Nineteenth-Century Progress Inventions to Make Life Easier

Setting the Stage As the industries we saw in the industrial revolution grew, scientific discovery started to push the frontiers of knowledge with new inventions and discoveries New kinds of energy: – Gasoline – Electricity – Hydrogen First used as a fuel source in 1806 for an engine! Including being used to power one of the first cars Would be used for aircraft long after it was discovered

Inventions to Make Life Easier Thomas Edison – Patented more than 1000 inventions, including the light bulb and phonograph – Light bulb Used direct current (DC) Was used widely as the standard throughout the US – Created a research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey Most of his inventions were created here Worked with Lewis H. Latimer, an African American inventor Implications for perceptions of race?

Inventions to Make Life Easier Nikola Tesla (1865) – Born in Croatia – Worked with Edison briefly – Created alternating-current (AC) machinery Tesla Electric Company “Tesla coil” – used for radio technology, still used today Sold this patent to Westinghouse Corporation which then got the contract for the Chicago World’s Fair – AC current quickly became the preeminent power system of the 20 th c and has been the worldwide standard ever since – Why have you never heard of him? Became obsessed with wireless transmission of energy and he set out to build a wireless (think about that!) communication system to provide free electricity around the world Got funding from JP Morgan but doubts arose among his investors and his rival Guglielmo Marconi – with the help of Edison and Carnegie – made advancements with radio technologies, forcing Tesla to abandon the project He declared bankruptcy two years later and his tower (called Wardenclyffe) was scraped to pay for the debts

Inventions to Make Life Easier Bell and Marconi Revolutionize Communication – Alexander Graham Bell Teacher of deaf students invented the telephone in his spare time Displayed his device at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 – Guglielmo Marconi used theoretical discoveries about electromagnetic waves to create the first radio in 1895 Sent messages using Morse Code through the air without wires Primitive radios quickly became standard equipment for ships

Inventions to Make Life Easier Ford Sparks the Automobile Industry – 1880s, German inventors used a gasoline powered engine to power a vehicle – automobile – Henry Ford decided to use this and make cars that were affordable for most people Used standardized, interchangeable parts Built them on an assembly line – line of workers who each put a single piece on unfinished cars as they passed on a moving belt – Could build an entire Model T in 2 hours First built in 1908 and sold for $850 As production costs fell, the price dropped to $300 – Other factories built on this and by 1916, there were more than 3.5 million cars on the roads (which had not quite caught up yet)

Inventions to Make Life Easier The Wright Brothers – Bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio built the first gasoline powered airplane – First heavier than air aircraft to SUCCEED – Flew it in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina Longest flight 59 seconds Started the aircraft industry Not the first to start toward flight though – First controlled flight was a dirigible (considered lighter than air) Reached 6.7 mph from a flight from Paris to Trappe Built by a Frenchman, Henri Giffard – Going back even farther Di Vinci was obsessed with, creating an invention for a glider as early as the – Produced more than 35,000 words and 500 sketches dealing with flying machines – Most of them mimicked a bird’s flight (impressive given the F4U Corsairs that were highly effective in WWII)

New Ideas in Medicine The Germ Theory of Disease – Louis Pasteur (mid-1800s) Discovered that fermentation of alcohol was caused by microscopic organisms he called bacteria – Realized that heat killed bacteria – Led him to develop the process of pasteurization to kill germs in liquids, like milk – Joseph Lister Read Pasteur’s work and realized that germs might explain why about half of all patients died after surgery from infection 1865 – ordered all surgical wards be kept spotless, wounds had to be washed with antiseptic, AND PEOPLE HAD TO WASH THEIR HANDS 85% of Lister’s patients started to survive after these techniques were put in place – Vaccines were found for deadly diseases like typhus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and yellow fever People started to live longer

New Ideas in Science Mendel and Genetics – 1850s an Austrian monk named Mendel used peas to prove genetics Realized there was a pattern to the way certain traits were inherited Started to experiment with pea pods in his garden to prove it – Significantly different that Lamarck who said that over time, species changed themselves through behavior His go to example is the neck of a giraffe – “Nervous Fluid” longer neck = longer necked offspring

New Ideas in Chemistry and Physics John Dalton (British) – theorized all matter is made of a tiny particles called atoms – Showed that elements have specific weights – Compounds then contain more than one element Dmitri Mendeleev (Russian) – Used Dalton’s ideas of weights of elements to organize them into the periodic table – Still used today (as you well know) Marie and Pierre Curie – Discovered two missing elements, radium and polonium – Found in a mineral called pitchblende which released a powerful form of energy – radioactivity – 1903 they shared the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on radioactivity – 1911, Marie won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for finding radium and polonium – Both were unfortunately killed by their exposure to radioactivity, which today we know is really dangerous Ernest Rutherford (British) – suggested that atoms were not the smallest particles – Nucleus surrounded by electrons

New Ideas in Science Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – On the Origin of Species – Theory of Evolution (Natural Selection) Populations tend to grow faster than the food supply and so much compete for food (who does this sound like?) Only the fittest and best adapted to their environment survive Surviving members produce offspring with their advantages Over many generations, the species change – Will be applied to races with the term Social Darwinism Huge reason why the Europeans feel the right to colonize (imperialize) other countries Does this still exist?

Social Sciences Explore Behavior (and borrow from the Hard Sciences) Wanted to study humans and societies scientifically Psychology – Study of the human mind and behavior – Ivan Pavlov Believed human actions were unconscious reactions to experiences and could be changed by training Pavlov’s dogs – Sigmund Freud Believed the unconscious mind drives how people think and act Psychoanalysis – dealt with psychological conflicts due to suppressed memories, desires, and impulses

The Rise of Mass Culture Changes produce mass culture – Appeal of art, writing, music, and other forms of entertainment to a larger audience – As goods became cheaper, it was easier for more people to enjoy them which lead to people wanting more Led to changes in music, theater, sports, movies

The Rise of Mass Culture Music Halls and Vaudeville – Many people went to music halls where they would have multiple acts a night – In the US, Vaudeville acts were variety acts that traveled from town to town Movies – During the 1880s, many inventors tried producing moving images – Edison succeeded – Earliest motion pictures were black and white and lasted less than a minute – By the 1900s, they were producing the first feature films 1910 – 5 million Americans attended some 10,000 theaters each day Europe had numbers close to that

The Rise of Mass Culture Sports Entertain Millions – Spectator sports now became entertainment (more people had money to spend) – US: football and baseball grew quickly in popularity Massillon Tiger and McKinley Bulldogs (my neck of the woods) – Europe: Soccer and Cricket drew huge crowds – Olympic Games 1896 Revived the Greek tradition (remind you of anything?) First games took place in Athens, Greece again