Transcript The Industrial Revolution Spreads

The Industrial Revolution
Spreads
• By the 1880s, steel had replaced steam as
the symbol of the Industrial Revolution.
• While the Industrial Revolution began with
the use of iron, steam engines, and
machinery in the British textile industry, the
revolution entered a new phase in the mid1800s. This second Industrial Revolution
transformed the economies of the western
world.
New Industrial Powers
• Belgium was the first European country outside
of Britain to industrialize. By the mid-1800s,
countries like Germany, France, and the United
States also began to use their abundant natural
resources to join the industrial age.
• The first American textile factory was built in
Pawtucket, Rhode Island with plans that had
been smuggled out of Britain.
• Germany and the United States became two of
the leading industrial nations in the late 1800s.
• Like Britain, the new industrial nations also
experienced major changes. Men, women, and
children worked long hours in difficult conditions,
although these conditions began to improve by
1900.
• The factory system produced huge quantities of
new goods at lower prices than ever before.
Workers could buy goods that only the wealthy
could afford in earlier times. Increased demand
for goods, and the building of cities, railroads,
and factories worked together to create jobs.
• Politics also changed as leaders had to meet the
demands of a changing society.
Technology and Industry
• By 1880, companies had begun hiring
professional chemists and engineers to create
new products and machinery.
• In 1856, Henry Bessemer developed a way to
purify iron ore and produce a new substance,
steel. It was lighter, harder, and more durable
than iron. Steel rapidly became the major
material used in tools, bridges, and railroads.
• Industrialized countries began to measure their
success in the amount of steel they were able to
produce each year.
• Chemists began to create hundreds of new
products – from medicines like aspirin to
perfumes and soaps. Chemical fertilizers
helped to increase food production.
• In 1866, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, a
material that was widely used in construction.
Unfortunately, it was also used in warfare.
Nobel used the fortune he made from dynamite
to fund the Nobel peace prize.
• In the late 1800s, a new power source replaced
steam – electricity.
• Alessandro Volta invented the battery around
1800. Then Michael Faraday created the first
simple electric motor and the first dynamo, a
machine to generate electricity. Even today,
electrical generators and transformers work on
the same principles as Faraday's dynamo.
• In the 1870s, Thomas Edison made the first
electric light bulb. His invention meant that
factories could continue to operate after dark.
• The basic features of the factory system
remained the same during the 1800s. To
improve efficiency, however, manufacturers
began to design machines with interchangeable
parts, or identical components that could be
used in place of one another. They simplified
assembly and repair of machines.
• By the early 1900s, manufacturers had
introduced the assembly line, a process in which
workers add parts to a product that moves along
a belt from one work station to the next. The
assembly line made production faster and
cheaper, lowering the price of goods.
• Henry Ford invented the assembly line, for use
on his Model T Ford.
Technology Speeds Transportation
and Communication
• Technology of the Second Industrial
Revolution transformed the fields of
transportation and communication.
• Steamships replaced sailing ships, and
railroad building took off. In the United
States, a new transcontinental railroad
provided rail service from the Atlantic to
the Pacific.
• A German engineer, Nikolaus Otto, invented a
gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.
In 1886, Karl Benz received a patent for the first
automobile, which used Otto’s engine, and had
only 3 wheels. Then Gottlieb Daimler invented
the first 4-wheeled automobile.
• These “horseless carriages” quickly transformed
transportation.
• An American, Henry Ford, produced an
automobile that could travel a breath-taking 25
miles an hour. His use of the assembly line
enabled him to mass-produce his automobiles,
lowering the cost so that many more people
could afford them. He made the United States a
leader in the automobile industry.
• The internal-combustion engine was used to boost farm
production as it came to power mechanical threshers
and reapers.
• It also fulfilled a dream of many when Orville and Wilbur
Wright used the engine to design a and fly a small
airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.
• Commercial passenger travel began in the 1920s.
• There was also a revolution in communication when
Samuel Morse developed the telegraph, an instrument
that could use electricity to send coded messages over
wires. His first telegraph line connected Baltimore and
Washington D.C. in 1844.
• In 1876, the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell
patented the telephone.
• By the 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian, had
invented the radio. In 1901, he sent a radio message
across the Atlantic using Morse’s dot-and-dash code.
New Directions for Business
• New technology required the investment of
large amounts of money. Entrepreneurs
developed new ways of organizing
businesses.
• Business owners began to sell stock, or
shares in their companies, to investors.
Each investor became an owner of a tiny
part of the company.
• By the late 1800s, “big business” came to
dominate industry. Large companies needed so
much capital that they sold hundreds of
thousands of shares of stocks. They formed
corporations, or businesses that are owned by
many investors who buy shares of stock.
Investors were liable only for the amount of
money they had invested in the company. They
could not be held personally responsible for
debts of the corporation.
• Powerful business leaders began to create
monopolies and trusts, or huge corporations that
controlled entire industries or areas of the
economy. In the US, one of these trusts was the
Standard Oil Company of Ohio, founded by John
D. Rockefeller.
• In their pursuit of profit, ruthless business leaders
destroyed competing companies. Then they were free to
raise prices as much as they wanted.
• Sometimes, the leaders of corporations in a particular
industry would join forces and form a cartel, an
association to fix (set) prices.
• The rise of these big businesses sparked a stormy
debate. Some people viewed the Rockefellers and
others like them as “captains of industry” or visionaries
who added to the general prosperity.
• Others viewed them as “robber barons” who damaged
free enterprise by crushing competition. Reformers
called for laws to prevent monopolies and regulate trade.
• By the early 1900s, some governments did move against
monopolies, but many business leaders used their
economic and political power to prevent regulations
against them.