I remember learning about THE Industrial Revolution in grade school… And in the last year have read many articles detailing disruption and innovation occurring right now… But I embarrassed to say that I honestly can’t tell you what happened during what revolution, why it was important, or what was revolutionized, innovated, and disrupted.

The Second Industrial Revolution

• Led to massive, but unstable economic growth
• Occurred during the late 19th to mid 20th century
• The Second Industrial Revolution came about after the Civil War
• Ushered in the “Gilded Age”
• But led to the Great Depression
• Mass Production a major theme
  • Economies of scale
  • Assembly lines
  • Electricity in manufacturing
• Continued growth of specialization and interdependence in manufacturing, which mainly took form in industrial regions or manufacturing belts
• And, perhaps most importantly: The Second Industrial Revolution made the American Middle Class a possibility

Short History Lesson

This period, encompassing most of the second half of the nineteenth century, has also been called the American Industrial Revolution.

• Over the first half of the century, the country expanded greatly, and the new territory was rich in natural resources
• Completing the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 was a major milestone, making it easier to transport people, raw materials, and products
• The United States also had vast human resources: between 1860 and 1900, fourteen million immigrants came to the country, providing workers for an array of industries
• The American industrialists overseeing this expansion were ready to take risks to make their businesses successful
  • Andrew Carnegie established the first steel mills in the U.S. to use the British “Bessemer process” for mass producing steel, becoming a titan of the steel industry in the process. He acquired business interests in the mines that produced the raw material for steel, the mills and ovens that created the final product and the railroads and shipping lines that transported the goods, thus controlling every aspect of the steelmaking process
• Other industrialists, including John D. Rockefeller, merged the operations of many large companies to form a trust
  • Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust came to monopolize 90% of the industry, severely limiting competition
  • These monopolies were often accused of intimidating smaller businesses and competitors in order to maintain high prices and profits
  • Economic influence gave these industrial magnates significant political clout as well
  • The U.S. government adopted policies that supported industrial development such as providing land for the construction of railroads and maintaining high tariffs to protect American industry from foreign competition

For millions of working Americans, the industrial revolution changed the very nature of their daily work

• Previously, they might have worked for themselves at home, in a small shop, or outdoors, crafting raw materials into products, or growing a crop from seed to table
• When they took factory jobs, they were working for a large company
  • The repetitive work often involved only one small step in the manufacturing process, so the worker did not see or appreciate what was being made
  • The work was often dangerous and performed in unsanitary conditions
• Some women entered the work force
• Child labor became a major issue
• Dangerous working conditions, long hours, and concern over wages and child labor contributed to the growth of labor unions
• In the decades after the Civil War, workers organized strikes and work stoppages that helped to publicize their problems
  • One especially significant labor upheaval was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
    • Wage cuts in the railroad industry led to the strike
    • Strikeegan in West Virginia and spread to three additional states over a period of 45 days
    • Was violently ended by a combination of vigilantes, National Guardsmen, and federal troops
  • Similar episodes occurred more frequently in the following decades as workers organized and asserted themselves against perceived injustices
• The new jobs for the working class were in the cities
• Thus, the Industrial Revolution began the transition of the United States from a rural to an urban society
• Young people raised on farms saw greater opportunities in the cities and moved there, as did millions of immigrants from Europe
• Providing housing for all the new residents of cities was a problem, and many workers found themselves living in urban slums; open sewers ran alongside the streets, and the water supply was often tainted, causing disease
• These deplorable urban conditions gave rise to the Progressive Movement in the early twentieth century; the result would be many new laws to protect and support people, eventually changing the relationship between government and the people

The “Age of Invention”

Many innovations that we now take for granted came about during the Second Industrial Revolution, including…

• Automatic road signals (traffic lights)
• Air brakes for cars
• Knuckle couples on railroads
• Dynamite
• The telephone
• Electric light and the light bulb
• The typewriter
• The elevator
• Structural steel for buildings, leading to the first skyscrapers
• The phonograph
• Motion pictures
• The electric generator
• Refrigerators
• Washing machines
• The internal combustion engine
• The first automobile
• The first motorcycle
• The first airplane flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903
• The Gatling Gun
• The Maxim Machine Gun
• The Colt .45
• The torpedo
• Barbed wire
• The Swiss Army knife
• The steam turbine
• Christmas lights
• The Hershey Bar
• The flashlight
• The electrostatic motor
• The zipper
• The toaster

American inventors like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison created a long list of new technologies that improved communication, transportation, and industrial production…

Alexander Graham Bell

“The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking” (c. 1906)

• Explored new speaking and hearing technologies, but his work was as wide as his imagination and included
  • Investigations on how to separate salt from water
  • Experiments with a rudimentary “air conditioner”
  • Development of one of the early versions of a metal detector
  • Motor-powered heavier-than-air flight
  • Research on finding alternative fuels, including
    • Methane Gas
    • Solar Power
• Alexander Bell was the inventor of
  • The telephone
  • A metal jacket that assisted in breathing
  • The audiometer to detect minor hearing problems
  • A device to locate icebergs
• Also held patents for the
  • Telegraph
  • Photophone
  • Phonograph
  • Aerial vehicles
  • “Hydroairplanes”
  • Selenium cells
  • Aeronautics

• Thomas Edison acquired a record number of 1,093 patents
• Thomas Edison’s most famous invention, the light bulb, paved the way for modern life
• In addition to his talent for invention, Edison was also a successful manufacturer and businessman who was highly skilled at marketing his inventions–and himself–to the public
• Edison’s 5 Most Important Inventions:
  • The Phonograph
  • The Light Bulb
  • The Motion Picture
  • First Invention – The Electrographic Vote Recorder
  • Magnetic Iron Ore Separator