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Communication Changes
In the early 1900s, American songwriters were caught up in the public fascination with new inventions.
One of the most popular songs of 1905,
“In My Merry Oldsmobile,”
“Come away with me Lucile,
In my merry Oldsmobile.
Down the road of life we’ll fly,
Automobubbling you and I.
To the church we’ll swiftly steal,
Then our wedding bells will peal;
You can go as far as you like . . . ,
In my merry Oldsmobile.”
—by Vincent Bryan and
Gus Edwards
How Did Life Change After 1870?
By 1910 Americans in cities drove cars through streets lit with electric lights. They went to department stores where they bought everything from kitchen sinks to shoes. Americans could also do their shopping by mail—or pick up the telephone and order groceries from the local store.
The automobile, the electric light, and the telephone were all invented after 1870. Within a generation, they had become part of everyday life for millions of people. New inventions helped people communicate more quickly over long distances. Improvements in communication helped unify the regions of the country and promoted economic growth.
Samuel Morse had introduced the telegraph in 1844.
By 1860 the United States had thousands of miles of telegraph lines, which were controlled for the most part by the Western Union Telegraph Company. At telegraph offices, trained operators transmitted messages called telegrams in Morse code. Telegrams offered almost instant communication. Shopkeepers relied on telegrams to order goods, and reporters used them to transmit stories to their newspapers. Americans also began sending personal messages by telegram. The telegraph soon linked the United States and Europe. In the 1860s news from Europe traveled to this country by ship and took several weeks. Cyrus Field wanted to speed up the process. After several unsuccessful attempts, in 1866 Field managed to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. The new transatlantic telegraph carried messages in a matter of seconds, bringing the United States and Europe closer together.
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell invented a device that revolutionized communications even more than Morse’s telegraph.
Born and educated in Scotland, Bell moved to the United States, where he studied ways of teaching people with hearing loss to speak. At the same time, he experimented with sending voices through electrical wires. By 1876 Bell developed a device that transmitted speech—the telephone. While Bell was preparing to test the device, he accidentally spilled some battery acid on his clothes.
In panic, Bell called out to his assistant in another room: “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!” Watson heard Bell’s voice coming through the telephone. The invention was a success. Bell formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. By the 1890s, he had sold hundreds of thousands of phones. Most early telephone customers were businesses. Before long, though, telephones became common in homes.
The Genius of Invention
The harnessing of electricity gave America a new source of power.
The late 1800s saw a burst of inventiveness in the United States. Between 1860 and 1890, the United States government granted more than 400,000 patents for new inventions.
Many of the inventions helped businesses operate more efficiently. Among these were Christopher Sholes’s typewriter (1868) and William Burroughs’s adding machine (1888).
Other inventions affected everyday life.
In 1888 George Eastman invented a small box camera—the Kodak—that made it easier and less costly to take photographs.
John Thurman developed a vacuum cleaner in 1899 that simplified housework.
The Wizard of Menlo Park
Thomas Edison was called “dull” by his teachers. Because of poor hearing, he had trouble in school and often didn’t attend. His mother finally removed him from school and taught him at home. Edison loved anything related to science. His mother allowed him to set up a chemistry lab in the family’s basement. When he was 12, he got a job working for the railroad, where he set up a new lab in an empty freight car. One day, Edison saved the life of a child who had fallen onto the tracks of an oncoming train. The child’s father took an interest in Edison and taught him to use the telegraph. Edison’s first invention was a gadget that sent automatic telegraph signals—which he invented so he could sleep on the job. While still in his 20s, Thomas Edison decided to go into the “invention business.”
In 1878, Edison built his famous laboratory in Menlo Park, where he invented the phonograph and electric light. Edison soon became known as the “Wizard of Menlo Park” because of the miraculous nature of his inventions which so radically changed how people lived. In 1887, he built a new, larger laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. The facility included a machine shop, phonograph and photograph departments, a library, and additional buildings for metallurgy and chemistry. . Out of this famous laboratory came the phonograph, the motion picture projector, the telephone transmitter, and the storage battery. But Edison’s most important invention was the electric lightbulb. Edison developed the first workable lightbulb in 1879. He then designed power plants that could produce electric power and distribute it to lightbulbs. For Christmas in 1880, Edison used 40 bulbs to light up Menlo Park. Visitors came to see the “light of the future.” He built the first central electric power plant in 1882 in New York City—illuminating 85 buildings!
Inventor George Westinghouse took Edison’s work with electricity even further. In 1885 Westinghouse developed and built transformers that could send electric power more cheaply over longer distances. Soon electricity powered factories, trolleys, streetlights, and lamps all over America. Westinghouse also developed a system for transporting natural gas and invented many safety devices.
African American Inventors
A number of African Americans contributed to the era of invention. Lewis Howard Latimer, an engineer, developed an improved filament for the lightbulb and joined Thomas Edison’s company.
Granville Woods, an electrical and mechanical engineer from Ohio, patented dozens of inventions. Among them were an electric incubator and railroad improvements such as an electromagnetic brake and an automatic circuit breaker.
Elijah McCoy invented a mechanism for oiling machinery.
Jan E. Matzeliger, another African American inventor, developed a shoe-making machine that performed many steps that were previously done by hand. His device, which revolutionized the shoe industry, was adopted in shoe factories in the United States and overseas.
A Changing Society
In the 1900s, improvements ushered in a new era of transportation. After a period of experimentation, the automobile became a practical method of getting from place to place.
Henry Ford’s Automobiles
Henry Ford wanted to build an inexpensive car that would last a lifetime. While working as an engineer in Detroit, Michigan, in the 1890s, Ford had experimented with an automobile engine powered by gasoline.
In 1903 he began designing cars at his automaking company.
In 1906 Ford told Charles Sorenson, later Ford’s general superintendent, “We’re going toget a car now that we can make in great volume and get the prices way down.”
For the next year, Ford and Sorenson worked on the Model T, building the car and testing it on rough roads.
In 1908 Ford introduced the Model T to the public. Sorenson described the sturdy black vehicle as “. . . a car which anyone could afford to buy, which anyone could drive anywhere, and which almost anyone could keep in repair.” The Model T became immensely popular.
During the next 18 years, Ford’s company sold 15 million Model T’s. Henry Ford also pioneered a less expensive way to manufacture cars—the moving assembly line. On the line, each worker performed an assigned task again and again at a certain stage in the production of the automobile. The assembly line revolutionized industry, enabling manufacturers to produce large quantities of goods more quickly. This mass production of goods decreased manufacturing costs, so products could be sold more cheaply.
The assembly line also changed the way people worked and lived, accelerating the shift from rural areas to cities, and increasing the number of people doing repetitive, low-skilled jobs.
#$5.00ADAY
In 1908 the Model T’s first year, it sold for $850. In 1914 mass production reduced the price to $490. By 1924 Model Ts were selling for $295.
Ford’s business philosophy was simple.
“Every time I reduce the charge for our car by one dollar,” he said, “I get a thousand new buyers. In this way, Ford made the automobile affordable for millions of Americans.
MASS PRODUCTION
Mass production is the industrial technique to produce large quantities of similar products in constant flows on production lines.
It focuses on low-cost production by using standardized and repetitive processes to manufacture the same line of products.
The First Flight at Kitty Hawk
A small crowd of people assembled on the sand dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to test the Wrights’ Flyer. Covering a few hundred feet in 12 seconds, the flight came to a halt when the Flyer’s wing caught on one of the dunes. It was enough to encourage the Wrights to try further flights though. They would soon have a practical aircraft, and the world would have a new form of transportation.
A small crowd of people assembled on the sand dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to test the Wrights’ Flyer. Covering a few hundred feet in 12 seconds, the flight came to a halt when the Flyer’s wing caught on one of the dunes. It was enough to encourage the Wrights to try further flights though. They would soon have a practical aircraft, and the world would have a new form of transportation.
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NICOLA TESLA!
bio-inventor-nikola-tesla-19022-article_only.pdfSelling Goods
With factories churning out more and more products, merchants looked for better ways to sell their goods.
One way was through the mail. In 1863 mail delivery to homes began—up to then, service was only to post offices. By the 1890s, the U.S. Post Office had expanded its delivery service in rural areas.
Some firms developed mail order businesses, receiving and shipping orders by mail. Companies such as Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck published catalogs that offered a wide range of goods from shoes to farm equip- ment.
Catalogs introduced rural families to a wide assortment of goods not found in country stores.
Chain stores—stores with identical branches n many places—grew rapidly.
F.W. Woolworth’s chain of “five-and-ten-cent stores” specialized in everyday household and personal items at bargain prices.
By 1911, more than a thousand Woolworth stores were in operation.
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