on to build several more cotton and wool mills throughout New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

, but when faced with a labor shortage, resorted to building housing, shops, and churches for the workers and their families adjacent to his factories. Slater's Mill was established in the Blackstone Valley

Blackstone Valley

The Blackstone Valley or Blackstone River Valley is a region of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It was a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution...

, which extended into neighboring Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, (Daniel Day

Daniel Day

Daniel Day was an American pioneer in woolen manufacturing.-Family:Daniel Day was born in Mendon, MA and was the son of Joseph Day and Deborah Taft...

's Woolen Mill, 1809), and became one of the earliest industrialized region in the United States, second to the North Shore of Massachusetts. Slater's business model of independent mills and mill villages (the "Rhode Island System") began to be replaced by the 1820s by a more efficient system (the "Waltham System") based upon Francis Cabot Lowell's replications of British power looms. The first power looms for woolens were installed in 1820, at Uxbridge, Massachusetts

Uxbridge, Massachusetts

Uxbridge is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It was first settled in 1662, incorporated in 1727 at Suffolk County, and named for the Earl of Uxbridge. Uxbridge is south-southeast of Worcester, north-northwest of Providence, and southwest of Boston. It is part of...

, by John Capron

John Capron

John Willard Capron was an American military officer in the infantry, state legislator, and textile manufacturer.-Early life, family:...

, of Cumberland, Rhode Island

Cumberland, Rhode Island

Cumberland is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States, incorporated in 1746. The population was 33,506 at the 2010 census.-History:...

. These added automated weaving under the same roof, a step which Slater's system outsourced to local farms. Lowell looms were managed by specialized employees, employed with unmarried young women ("mill girls

Lowell Mill Girls

"Lowell Mill Girls" was the name used for female textile workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. The Lowell textile mills employed a workforce which was about three quarters female; this characteristic caused two social effects: a close examination of the women's moral behavior, and...

"), and owned by a corporation. Unlike the previous forms of labor (apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

, family labor, slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

, and indenture

Indenture

An indenture is a legal contract reflecting a debt or purchase obligation, specifically referring to two types of practices: in historical usage, an indentured servant status, and in modern usage, an instrument used for commercial debt or real estate transaction.-Historical usage:An indenture is a...

), the Lowell system popularized the concept of wage laborer who sells his labor to an employer under contract—a socio-economic system which persists in many modern countries and industries.

Turnpikes and canals

Even as the country grew even larger with the admission of Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

, Tennessee

Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

, and Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

by 1803, the only means of transportation between these landlocked western states and their coastal neighbors was by foot, pack animal, or ship. Recognizing the success of Roman road

Roman road

The Roman roads were a vital part of the development of the Roman state, from about 500 BC through the expansion during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Roman roads enabled the Romans to move armies and trade goods and to communicate. The Roman road system spanned more than 400,000 km...

s in unifying that empire, political and business leaders in the United States began to construct roads and canals to connect the disparate parts of the nation.

Early toll road

Toll road

A toll road is a privately or publicly built road for which a driver pays a toll for use. Structures for which tolls are charged include toll bridges and toll tunnels. Non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically fuel tax or general tax funds...

s were constructed and owned by joint-stock companies

Joint stock company

A joint-stock company is a type of corporation or partnership involving two or more individuals that own shares of stock in the company...

that sold stock to raise construction capital like Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

's 1795 Lancaster Turnpike Company. In 1808, Secretary of the Treasury

United States Secretary of the Treasury

The Secretary of the Treasury of the United States is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, which is concerned with financial and monetary matters, and, until 2003, also with some issues of national security and defense. This position in the Federal Government of the United...

Albert Gallatin

Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin was a Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, politician, diplomat, congressman, and the longest-serving United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 1831, he founded the University of the City of New York...

's Report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals suggested that the federal government should fund the construction of interstate turnpikes

Toll road

and canal

Canal

Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

s. While many Anti-Federalists

Democratic-Republican Party (United States)

The Democratic-Republican Party or Republican Party was an American political party founded in the early 1790s by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Political scientists use the former name, while historians prefer the latter one; contemporaries generally called the party the "Republicans", along...

opposed the federal government assuming such a role, the British blockade in the War of 1812

War of 1812

The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

demonstrated the United States' reliance upon these overland roads for military operations as well as for general commerce. Construction on the National Road

National Road

The National Road or Cumberland Road was the first major improved highway in the United States to be built by the federal government. Construction began heading west in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River. It crossed the Allegheny Mountains and southwestern Pennsylvania, reaching...

began in 1815 in Cumberland, Maryland

Cumberland, Maryland

Cumberland is a city in the far western, Appalachian portion of Maryland, United States. It is the county seat of Allegany County, and the primary city of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 20,859, and the metropolitan area had a...

and reached Wheeling, Virginia

Wheeling, West Virginia

Wheeling is a city in Ohio and Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia; it is the county seat of Ohio County. Wheeling is the principal city of the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area...

in 1818, but political strife thereafter ultimately prevented its western advance to the Mississippi River

Mississippi River

The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...

. Nevertheless, the road became a primary overland conduit through Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

and was the gateway for thousands of antebellum westward-bound settlers.

Numerous canal companies had also been chartered; but of all the canals projected, only three had been completed when the War of 1812 began: the Dismal Swamp Canal

Dismal Swamp Canal

The Dismal Swamp Canal is located along the eastern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina in the United States. It is the oldest continually operating man-made canal in the United States, opened in 1805...

in Virginia, the Santee Canal

Santee Canal

The Santee Canal was one of the earliest canals built in the United States. It was built to provide a direct water route between Charleston and Columbia, the new South Carolina state capital.- History :...

in South Carolina, and the Middlesex Canal

Middlesex Canal

The Middlesex Canal was a 27-mile barge canal connecting the Merrimack River with the port of Boston. When operational it was 30 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, with 20 locks, each 80 feet long and between 10 and 11 feet wide...

in Massachusetts. It remained for New York to usher in a new era in internal communication by authorizing in 1817 the construction of the Erie Canal

Erie Canal

The Erie Canal is a waterway in New York that runs about from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, at Lake Erie, completing a navigable water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The canal contains 36 locks and encompasses a total elevation differential of...

. This bold bid for Western trade alarmed the merchants of Philadelphia, particularly as the completion of the national road threatened to divert much of their traffic to Baltimore. In 1825, the legislature of Pennsylvania grappled with the problem by projecting a series of canals which were to connect its great seaport with Pittsburgh on the west and with Lake Erie and the upper Susquehanna on the north. The Blackstone Canal

Blackstone Canal

The Blackstone Canal was a waterway linking Worcester, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island through the Blackstone Valley via a series of locks and canals during the early 19th century.-History:...

, (1823–1828) soon followed in Rhode Island

Rhode Island

The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

and Massachusetts

Massachusetts

, and later the Illinois and Michigan Canal

Illinois and Michigan Canal

The Illinois and Michigan Canal ran from the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago on the Chicago River to LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, on the Illinois River. It was finished in 1848 when Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth presided over its opening; and it allowed boat transportation from the Great...

from Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

to the Illinois River

Illinois River

The Illinois River is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately long, in the State of Illinois. The river drains a large section of central Illinois, with a drainage basin of . This river was important among Native Americans and early French traders as the principal water route...

(1824–1848).

Like the turnpikes, the early canals were constructed, owned, and operated by private joint-stock companies but later gave way to larger projects funded by the states. The Erie Canal

Erie Canal

, proposed by Governor of New York

Governor of New York

The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...

De Witt Clinton, was the first canal project undertaken as a public good to be financed at the public risk through the issuance of bond

Municipal bond

A municipal bond is a bond issued by a city or other local government, or their agencies. Potential issuers of municipal bonds includes cities, counties, redevelopment agencies, special-purpose districts, school districts, public utility districts, publicly owned airports and seaports, and any...

s. When the project was completed in 1825, the canal linked Lake Erie

Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...

with the Hudson River

Hudson River

The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

through 83 separate locks and over a distance of 363 miles (584 km). The success of the Erie Canal spawned a boom of other canal-building around the country: over 3326 miles (5,352.7 km) of artificial waterways were constructed between 1816 and 1840. Small towns like Syracuse, New York

Syracuse, New York

Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...

, Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

, and Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

that lied along major canal routes boomed into major industrial and trade centers, while canal-building pushed some states like Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

, Ohio

Ohio

, and Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

to the brink of bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

.

The magnitude of the transportation problem was such, however, that neither individual states nor private corporations seemed able to meet the demands of an expanding internal trade. As early as 1807, Albert Gallatin

Albert Gallatin

had advocated the construction of a great system of internal waterways to connect East and West, at an estimated cost of $20,000,000 ($ in consumer dollars). But the only contribution of the national government to internal improvements

Internal improvements

during the Jeffersonian era was an appropriation in 1806 of two percent of the net proceeds of the sales of public lands in Ohio for the construction of a national road, with the consent of the states through which it should pass. By 1818 the road was open to traffic from Cumberland, Maryland

Cumberland, Maryland

, to Wheeling, West Virginia.

In 1816, with the experiences of the war before him, no well-informed statesman could shut his eyes to the national aspects of the problem. Even President Madison invited the attention of Congress to the need of establishing "a comprehensive system of roads and canals". Soon after Congress met, it took under consideration a bill drafted by Calhoun which proposed an appropriation of $1,500,000 ($ in consumer dollars) for internal improvements. Because this appropriation was to be met by the moneys paid by the National Bank to the government, the bill was commonly referred to as the "Bonus Bill". But on the day before he left office, President Madison vetoed the bill because it was unconstitutional. The policy of internal improvements by federal aid was thus wrecked on the constitutional scruples of the last of the Virginia dynasty. Having less regard for consistency, the House of Representatives recorded its conviction, by close votes, that Congress could appropriate money to construct roads and canals, but had not the power to construct them. As yet the only direct aid of the national government to internal improvements consisted of various appropriations, amounting to about $1,500,000 for the Cumberland Road.

As the country recovered from financial depression following the Panic of 1819

Panic of 1819

The Panic of 1819 was the first major financial crisis in the United States, and had occurred during the political calm of the Era of Good Feelings. The new nation previously had faced a depression following the war of independence in the late 1780s and led directly to the establishment of the...

, the question of internal improvements again forged to the front. In 1822, a bill to authorize the collection of tolls on the Cumberland Road had been vetoed by the President. In an elaborate essay Monroe set forth his views on the constitutional aspects of a policy of internal improvements. Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it might not undertake the actual construction of national works nor assume jurisdiction over them. For the moment the drift toward a larger participation of the national government in internal improvements was stayed. Two years later, Congress authorized the President to institute surveys for such roads and canals as he believed to be needed for commerce and military defense. No one pleaded more eloquently for a larger conception of the functions of the national government than Henry Clay

Henry Clay

Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...

. He called the attention of his hearers to provisions made for coast surveys and lighthouses on the Atlantic seaboard and deplored the neglect of the interior of the country. Of the other presidential candidates, Jackson voted in the Senate for the general survey bill; and Adams left no doubt in the public mind that he did not reflect the narrow views of his section on this issue. Crawford felt the constitutional scruples which were everywhere being voiced in the South, and followed the old expedient of advocating a constitutional amendment to sanction national internal improvements.

In President Adams' first message to Congress, he advocated not only the construction of roads and canals but also the establishment of observatories

Observatory

An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed...

and a national university. President Jefferson had recommended many of these in 1806 for Congress to consider for creation of necessary amendments to the Constitution. Adams seemed oblivious to the limitations of the Constitution. In much alarm Jefferson suggested to Madison the desirability of having Virginia adopt a new set of resolutions, bottomed on those of 1798, and directed against the acts for internal improvements. In March, 1826, the general assembly declared that all the principles of the earlier resolutions applied "with full force against the powers assumed by Congress" in passing acts to protect manufacturers and to further internal improvements. That the Administration would meet with opposition in Congress was a foregone conclusion.

Steamboats

Despite the new efficiencies introduced by the turnpikes and canals, travel along these routes was still time-consuming and expensive. The idea of integrating a steam boiler

Boiler

A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications.-Materials:...

and propulsion system can be first attributed to John Fitch

John Fitch (inventor)

John Fitch was an American inventor, clockmaker, and silversmith who, in 1787, built the first recorded steam-powered boat in the United States...

and James Rumsey

James Rumsey

James Rumsey was an American mechanical engineer chiefly known for exhibiting a boat propelled by machinery in 1787 on the Potomac River at Shepherdstown, now West Virginia, before a crowd of local notables, including Horatio Gates...

who both filed for patents or state monopolies on steamboat

Steamboat

A steamboat or steamship, sometimes called a steamer, is a ship in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels...

s in the late 1780s. However, these first steamboats were complicated, heavy, and expensive. It would be almost 20 years until Robert R. Livingston

Robert Livingston (1746-1813)

Robert R Livingston was an American lawyer, politician, diplomat from New York, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was known as "The Chancellor," after the office he held for 25 years....

contracted a civil engineer

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

named Robert Fulton

Robert Fulton

Robert Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat...

to develop an economical steamboat. Fulton's paddle steamer

Paddle steamer

A paddle steamer is a steamship or riverboat, powered by a steam engine, using paddle wheels to propel it through the water. In antiquity, Paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses were wheelers driven by animals or humans...

, The North River Steamboat (erroneously referred to as the Clermont), made its first trip from New York City north on the Hudson River to Albany

Albany, New York

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

on August 17, 1807. By 1820, steamboat services had been established on all the Atlantic tidal river

River

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...

s and Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...

. The shallow-bottomed boats were also ideally suited navigating the Mississippi

Mississippi River

and Ohio River

Ohio River

The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

s and the number of boats on these rivers increased from 17 boats to 727 boats between 1817 and 1855. The speed of the steamboats decreased travel times between coastal ports and upstream cities by weeks and costs for transporting goods along these rivers by as much as 90%.

Steamboats profoundly altered the relationships between the federal government, state governments, and private property owners. Livingston and Fulton had obtained monopoly rights to operate a steamboat service within the state of New York, but Thomas Gibbons, who operated a competing New Jersey ferry service, was enjoined from entering New York waters under the terms of the monopoly. In 1824, the Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden
Gibbons v. Ogden
Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 , was a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce was granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. The case was argued by some of America's most admired and...

that Congress could regulate commerce and transportation under the Commerce Clause

Commerce Clause

The Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...

which compelled the state of New York to allow steamboat services from other states.

Because the physics

Structural failure

Structural failure refers to loss of the load-carrying capacity of a component or member within a structure or of the structure itself. Structural failure is initiated when the material is stressed to its strength limit, thus causing fracture or excessive deformations...

and metallurgy of boilers were poorly understood, steamboats were prone to boiler explosion

Boiler explosion

A boiler explosion is a catastrophic failure of a boiler. As seen today, boiler explosions are of two kinds. One kind is over-pressure in the pressure parts of the steam and water sides. The second kind is explosion in the furnace. Boiler explosions of pressure parts are particularly associated...

s that killed hundreds of people between 1810s and 1840s. In 1838, legislation was enacted that mandated boiler inspections by federal agents

Steamboat Inspection Service

The Steamboat Inspection Service was a United States agency created in 1852 to safeguard lives and property at sea. It merged with the Bureau of Navigation in 1932 to form the Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection which, in 1936, was reorganized into the Bureau of Marine Inspection and...

under the threat of revocation of the operator's navigation licenses and lowered the threshold for liability

Legal liability

Legal liability is the legal bound obligation to pay debts.* In law a person is said to be legally liable when they are financially and legally responsible for something. Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law. See Strict liability. Under English law, with the passing of the Theft...

in suit

Lawsuit

A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...

s arising from such accidents. While Americans long resisted any government's power to regulate private property

Private property

Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...

, these new rules demonstrated that many Americans believed that property rights did not override civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

and set the precedent for future federal safety regulations.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Labor. It was created by Congress of the United States under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon, on December 29, 1970...

Civil War

Role of industry & technology in causes, conduct & operations, reconstruction

Samuel Colt
Samuel Colt
Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He was the founder of Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company , and is widely credited with popularizing the revolver. Colt's innovative contributions to the weapons industry have been described by arms historian James E...

—Invented the revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...

, the first repeating pistol
Pistol
When distinguished as a subset of handguns, a pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, as opposed to a revolver, wherein the chamber is separate from the barrel as a revolving cylinder. Typically, pistols have an effective range of about 100 feet.-History:The pistol...
John Browning
John Browning
John Moses Browning , born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world...

- guns

Technological systems and infrastructure

The period after the Civil War was marked by increasing intense and pervasive industrialization and successive technological advances like the railroad, telegraph & telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

, and internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...

. This facilitated America's westward expansion

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...

and economic development by connecting the frontier with the industrial, financial, and political centers of the East. Americans increasingly relied upon technological infrastructures like the railroad, electric, and telecommunications systems for economic and social activities.

Railroads

Between 1820 and 1830, many inventors and entrepreneurs began to apply emerging steamboat technology to engines that could travel on land. The earliest proposal came in 1813 from Oliver Evans' idea of a railway to connect New York and Philadelphia with "carriages drawn by steam engines." Many individuals and companies have a claim to being the first railroad in the United States, but by the mid 1830s several companies were using steam-powered locomotive

Locomotive

A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...

s to move train cars on rail tracks

Rail tracks

The track on a railway or railroad, also known as the permanent way, is the structure consisting of the rails, fasteners, sleepers and ballast , plus the underlying subgrade...

. Between 1840 and 1860 the total length of railroad trackage increased from 3326 miles (5,353 km) to 30600 miles (49,245.8 km). The efficiency of railroad to move large, bulk items contributed enabled further drops in cost of transporting goods to market but in so doing undermined the profitability of the earlier turnpikes and canals which began to fold and fall into disrepair. However, the early railroads were poorly integrated; there were hundreds of competing companies using different gauge

Rail gauge

Track gauge or rail gauge is the distance between the inner sides of the heads of the two load bearing rails that make up a single railway line. Sixty percent of the world's railways use a standard gauge of . Wider gauges are called broad gauge; smaller gauges, narrow gauge. Break-of-gauge refers...

s for their track requiring cargo to be trans-shipped

Transshipment

Transshipment or Transhipment is the shipment of goods or containers to an intermediate destination, and then from there to yet another destination....

—rather than traveling directly—between cities. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad

First Transcontinental Railroad

The First Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska The First...

in 1869 and its attendant profit and efficiency had the effect of stimulating a period of intense consolidation and technological standardization that would last another 50 years. It was during this time that railroad magnates such as Jay Gould

Jay Gould

Jason "Jay" Gould was a leading American railroad developer and speculator. He has long been vilified as an archetypal robber baron, whose successes made him the ninth richest American in history. Condé Nast Portfolio ranked Gould as the 8th worst American CEO of all time...

and Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt , also known by the sobriquet Commodore, was an American entrepreneur who built his wealth in shipping and railroads. He was also the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family and one of the richest Americans in history...

amassed great power and fortunes from consolidation of smaller rail lines into national corporations. By 1920, 254000 miles (408,772.4 km) of standard-gauge railroad track had been laid in the United States, all of it owned or controlled by seven organizations. The need to synchronize train schedules and the inefficiencies introduced by every city having its own local time, also led to introduction of Standard time

Standard time

Standard time is the result of synchronizing clocks in different geographical locations within a time zone to the same time rather than using the local meridian as in local mean time or solar time. Historically, this helped in the process of weather forecasting and train travel. The concept...

by railway managers in 1883.

Iron and steel-making

Because iron

Iron

occurs in nature commonly as an oxide, it must be smelt

Smelting

Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...

ed to drive off the oxygen to obtain the metallic form. Bloomery forges

Bloomery

A bloomery is a type of furnace once widely used for smelting iron from its oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron. A bloomery's product is a porous mass of iron and slag called a bloom. This mix of slag and iron in the bloom is termed sponge iron, which...

were prevalent in the colonies and could produce small batches of iron to be smithed

Blacksmith

A blacksmith is a person who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal; that is, by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut...

for local needs (horseshoes, axeblades, plowshares) but were unable to scale production for exporting or larger-scale industry (gunmaking, shipbuilding, wheelmaking). Blast furnace

Blast furnace

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...

s creating cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

and pig iron

Pig iron

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel...

emerged on large self-sufficient plantations in the mid-17th century to meet these demands, but production was expensive and labor-intensive: forges, furnaces, and waterwheels had to be constructed, huge swaths of forest had to be cleared and the wood rendered into charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

, and iron ore and limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

had to be mined and transported. By the end of the 18th century, the threat of deforestation

Deforestation

Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....

forced the English to use coke

Coke (fuel)

Coke is the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Cokes from coal are grey, hard, and porous. While coke can be formed naturally, the commonly used form is man-made.- History :...

, a fuel derived from coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

, to fire their furnaces. This shift precipitated a drop in iron prices since the process no longer required charcoal, the production of which was labor intensive. This was a practice that was later adopted in the US as well.

Although steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

is an alloy of iron and a small amount of carbon, historically steel and iron-making were intended for different products given the high costs of steel over wrought iron

Wrought iron

thumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon...

. The main difficulty with making steel is that its higher melting point than pig or cast iron was not easily achievable in large scale production until methods that introduced air or oxygen to oxidize the carbon in the molten pig iron were developed, allowing the direct conversion of molten pig iron to molten steel.

Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, the English steelmakers produced blister and crucible steel

Crucible steel

Crucible steel describes a number of different techniques for making steel in a crucible. Its manufacture is essentially a refining process which is dependent on preexisting furnace products...

which required specialized equipment like finery forge

Finery forge

Iron tapped from the blast furnace is pig iron, and contains significant amounts of carbon and silicon. To produce malleable wrought iron, it needs to undergo a further process. In the early modern period, this was carried out in a finery forge....

s and puddling furnaces and cost over £50 per long ton

Long ton

Long ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the United States by the short ton...

. In the 18th century, innovations like steamboats, railroads, and guns increased demand for wrought iron and steel. In the 1850s, American William Kelly

William Kelly (inventor)

William Kelly , born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was an American inventor. Kelly studied metallurgy at the Western University of Pennsylvania. Instead of getting a job as a scientist, Kelly, his brother, and his brother-in-law started a dry goods and commission business, which they called...

and Englishman Henry Bessemer

Henry Bessemer

Sir Henry Bessemer was an English engineer, inventor, and businessman. Bessemer's name is chiefly known in connection with the Bessemer process for the manufacture of steel.-Anthony Bessemer:...

independently discovered that air blown through the molten iron increases its temperature by oxidizing the carbon and separating additional impurities into the slag. The Kelly-Bessemer process, because it reduces the amount of coke needed for blasting and increases the quality of the finished iron, revolutionized the mass production of high-quality steel and facilitated a drastic drop in steel prices and expansion of its availability.

In 1868, Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...

saw an opportunity to integrate new coke-making methods with the recently developed Kelly-Bessemer process to supply steel for railroads. In 1872, he built a steel plant in Braddock, Pennsylvania at the junction of several major railroad lines. Carnegie earned enormous profits by pioneering vertical integration

Vertical integration

In microeconomics and management, the term vertical integration describes a style of management control. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to...

; he owned the iron ore mines in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, the transport steamboats on the Great Lakes

Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...

, the coal mines and coke ovens, and the rail lines delivering the coke and ore to his Pennsylvania mills. By 1900, the Carnegie Steel Company

Carnegie Steel Company

Carnegie Steel Company was a steel producing company created by Andrew Carnegie to manage business at his steel mills in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area in the late 19th century.-Creation:...

was producing more steel than all of Britain and in 1901 Carnegie sold his business to J.P. Morgan's U.S. Steel

U.S. Steel

The United States Steel Corporation , more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the United States, Canada, and Central Europe. The company is the world's tenth largest steel producer ranked by sales...

earning Carnegie $480 million personally.

Telegraph and telephone

The ability to quickly transmit information over long distances would prove to have an enormous impact on many diverse fields like journalism, banking, and diplomacy. Between 1837 and 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse and Alfred Vail developed a transmitter that could send "short" or "long" electric current which would move an electromagnetic receiver to record the signal as dots and dashes

Morse code

Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...

. Morse established the first telegraph line (between Baltimore and Washington D.C.) in 1844 and by 1849 almost every state east of the Mississippi had telegraph service. Between 1850 and 1865, the telegraph business became progressively more consolidated and the 1866 incorporation of Western Union

Western Union

The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...

emerged with a near-monopoly over 22,000 telegraph offices and 827000 miles (1,330,924.2 km) of cable throughout the country. The telegraph was used to dispatch news from the fronts of the Mexican-American War, coordinate Union

Union (American Civil War)

During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...

troop movements during the Civil War, relay stock

Stock

The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

and commodity

Commodity

In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....

prices and orders between markets on ticker tape

Ticker tape

Ticker tape was the earliest digital electronic communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 through 1970...

, and conduct diplomatic negotiations

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...

after the Transatlantic telegraph cable

Transatlantic telegraph cable

The transatlantic telegraph cable was the first cable used for telegraph communications laid across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. It crossed from , Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland. The transatlantic cable connected North America...

was laid in 1866.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....

obtained a patent in 1876 to a device that could transmit and reproduce the sound of a voice over electrical cables. Bell realized the enormous potential for his telephone

Telephone

and formed the Bell Telephone Company

Bell Telephone Company

The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...

which would control the whole system from the manufacture the telephones and exchange equipment to leasing

Lease

A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee to pay the lessor for use of an asset. A rental agreement is a lease in which the asset is tangible property...

the equipment to customers and operators

Telephone operator

A telephone operator is either* a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls , calls which are billed to a credit card, station-to-station and person-to-person calls, and certain...

. Between 1877 and 1893 (the term of Bell's patent coverage) the number of phones leased by Bell's company increased from 3,000 to 260,000, although these were largely limited to businesses and government offices that could afford the relatively high rates. After the Bell patents expired, thousands of independent operators became incorporated and their competition for services to middle and low-class households as well as rural farmers drove prices down significantly. By 1920, there were 13 million phones in the United States providing service to 39 percent of all farm households and 34 percent of non-farm households.

Petroleum

The 1859 discovery of crude oil in western Pennsylvania

Titusville, Pennsylvania

Titusville is a city in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 6,146 at the 2000 census. In 1859, oil was successfully drilled in Titusville, resulting in the birth of the modern oil industry.-History:...

set off an "oil rush"

Pennsylvanian oil rush

The Pennsylvanian oil rush was a "boom" in petroleum production which occurred in northwestern Pennsylvania from 1859 to about 1870. It was the first oil boom in the United States....

reminiscent the 1849 California Gold Rush

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

and would prove to be a valuable resource on the eve of the Civil War

American Civil War

. Because crude oil needs to be distilled to extract usable fuel oil

Fuel oil

Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...

s, oil refining quickly became a major industry in the area. However, the rural and mountainous terrain of these Pennsylvania oilfields allowed neither economical in-situ refining nor efficient railroad transportation of extracted oil. Beginning in 1865, the construction of oil pipelines to connect the oilfields with railroads or oil refineries alleviated this geographical bottleneck but also put thousands of cooper

Cooper (profession)

Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads...

s and teamster

Teamster

A teamster, in modern American English, is a truck driver. The trade union named after them is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters , one of the largest unions in the United States....

s (who made the barrels and drove the wagons to transport oil) out of business. As the network of oil pipelines expanded, they became more integrated with both the railway and telegraph systems which enabled even greater coordination in production, scheduling, and pricing.

John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...

was a forceful driver of consolidation

Horizontal integration

In microeconomics and strategic management, the term horizontal integration describes a type of ownership and control. It is a strategy used by a business or corporation that seeks to sell a type of product in numerous markets...

in the American oil industry. Beginning in 1865, he bought refineries, railroads, pipelines, and oilfields and ruthlessly eliminated competition to his Standard Oil

Standard Oil

Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational...

. By 1879, he controlled 90% of oil refined in the US. Standard Oil used pipelines to directly connect the Pennsylvanian oilfields with the refineries in New Jersey, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, rather than loading and unloading railroad tank cars, which enabled huge gains in efficiency and profitability. Given the unprecedented scale of Standard Oil's network, the company developed novel methods for managing, financing, and organizing its businesses. Because laws governing corporations limited their ability to do business across state lines, Standard Oil pioneered the use of a central trust

Trust company

A trust company is a corporation, especially a commercial bank, organized to perform the fiduciary of trusts and agencies. It is normally owned by one of three types of structures: an independent partnership, a bank, or a law firm, each of which specializes in being a trustee of various kinds of...

that owned and controlled the constituent companies in each state. The use of trusts by other industries to stifle competition and extract monopoly

Monopoly

A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

prices led to the 1890 passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act

Sherman Antitrust Act

The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...

. In the 1911 case of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States found Standard Oil guilty of monopolizing the petroleum industry through a series of abusive and anticompetitive actions...

, the Supreme Court ordered the Standard Oil Trust be disbanded into competing companies that would become Exxon

Exxon

Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....

(Standard Oil of New Jersey), Mobil

Mobil

Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...

(Standard Oil of New York), and Chevron

Chevron Corporation

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,...

(Standard Oil of California).

The demand for petroleum products increased rapidly after the turn of the century as families relied upon kerosene

Kerosene

Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...

to heat and light their houses, industries relied upon lubricant

Lubricant

A lubricant is a substance introduced to reduce friction between moving surfaces. It may also have the function of transporting foreign particles and of distributing heat...

s for machinery, and the ever-more prevalent internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

demanded gasoline

Gasoline

Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...

fuel. Between 1880 and 1920, the amount of oil refined annually jumped from 26000000 barrels (4,133,669,670 l) to 442 million. The discovery of large oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and California in the early 20th century touched off "oil crazes" and contributed to these states' rapid industrialization. Because these previously agrarian western states lay outside of the various Standard Oil's production and refining networks, cities like Long Beach, California

Long Beach, California

Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...

, Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

, and Houston, Texas

Houston, Texas

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

emerged as major centers for refining and managing these new fields under companies like Sunoco

Sunoco

Sunoco Inc. is an American petroleum and petrochemical manufacturer headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, formerly known as Sun Company Inc. and Sun Oil Co. ....

, Texaco

Texaco

Texaco is the name of an American oil retail brand. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand....

, and Gulf Oil

Gulf Oil

Gulf Oil was a major global oil company from the 1900s to the 1980s. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies...

Electricity

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

pioneered the study of electricity by being the first to describe positive and negative charges, as well as advancing the principle of conservation of charge. Franklin is best known for the apocryphal feat of flying a kite in thunderstorm to prove that lightning

Lightning

Lightning is an atmospheric electrostatic discharge accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms...

is a form of electricity

Electricity

Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

which, in turn, led to the invention of the lightning rod

Lightning rod

A lightning rod or lightning conductor is a metal rod or conductor mounted on top of a building and electrically connected to the ground through a wire, to protect the building in the event of lightning...

to protect buildings.

Major advances were made by Europeans for the next century.

By the early 1880 generators were beginning to power arc lamp

Arc lamp

"Arc lamp" or "arc light" is the general term for a class of lamps that produce light by an electric arc . The lamp consists of two electrodes, first made from carbon but typically made today of tungsten, which are separated by a gas...

s in Britain and France, but they generated high temperatures and sparks that prevented widespread adoption. In 1880, Thomas Alva Edison developed and patented a long-lasting incandescent lamp based upon the previous work of many inventors. Like Bell, Edison immediately set about commercializing his invention through a shrewd business plan involving companies that would manufacture the whole technological system upon which the "light bulb" would depend - generators (Edison Machine Company), cables (Edison Electric Tube Company), generating plants and electric service (Edison Electric Light Company), sockets, and bulbs. As in other industries of the era, these companies achieved greater efficiencies by merging to form a conglomerated

Conglomerate (company)

A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate structure , usually involving a parent company and several subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company...

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

company. Lighting was immensely popular: between 1882 and 1920 the number of generating plants in the US increased from one in downtown Manhattan to nearly 4,000. While the earliest generating plants were constructed in the immediate vicinity of consumers, plants generating electricity for long-distance transmissions were in place by 1900. To help finance this great expansion, the utility industry exploited a financial innovation known as the "holding company

Holding company

A holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...

"; a favorite holding company investment among many was the Electric Bond and Share Company

Electric Bond and Share Company

The Electric Bond and Share Company was originally a holding company that sold securities of electric utilities. It was created by General Electric in 1905. The company was restructured after the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. Later known as EBASCO Services, it provided engineering...

(later much-changed, and known as Ebasco), created by the General Electric company in 1905. The abuse of holding companies, like trusts before it, led to the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935

Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 , , also known as the Wheeler-Rayburn Act, was a law that was passed by the United States Congress to facilitate regulation of electric utilities, by either limiting their operations to a single state, and thus subjecting them to effective state...

, but by 1920, electricity had surpassed petroleum-based lighting sources that had dominated the previous century.

In addition to lighting, electric motor

Electric motor

An electric motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy.Most electric motors operate through the interaction of magnetic fields and current-carrying conductors to generate force...

s (analogous to generators operating in reverse, or using a current to spin a magnet to perform work) became extremely important to industry. Speed control of early DC motors limited their use. Frank J. Sprague

Frank J. Sprague

Frank Julian Sprague was an American naval officer and inventor who contributed to the development of the electric motor, electric railways, and electric elevators...

developed the first successful DC motor (ca. 1886) by solving the problem of varying speed with load. Within a few years DC motors were used in electric street railways.

In 1883, a Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

n immigrant, Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer...

, a former employee of Edison's, invented the alternating current (AC) electric motor and licensed the invention to the Westinghouse Corporation. Electric motors quickly replaced steam engines in factories around the nation as they required neither complex mechanical transmissions from a central engine nor water sources for steam boilers in order to operate. Frank Sprague, an electrical engineer who also previously worked for Edison, pioneered the use motors to power electric street carriages in 1888.

Edison's patents on direct current

Direct current

Direct current is the unidirectional flow of electric charge. Direct current is produced by such sources as batteries, thermocouples, solar cells, and commutator-type electric machines of the dynamo type. Direct current may flow in a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through...

generation and illumination allowed him to dominate the initial years of electric power distribution

Electric power distribution

File:Electricity grid simple- North America.svg|thumb|380px|right|Simplified diagram of AC electricity distribution from generation stations to consumers...

. However, DC transmission was hampered by the difficulty in changing voltages between industrial generation and residential/commercial consumption as well as low transmission efficiency. In 1887, Tesla introduced system for alternating current

Alternating current

In alternating current the movement of electric charge periodically reverses direction. In direct current , the flow of electric charge is only in one direction....

generators, transformers, motors, wires and lights that allowed for convenient voltage transformation

Transformer

A transformer is a device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through inductively coupled conductors—the transformer's coils. A varying current in the first or primary winding creates a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's core and thus a varying magnetic field...

and greater transmission efficiencies and licensed the inventions to George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse, Jr was an American entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry. Westinghouse was one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system...

to commercialize. Despite the apparent technical superiority of Tesla's system, Edison's GE began a campaign to disparage

Fear, uncertainty and doubt

Fear, uncertainty and doubt, frequently abbreviated as FUD, is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda....

the competing AC system in the war of currents

War of Currents

In the "War of Currents" era in the late 1880s, George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison became adversaries due to Edison's promotion of direct current for electric power distribution over alternating current advocated by several European companies and Westinghouse Electric based out of Pittsburgh,...

by holding animal executions such as Topsy the elephant using AC current (which led to the invention of the electric chair

Electric chair

Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body...

), publicizing accounts of injuries related to AC power, and lobbying

Lobbying

Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...

state legislatures. In 1893, the Niagara Falls Commission awarded Tesla-Westinghouse (backed by J.P. Morgan, Lord Rothschild, and John Jacob Astor IV

John Jacob Astor IV

John Jacob Astor IV was an American businessman, real estate builder, investor, inventor, writer, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War and a member of the prominent Astor family...

) their hydroelectric dam contract over opposition from GE, thereby establishing AC generation and transmission on a large scale as well as creating the 60 Hz

Hertz

The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....

standard.

Automobiles

The technology for creating an automobile

Automobile

An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

emerged in Germany in the 1870 and 1880s: Nicolaus Otto

Nicolaus Otto

Nikolaus August Otto was the German inventor of the first internal-combustion engine to efficiently burn fuel directly in a piston chamber. Although other internal combustion engines had been invented these were not based on four separate strokes...

created a four-stroke internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

, Gottlieb Daimler

Gottlieb Daimler

Gottlieb Daimler was an engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf , in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development...

and Wilhelm Maybach

Wilhelm Maybach

Wilhelm Maybach was an early German engine designer and industrialist. During the 1890s he was hailed in France, then the world centre for car production, as the "King of constructors"....

modified the Otto engine to run at higher speeds, and Karl Benz

Karl Benz

Karl Friedrich Benz, was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered car, and together with Bertha Benz pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz...

pioneered the electric ignition. The Duryea brothers and Hiram Percy Maxim

Hiram Percy Maxim

Hiram Percy Maxim was an American radio pioneer and inventor, and co-founder of the American Radio Relay League . He originally had the amateur call signs SNY, 1WH, 1ZM, 1AW, and later W1AW, which is now the ARRL Headquarters club station call sign...

were among the first to construct a "horseless carriage" in the US in the mid-1890s, but these early cars proved to be heavy and expensive.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...

revolutionized the automobile manufacturing process by employing interchangeable parts

Interchangeable parts

on assembly lines—the beginning of industrial mass production

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

. In 1908, the Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

released the Model T which could generate 20 horsepower

Horsepower

Horsepower is the name of several units of measurement of power. The most common definitions equal between 735.5 and 750 watts.Horsepower was originally defined to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses in continuous operation. The unit was widely adopted to measure the...

, was lightweight, and easy to repair. Demand for the car was so great, he had to relocate his assembly plant to Highland Park, Michigan

Highland Park, Michigan

- Geography :According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land.- Demographics :As of the census of 2000, there were 16,746 people, 6,199 households, and 3,521 families residing in the city. The population density was 5,622.9 per square mile . There were 7,249...

in 1912. The new plant was a model of industrial efficiency for the time: it was well lit and ventilated, employed conveyors to move parts along an assembly line, and workers' stations were orderly arranged along the line. The efficiency of the assembly line allowed Ford to realize great gains in economy and productivity; in 1912, Ford sold 6,000 cars for approximately $900 and by 1916 approximately 577,000 Model T automobiles were sold for $360. Ford was able to scale production rapidly because assembly-line workers were unskilled laborers performing repetitive tasks. Ford hired European immigrants, African-Americans, ex-convicts, and the disabled and paid comparatively high wages, but was quick to dismiss anyone involved in labor unions or radical

Anarchism in the United States

Anarchism in the United States spans a wide range of anarchist philosophy, from individualist anarchism to anarchist communism and other less known forms. America has two main traditions, native and immigrant, with the native tradition being strongly individualist and the immigrant tradition being...

political

Socialism in the United States

Socialism as an organized political movement in the United States began with utopian communities in the early 19th century and later became closely tied to the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Party of America...

associations

Communist Party USA

The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....

With growth of American automobile usage, urban and rural roads were gradually upgraded for the new traffic. Local automobile clubs formed the American Automobile Association

American Automobile Association

AAA , formerly known as the American Automobile Association, is a federation of 51 independently operated motor clubs throughout North America. AAA is a not-for-profit member service organization with more than 51 million members. AAA provides services to its members such as travel, automotive,...

to lobby

Lobbying

city, state, and federal governments to widen and pave existing roads and build limited-access highway

Highway

A highway is any public road. In American English, the term is common and almost always designates major roads. In British English, the term designates any road open to the public. Any interconnected set of highways can be variously referred to as a "highway system", a "highway network", or a...

s. Some federal road aid was passed in the 1910s and 20s (resulting in highways like U.S. Route 1

U.S. Route 1

U.S. Route 1 is a major north–south U.S. Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs 2,377 miles from Fort Kent, Maine at the Canadian border south to Key West, Florida. U.S. 1 generally parallels Interstate 95, though it is significantly farther west between...

and U.S. Route 66

U.S. Route 66

U.S. Route 66 was a highway within the U.S. Highway System. One of the original U.S. highways, Route 66 was established on November 11, 1926 -- with road signs erected the following year...

). The coverage and quality of many roads would greatly improve following Depression-era Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

investment in road infrastructure. New Automobile sales were temporarily slowed during World War II when wartime rationing

Rationing

Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time.- In economics :...

and military production lines limited the number of automobiles that could be manufactured—the largest companies like Ford

Ford Motor Company

, GM

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

, and Chrysler

Chrysler

Chrysler Group LLC is a multinational automaker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925....

would survive those lean years. After the war, rising family sizes

Baby boom

A baby boom is any period marked by a greatly increased birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds and when the number of annual births exceeds 2 per 100 women...

, increasing affluence, and government-subsidized mortgages for veterans fueled a boom in single-family homes. Many were automobile-owners. In 1956, Congress passed the Interstate and National Defense Highway Act which provided funding for the construction of 41000 miles (65,982.9 km) of toll-free expressways throughout the country laying the legislative and infrastructural foundations for the modern American highway system.

Agricultural production

In the 1840s, as more and more western states joined the Union, many poor and middle-class Americans increasingly agitated for free land in these large, undeveloped areas. Early efforts to pass a Homestead Act by George Henry Evans

George Henry Evans

Born in England, George H Evans was a radical reformer, with experience in the Working Men's movement of 1829 and the trade union movements of the 1830s...

and Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...

were stymied by Southern states who feared that free land would threaten the plantation system. The Homestead Act

Homestead Act

A homestead act is one of three United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title to an area called a "homestead" – typically 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River....

was passed in 1862 after the opposing Southern states had seceded. The Homestead Act granted 160 acres (65 hectares) to farmers who lived on the land for 5 years or allowed the farmer to purchase the land after 6 months for $1.25 per acre ($3/ha).

Even as America's westward expansion allowed over 400 million acres (1,600,000 km²) of new land to be put under cultivation, between 1870 and 1910 the number of Americans involved in farming or farm labor dropped by a third. New farming techniques and agricultural mechanization facilitated both processes. Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus Hall McCormick, Sr. was an American inventor and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of International Harvester Company in 1902.He and many members of the McCormick family became prominent Chicagoans....

's reaper (invented in 1834) allowed farmers to quadruple their harvesting efficiency by replacing hand labor with a mechanical device. John Deere invented the steel

Steel

plow in 1837, keeping the soil from sticking to the plow and making it easier to farm in the rich prairie

Prairie

Prairies are considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type...

s of the Midwest. The harvester, self-binder, and combine allowed even greater efficiencies: wheat farmers in 1866 achieved an average yield of 9.9 bushels per acre but by 1898 yields had increased to 15.3 bushels per acre even as the total area had tripled.

Railroads allowed harvests to reach markets more quickly and Gustavus Swift's refrigerated railroad car allowed fresh meat and fish to reach distant markets. Food distribution also became more mechanized as companies like Heinz and Campbell distributed previously perishable foods by canning and evaporation. Commercial bakeries, breweries, and meatpackers replaced locally-owned operators and drove demand for raw agricultural goods. Despite increasing demand, rising production caused a drop in prices, creating substantial discontent among farmers. Organizations like The Grange and Farmers Alliance emerged to demand conservative monetary policy

Gold standard

The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...

, railroad regulations, and protective tariffs.

Urbanization

The period between 1865 and 1920 was marked by the increasing concentration of people, political power, and economic activity in urban areas. In 1860, there were nine cities with populations over 100,000 and by 1910 there were fifty. These new large cities were not coastal port cities (like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia) but laid inland along new transportation routes (like Denver, Chicago, and Cleveland). The first twelve presidents of the United States had all been born into farming communities, but between 1865 and 1912 the Presidency was filled by men with backgrounds of representing businesses and cities.

Industrialization and urbanization reinforced each other and urban areas became increasingly congested. As a result of unsanitary living conditions, diseases like cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

, dysentery

Dysentery

Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...

, and typhoid fever

Typhoid fever

Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...

struck urban areas with increasing frequency. Cities responded by paving streets, digging sewers, sanitizing water, constructing housing, and creating public transportation systems.

Labor issues and immigration

As the nation deepened its technological base, old-fashioned artisan and craftsman became "deskilled

Deskilling

Deskilling is the process by which skilled labor within an industry or economy is eliminated by the introduction of technologies operated by semiskilled or unskilled workers...

" and replaced by specialized workers and engineers who used machines to replicate in minutes or hours work that would require a journeyman hours or days to complete. Frederick W. Taylor, recognizing the inefficiencies introduced by some production lines, proposed that by studying the motions and processes necessary to manufacture each component of a product, reorganizing the factory and manufacturing processes around workers, and paying workers piece rates would allow great gains in process efficiency. Scientific management, or "Taylorism" as it came to be known, was soon being applied by progressive city governments to make their urban areas more efficient and by suffragettes to home economics.

Increasing industrialization outpaced the supply of laborers able or willing to work in dangerous, low-paying, and dead-end jobs. However, the demand for low or unskilled jobs drove wages up and attracted waves of Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish immigrants who could earn more in America than in their homelands.

The earliest unions emerged before the Civil War as trade guilds composed of journeyman carpenters, masons, and other artisans who would engage in strikes to demand better hours and pay from their masters. All branches of government generally sought to stop labor from organizing into unions or from organizing strikes.

Banking, trading, and financial services

To finance the larger-scale enterprises required during this era, the Stockholder Corporation emerged as the dominant form of business organization. Corporations expanded by combining into trusts, and by creating single firms out of competing firms, known as monopolies.
Banking, investment, insurance, consulting, corporations, speculation, business cycle

Regulation

Business leaders backed government policies of laissez-faire. High tariffs sheltered U.S. factories and workers from foreign competition, federal railroad subsidies enriched investors, farmers and railroad workers, and created hundreds of towns and cities. Powerful "robber baron

Robber baron (industrialist)

Robber baron is a pejorative term used for a powerful 19th century American businessman. By the 1890s the term was used to attack any businessman who used questionable practices to become wealthy...

" industrialists such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...

, John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

and Jay Gould

Jay Gould

held great wealth and power during this period.

The Progressive movement and the Progressive Era

Progressive Era

The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...

that emerged from it was in part a reaction to excesses of the new industrial age. "Muckraking

Muckraker

The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...

" journalists reported on a wide array of social issues, and the reaction of the public lent urgency to reforms that led to increased government regulation, such as the Meat Inspection Act

Meat Inspection Act

The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was a United States Congress Act that worked to prevent adulterated or misbranded meat and meat products from being sold as food and to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. These requirements also apply...

and Pure Food and Drug Act

Pure Food and Drug Act

The Pure Food and Drug Act of June 30, 1906, is a United States federal law that provided federal inspection of meat products and forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated food products and poisonous patent medicines...

(1906). Antitrust

Competition law

Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, is law that promotes or maintains market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies....

legislation sought to break up monopolies

Monopoly

A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

and increase competition

Competition (economics)

Competition in economics is a term that encompasses the notion of individuals and firms striving for a greater share of a market to sell or buy goods and services...

Great Depression

Military-industrial-academic complex

In the 20th century, the pace of technological developments increasingly became tied into a complex set of interactions between Congress, the industrial manufacturers, university research, and the military establishment. This set of relations, known more popularly as the "military-industrial complex," emerged because the military's unique technological demands, concentration of funding, large scale application, and highly centralized control played a dominant role in driving technological innovation. Fundamental advances in medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

, physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

, chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

, computing

Computing

Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...

, aviation

Aviation

Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird.-History:...

, material science, naval architecture

Naval architecture

Naval architecture is an engineering discipline dealing with the design, construction, maintenance and operation of marine vessels and structures. Naval architecture involves basic and applied research, design, development, design evaluation and calculations during all stages of the life of a...

, and meteorology

Meteorology

Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...

, among other fields, can be traced back to basic and applied research for military applications. Smokestack America became a nickname applied to traditional manufacturing core of U.S. industry, used to represent particular industries, regions, or towns.

Research universities

The first universities in the United States

Colonial colleges

The Colonial Colleges are nine institutions of higher education chartered in the American Colonies before the United States of America became a sovereign nation after the American Revolution. These nine have long been considered together, notably in the survey of their origins in the 1907 The...

were modeled on the liberal curricula

Liberal arts

The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...

of the great

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

English

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

universities

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

and were meant to educate clergy

Clergy

Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....

men and lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

s rather than teach vocational

Vocational education

Vocational education or vocational education and training is an education that prepares trainees for jobs that are based on manual or practical activities, traditionally non-academic, and totally related to a specific trade, occupation, or vocation...

skills or conduct scientific research. The U.S. Military Academy

United States Military Academy

The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...

, established in 1811, broke the mold of traditional universities and military academies alike by including practical engineering-related subjects in its earliest curricula. By the middle of the 19th century, polytechnic institutes were being founded in increasing numbers to train students in the scientific and technical skills needed to design, build, and operate increasingly complex machines. In 1824, Stephen van Rensselaer established the first American institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...

granting a bachelor's degree in technical subjects and in the 1850s several Ivy League

Ivy League

The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...

schools began to offer courses of study in scientific fields.

Congressional legislators, recognizing the increasing importance and prevalence of these eastern polytechnic schools, passed the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act

Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges, including the Morrill Act of 1862 and the Morrill Act of 1890 -Passage of original bill:...

providing large grants of land that were to be used toward establishing and funding the educational institutions that would teach courses on military tactics, engineering, and agriculture. Many of the United States' noted public research universities can trace their origins back to land grant colleges. Between 1900 and 1939, enrollments in post-secondary institutes increased from 238,000 to 1,494,000 and higher education had become so available and affordable that a college degree was increasingly required for scientific, engineering, and government jobs that previously only required only vocational or secondary education.

After World War II, the GI Bill caused university enrollments to explode as millions of veterans earned college degrees.

World wars

Great White fleet, Spanish-American War, tanks, machine gun, medicine, chemical weapons,

Richard Jordan Gatling
Richard Jordan Gatling
Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling was an American inventor best known for his invention of the Gatling gun, the first successful machine gun.-Life:...

- Gatling gun
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is one of the best known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun. It is well known for its use by the Union forces during the American Civil War in the 1860s, which was the first time it was employed in combat...
John T. Thompson
John T. Thompson
John Taliaferro Thompson, , was a United States Army officer best remembered as the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun.-Early life:...

- Tommy gun

The introduction of the airplane to the battlefield was one of the most radical changes in the history of warfare. The history of flight

Aviation history

The history of aviation has extended over more than two thousand years from the earliest attempts in kites and gliders to powered heavier-than-air, supersonic and hypersonic flight.The first form of man-made flying objects were kites...

traces hundreds of years and the distinction of building first flying machine

First flying machine

There are conflicting views as to what was the first flying machine.Much of the debate surrounding records of early flying machines depends on the exact definition of what constitutes a "flying machine", "flight", and even "first"....

is complicated, but in December 1903 the Wright Brothers

Wright brothers

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur , were two Americans credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903...

achieved sustained, manned, and controlled heavier-than-air flight. The Wright brothers had difficulty raising funding from the government and military, but after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

began in 1914, airplanes quickly assumed great tactical importance for both sides (see Aviation in World War I

Aviation in World War I

World War I was the first war in which aircraft were deployed on a large scale. Tethered observation balloons had already been employed in several wars, and would be used extensively for artillery spotting. Germany employed Zeppelins for reconnaissance over the North Sea and strategic bombing raids...

); the US government appropriated $640 million in 1917 to procure 20,000 airplanes for the war for aerial reconnaissance

Aerial reconnaissance

Aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance that is conducted using unmanned aerial vehicles or reconnaissance aircraft. Their roles are to collect imagery intelligence, signals intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence...

, dogfight

Dogfight

A dogfight, or dog fight, is a form of aerial combat between fighter aircraft; in particular, combat of maneuver at short range, where each side is aware of the other's presence. Dogfighting first appeared during World War I, shortly after the invention of the airplane...

ing, and aerial bombing

Strategic bombing

Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability and public will to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...

. After the close of the war in 1918, the US government continued to fund peacetime aeronautical activities like airmail

Airmail

Airmail is mail that is transported by aircraft. It typically arrives more quickly than surface mail, and usually costs more to send...

and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915 to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958 the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and...

. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, industrial, university, and military research continued to realize gains in the power, maneuverability, and reliability of airplanes: Charles Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...

completed a non-stop transatlantic flight

Transatlantic flight

Transatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. A transatlantic flight may proceed east-to-west, originating in Europe or Africa and terminating in North America or South America, or it may go in the reverse direction, west-to-east...

in 1927, Wiley Post

Wiley Post

Wiley Hardeman Post was a famed American aviator, the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits. His Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae, was on display at the National Air and Space Museum's...

flew around the world in nine days in 1931, and Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

shattered flight airspeed records throughout the decade. In the 1930s, passenger airlines

Airline

An airline provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for mutual benefit...

boomed as a result of the Kelley Act, state and local governments began constructing airports to attract airlines, and the federal government began to regulate

United States government role in civil aviation

Governments have played an important part in shaping air transportation. This role began as early as 1783, when the king of France summoned the Montgolfier brothers to demonstrate their balloon. In 1892, the French War Ministry backed an attempt to build a heavier-than-air flying machine...

air traffic control

Air traffic control

Air traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...

and investigate aviation accidents and incidents

Aviation accidents and incidents

An aviation accident is defined in the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, in which a...

Cold War and Space Race

Manhattan project, procurement, government R&D, technology gap

American Robert Goddard was one of the first scientists to experiment with rocket

Rocket

A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...

propulsion systems. In his small laboratory in Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....

, Goddard worked with liquid oxygen

Liquid oxygen

Liquid oxygen — abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries — is one of the physical forms of elemental oxygen.-Physical properties:...

and gasoline

Gasoline

to propel rockets into the atmosphere

Earth's atmosphere

The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention , and reducing temperature extremes between day and night...

, and in 1926 successfully fired the world's first liquid-fuel rocket which reached a height of 12.5 meters. Over the next 10 years, Goddard's rockets achieved modest altitudes of nearly two kilometers, and interest in rocket

Rocket

ry increased in the United States, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union.

At the close of World War II, both the American and Russian forces recruited or smuggled top German scientists

Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...

like Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun

Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...

back to their respective countries to continue defense-related work.
Expendable rockets provided the means for launching artificial satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

s, as well as manned spacecraft. In 1957 the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, and the United States followed with Explorer I

Explorer I

Explorer 1 was the first Earth satellite of the United States, launched as part of its participation in the International Geophysical Year...

in 1958. The first manned space flights were made in early 1961, first by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961....

and then by American astronaut Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was an American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, and NASA astronaut who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, in space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit...

.

From those first tentative steps, to the 1969 Apollo program landing on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

, to today's reusable Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...

, the American space program has brought forth a breathtaking display of applied science. Communications satellite

Communications satellite

A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...

s transmit computer data, telephone

Telephone

calls, and radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

broadcasts. Weather satellite

Weather satellite

The weather satellite is a type of satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be either polar orbiting, seeing the same swath of the Earth every 12 hours, or geostationary, hovering over the same spot on Earth by orbiting over the equator while...

s furnish the data necessary to provide early warnings of severe storm

Storm

A storm is any disturbed state of an astronomical body's atmosphere, especially affecting its surface, and strongly implying severe weather...

Computers and information networks

American researchers made fundamental advances in telecommunications and information technology. For example, AT&T's Bell Laboratories spearheaded the American technological revolution with a series of inventions including the light emitting diode (LED

LEd

LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

), the transistor

Transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...

, the C programming language, and the UNIX

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

computer operating system. SRI International

SRI International

SRI International , founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in Menlo Park, California, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later...

and Xerox PARC

Xerox PARC

PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....

in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

helped give birth to the personal computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

industry, while ARPA

ARPA

Arpa and ARPA may refer to:Arpa* Arpa River in Armenia* Areni, Armenia - formerly called Arpa* Arpi, Armenia, also called Arpa* Turkish for Akhurian River in Turkey and Armenia* Italian for harp, sometimes used in scoresARPA...

and NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

funded the development of the ARPANET

ARPANET

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...

and the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. Companies like IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

and Apple Computer

Apple Computer

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

developed personal computer

Personal computer

s while Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

created operating systems and office productivity software to run on them. With the growth of information on the World Wide Web, search companies like Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

and Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

developed technologies to sort and rank web pages based on relevance. The web also has become a site for computer-mediated social interactions and web services like MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

, Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, and Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

are used by millions to communicate. Miniaturization of computing technology

Moore's Law

Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....

and the increasing pervasiveness and speed of wireless network

Wireless network

Wireless network refers to any type of computer network that is not connected by cables of any kind. It is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and enterprise installations avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment...

s had led to substantial adoption of mobile phone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s and increasingly powerful smartphones based on software platforms like Apple's iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

and Google's Android.

Health care and biotechnology

As in physics and chemistry, Americans have dominated the Nobel Prize for physiology

Physiology

Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

or medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

since World War II (compare the Evolution of Nobel Prizes by country). The private sector

Private sector

In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...

has been the focal point for biomedical research in the United States, and has played a key role in this achievement. As of 2000, for-profit industry funded 57%, non-profit private organizations funded 7%, and the tax-funded National Institutes of Health

National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...

funded 36% of medical research in the U.S. Funding by private industry increased 102% from 1994 to 2003.

The National Institutes of Health

National Institutes of Health

consists of 24 separate institutes supporting the prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease

Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

s and disabilities

Disability

A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...

. At any given time, grants from the NIH support the research of about 35,000 principal investigators, working in every US state and several foreign countries. Between 1971 and 1991, mortality from heart disease

Heart disease

Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...

dropped 41 percent, stroke

Stroke

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

s decreased by 59 percent. And today more than 70 percent of children who get cancer are cured.

Molecular genetics

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

and genomics

Genomics

Genomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis,...

research have revolutionized biomedical science. In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers performed the first trial of gene therapy

Gene therapy

Gene therapy is the insertion, alteration, or removal of genes within an individual's cells and biological tissues to treat disease. It is a technique for correcting defective genes that are responsible for disease development...

in humans and are now able to locate, identify, and describe the function of many genes in the human genome

Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs plus the small mitochondrial DNA. 22 of the 23 chromosomes are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...

.

Research conducted by universities, hospitals, and corporations also contributes to improvement in diagnosis and treatment of disease. NIH funded the basic research on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

), for example. Many of the drugs used to treat the disease have emerged from the laboratories of the American pharmaceutical industry.

News, media, and entertainment

Radio, television, newspapers, movies, music, games

Hospitality, tourism, and travel

Hotels & restaurants, franchising, fast food, casinos & gambling, air & space tourism

Technology and society

This section discusses technology, scientific studies, engineering, and overall impact.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Pre-European technology

European exploration and settlement

Agriculture

Artisanship

Early industrialization

Factories and mills

Turnpikes and canals

Steamboats

Civil War

Technological systems and infrastructure

Railroads

Iron and steel-making

Telegraph and telephone

Petroleum

Electricity

Automobiles

Agricultural production

Urbanization

Labor issues and immigration

Banking, trading, and financial services

Regulation

Great Depression

Military-industrial-academic complex

Research universities

World wars

Cold War and Space Race

Computers and information networks

Health care and biotechnology

News, media, and entertainment

Hospitality, tourism, and travel

Technology and society

See also

Further reading

External links