Industrial Revolution Continues

Throughout the 1800s, factory production in the United States had expanded. America’s wealth in natural resources, such as forests, water, coal, iron, copper, silver, and gold, helped industry to manufacture a variety of goods. 1

American industry experienced many ups and downs. The up times are referred to as booms, and the down times as busts. Very bad bust times are called depressions. 2

The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron prior to the open hearth furnace. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in The process was independently discovered in 1851 by William Kelly. The process had also been used outside of Europe for hundreds of years, but not on an industrial scale. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten. 3

Andrew Carnegie was born November 25, 1835, in Scotland. When Andrew Carnegie was 11 he emigrated to western Pennsylvania. Starting from when he was 13, he rose from a job as a bobbin boy to the top of the railroad industry. Wanting a larger income, he left the railroad business to go to the steel industry. Carnegie used the Bessemer process to get control of steel production. He also used the "cost-accounting" techniques of the railroad industry. Working with Henry Bessemer, Carnegie took every steel plant under his control. He bought the steel, coal and coke mills, as well as the iron mines. Since he controlled every aspect of the steel industry, he could have the coal and coke made cheaply, the iron mined cheaply, and sell the steel for a low per-unit cost. He became a millionaire, and the richest person of his time. He died August 11,

Born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, Thomas Edison rose from humble beginnings to work as an inventor of major technology. Setting up a lab in Menlo Park, some of the products he developed included the telegraph, phonograph, electric light bulb, alkaline storage batteries and Kinetograph (a camera for motion pictures). 5

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. 6

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His education was largely received through numerous experiments in sound and the furthering of his father’s work on Visible Speech for the deaf. Bell worked with Thomas Watson on the design and patent of the first practical telephone. In all, Bell held 18 patents in his name alone and 12 that he shared with collaborators. 7

Christopher Latham Sholes was an American inventor who invented the first practical typewriter in 1867 and the QWERTY keyboard still in use today. He was also a newspaper publisher and Wisconsin politician. 8

Isaac Merritt Singer was an American inventor, actor, and entrepreneur. He made important improvements in the design of the sewing machine and was the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Many had patented sewing machines before Singer, but his success was based on the practicality of his machine, the ease with which it could be adapted to home use, and its availability on an installment payment basis. 9

Granville T. Woods was an African-American inventor who held more than 50 patents. He is also the first American of African ancestry to be a mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. Self-taught, he concentrated most of his work on trains and streetcars. One of his notable inventions was the Multiplex Telegraph, a device that sent messages between train stations and moving trains. His work assured a safer and better public transportation system for the cities of the United States. 10

Margaret E. Knight was an American inventor. She has been called "the most famous 19th-century woman inventor". She was born in York, Maine to James Knight and Hannah Teal. James Knight died when Margaret was a little girl. Knight went to school until she was twelve and worked in a cotton mill between ages 12 through 56. In 1868, while living in Springfield, Massachusetts, Knight invented a machine that folded and glued paper to form the flat bottomed brown paper bags familiar to shoppers today. 11

John D. Rockefeller was an American tycoon, businessman, and philanthropist. He was a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry. In 1870, he co-founded Standard Oil Company and aggressively ran it until he officially retired in