Innovation/Inventions Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922 “Watson, come here! I need you!” Starts the Bell Telephone Company By the mid 1880’s, 300,000 phones (mostly in business) are in use.

Innovation/Inventions Thomas A. Edison 1847-1931 Phonograph Incandescent Lamp Builds the 1st central electric power station. Edison helped make electricity more widely available to American businesses and homes. *The telephone and electric power help business improve.

Henry Ford July 3rd 1863 – April 1947 Mechanical from an early age Started with the Model A Most popular and affordable was the Model T By 1913 he had decrease production time from 12 hours to 6 hours to 93 minutes Increase wages and reduced hours because the work was repetitious

The Gilded Age Business and Industry Theory of Social Darwinism as it applies to business refers to the “survival of the fittest” Marketing techniques that helped change businesses Advertising in magazines and newspapers. The use of catalogs. The start of department stores.

Government Helps Business Laissez – Faire Economics – This is the government’s economic philosophy of “hands off the economy”. The laissez – Faire approach allows business to act without many restrictions. Tariff – Taxes placed on imports. Tariffs were put in place to protect American Industries.

Monopolies Andrew Carnegie built a Steel Empire. Carnegie creates Vertical Consolidation (Vertical Integration) which is a form of business in which a manufacturing corporation acquires firms that contribute to the completion of a finished product. Owns Steel Mills Buys the mining companies Buys the R. R. and shipping Sells all finished products

Carnegie uses the Bessemer Process to produce stronger, more durable steel. The Bessemer Process revolutionized the steel Industry by taking the impurities out of steel. It also greatly changes construction of buildings and bridges in the United States. Bessemer process First cheap method of making steel, invented by Henry Bessemer in England in 1856. It has since been superseded by more efficient steel-making processes, such as the basic–oxygen process. In the Bessemer process compressed air is blown into the bottom of a converter, a furnace shaped like a cement mixer, containing molten pig iron. The excess carbon in the iron burns out, other impurities form a slag, and the furnace is emptied by tilting.

John D. Rockefeller Rockefeller built an Oil Empire and names it Standard Oil. Rockefeller creates Horizontal Consolidation (Horizontal Integration) which is a form of business organization in which a corporation acquires rival companies for the purpose of eliminating competition. He eventually controls all oil wells in the U. S. by accumulating stocks. Buys all oil refineries in the U. S. Markets and sells his products.