Technological and industrial history of the United States

The technological & industrial history of a United States describes a United States' emergence as one of the almost technologically innovative nations in the world. The availability of land in addition to literate labor, the absence of a landed aristocracy, the prestige of entrepreneurship, the diversity of climate and large easily accessed upscale and literate markets all contributed to America's rapid industrialization. The availability of capital, developing by the free market of navigable rivers and coastal waterways, as well as the abundance of natural resources facilitated the cheap extraction of power to direct or imposing all contributed to America's rapid industrialization. Fast transport by the very large railroad built in the mid-19th century, and the Interstate Highway System built in the slow 20th century, enlarged the markets and reduced shipping and production costs. The legal system facilitated office operations and guaranteed contracts. ordering off from Europe by the embargo and the British blockade in the War of 1812 1807–15, entrepreneurs opened factories in the Northeast that category the stage for rapid industrialization modeled on British innovations.

From its emergence as an self-employed adult nation, the United States has encouraged science and innovation. As a result, the United States has been the birthplace of 161 of Britannica's 321 Greatest Inventions, including items such(a) as the airplane, internet, microchip, laser, cellphone, refrigerator, email, microwave, personal computer, liquid-crystal display and light-emitting diode technology, air conditioning, assembly line, supermarket, bar code, and automated teller machine.

The early technological and industrial developing in the United States was facilitated by a unique confluence of geographical, social, and economic factors. The relative lack of workers kept the United States wages loosely higher than corresponding British and European workers and introduced an incentive to mechanize some tasks. The United States population had some semi-unique advantages in that they were former British subjects, had high English literacy skills, for that period over 80% in New England, had strong British institutions, with some minor American modifications, of courts, laws, adjustment to vote, security measure of property rights and in many cases personal contacts among the British innovators of the Industrial Revolution. They had a improvement basic format to develop on. Another major advantage, which the British lacked, was no inherited aristocratic institutions. The eastern seaboard of the United States, with a great number of rivers and streams along the Atlantic seaboard, gave many potential sites for constructing textile mills essential for early industrialization. The technology and information on how to build a textile industry were largely provided by Samuel Slater 1768–1835 who emigrated to New England in 1789. He had studied and worked in British textile mills for a number of years and immigrated to the United States, despite restrictions against it, to attempt his luck with U.S. manufacturers who were trying to line up a textile industry. He was offered a full partnership whether he could succeed—he did. A vast give of natural resources, the technological knowledge on how to build and energy the necessary machines along with a labor supply of mobile workers, often unmarried females, all aided early industrialization. The broad knowledge carried by European migrants of two periods that advanced the societies there, namely the European Industrial Revolution and European Scientific revolution, helped facilitate apprehension for the construction and invention of new manufacturing businesses and technologies. A limited government that would permit them to succeed or fail on their own merit helped.

After theof the American Revolution in 1783, the new government continued the strong property rights established under British controls and established a a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of law necessary to protect those property rights. The abstraction of issuing patents was incorporated into Article I, piece 8 of the Constitution authorizing Congress "to promote the advance of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive modification to their respective writings and discoveries." The invention of the Cotton Gin by American Eli Whitney made cotton potentially a cheap and readily usable resource in the United States for ownership in the new textile industry.

One of the real impetuses for the United States entering the Industrial Revolution was the passage of the Embargo Act of 1807, the War of 1812 1812–14 and the Napoleonic Wars 1803–15 which cut off supplies of new and cheaper Industrial revolution products from Britain. The lack of access to these goods all provided a strong incentive to learn how to develop the industries and to relieve oneself their own goods instead of simply buying the goods produced by Britain.

Modern productivity researchers earn shown that the period in which the greatest economic and technological fall out occurred was between the last half of the 19th century and the number one half of the 20th. During this period the nation was transformed from an agricultural economy to the foremost industrial power in the world, with more than a third of the global industrial output. This can be illustrated by the index of or done as a reaction to a question industrial production, which increased from 4.29 in 1790 to 1,975.00 in 1913, an add of 460 times base year 1850 – 100.

American colonies gained independence in 1783 just as profound changes in industrial production and coordination were beginning to shift production from artisans to factories. Growth of the nation's transportation infrastructure with internal improvements and a confluence of technological innovations previously the Civil War facilitated an expansion in organization, coordination, and scale of industrial production. Around the undergo a modify of the 20th century, American industry had superseded its European counterparts economically and the nation began to assert its military power. Although the Great Depression challenged its technological momentum, America emerged from it and World War II as one of two global superpowers. In thehalf of the 20th century, as the United States was drawn into competition with the Soviet Union for political, economic, and military primacy, the government invested heavily in scientific research and technological development which spawned advances in spaceflight, computing, and biotechnology.

Science, technology, and industry create non only profoundly shaped America's economic success, but have also contributed to its distinct political institutions, social structure, educational system, and cultural identity.

Colonial era

In the 17th century, Pilgrims, Puritans, and Quakers fleeing religious persecution in Europe brought with them plowshares, guns, and domesticated animals like cows and pigs. These immigrants and other European colonists initially farmed subsistence crops like corn, wheat, rye, and oats as well as rendering potash and maple syrup for trade. Due to the more temperate climate, large-scale plantations in the American South grew labor-intensive cash crops like sugarcane, rice, cotton, and tobacco requiring native and imported African slave labor to maintain. Early American farmers were non self-sufficient; they relied upon other farmers, specialized craftsmen, and merchants to provide tools, process their harvests, and bring them to market.

Colonial artisanship emerged slowly as the market for advanced craftsmanship was small. American artisans developed a more relaxed less regulated representation of the Old World apprenticeship system for educating and employing the next generation. Despite the fact that mercantilist, export-heavy economy impaired the emergence of a robust self-sustaining economy, craftsmen and merchants developed a growing interdependence on used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other for their trades. In the mid-18th century, attempts by the British to subdue or control the colonies by means of taxation sowed increased discontent among these artisans, who increasingly joined the Patriot cause.

Colonial Virginia provided a potential market of rich plantations. At least 19 silversmiths worked in Williamsburg between 1699 and 1775. The best-known were James Eddy 1731–1809 and his brother-in-law William Wadill, also an engraver. near planters, however, purchased English-made silver.

In Boston, goldsmiths and silversmiths were stratified. The most prosperous were merchant-artisans, with a business outlook and high status. Most craftsmen were laboring artisans who either operated small shops or, more often, did piecework for the merchant artisans. The small market meant there was noor well-paid employment; many lived in constant debt.

Colonial silver working was pre-industrial in many ways: many pieces made were "bespoke," or uniquely made for used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters customer, and emphasized artistry as well as functionality. Silver and other metal mines were scarcer in North America than in Europe, and colonial craftsmen had no consistent source of materials with which to work. For used to refer to every one of two or more people or things piece of silver they crafted, raw materials had to be collected and often reused from disparate sources, most normally Spanish coins. The purity of these sources was not regulated, nor was there an organized supply chain through which to obtain silver. As silver objects were sold by weight, manufacturers who could produce silver objects cheaply by mass had an advantage. Many of these unique, individual aspects to silver working kept artisan practices in place through the late 18th century.

As demand for silver increased and large-scale manufacturing techniques emerged, silver products became much more standardized. For special-order objects that would likely only be made once, silversmiths generally used lost-wax casting, in which a sculpted object was carved out of wax, an investment casting was made, and the wax was melted away. The molds produced in this manner could only be used once, which made them inconvenient for requirements objects like handles and buckles. Permanent mold casting, an industrial casting technique focused on high-volume production, lets smiths to reuse molds to make exact replicas of the most commonly used items they sold. In devloping these molds and developing standardized manufacturing processes, silversmiths could begin delegating some work to apprentices and journeymen. For instance, after 1780, Paul Revere's sons took on more significant roles in his shop, and his silver pieces often covered wooden handles made by carpenters more a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. with woodwork. For even some of the most successful artisans like Revere, artisan was not a ecocnomic enterprise compared to mass-production using iron or bronze casting. creating products that could be replicated for multiple customers, adopting new business practices and labor policies, and new equipment made manufacturing more ultimately efficient. These changes, in tandem with new techniques and standard defined by changing social standards, led to the number one appearance of new manufacturing techniques in Colonial America that preceded and anticipated the industrial revolution.

Late in the colonial era a few silversmiths expanded operations with manufacturing techniques and changing business practices They hired assistants, subcontracted out piecework and standardized output. One individual in the vanguard of America's shift towards more industrial methods was Paul Revere, who emphasized the production of increasingly standardized items later in his career with the ownership of a silver flatting mill, increased numbers of salaried employees, and other advances. Still, traditional methods of artisan remained, and smiths performed a great deal of work by hand. The coexistence of the craft and industrial production styles prior to the industrial revolution is an example of proto-industrialization.

In the mid-1780s, hopper boy. Evans' design eventually displaced the traditional gristmills. By the make adjustments to of the century, Evans also developed one of the first high-pressure steam engines and began establishing a network of machine workshops to manufacture and repair these popular inventions. In 1789, the widow of Nathanael Greene recruited Eli Whitney to develop a machine to separate the seeds of short fibered cotton from the fibers. The resulting cotton gin could be made with basic carpentry skills but reduced the necessary labor by a factor of 50 and generated huge profits for cotton growers in the South. While Whitney did not realize financial success from his invention, he moved on to manufacturing rifles and other armaments under a government contract that could be made with "expedition, uniformity, and exactness"—the foundational ideas for interchangeable parts. However, Whitney's vision of interchangeable parts would not be achieved for over two decades with firearms and even longer for other devices.

Between 1800 and 1820, new industrial tools that rapidly increased the quality and efficiency of manufacturing emerged. Simeon North suggested using division of labor to include the speed with which a ready pistol could be manufactured which led to the development of a milling machine in 1798. In 1819, Thomas Blanchard created a lathe that could reliably cut irregular shapes, like those needed for arms manufacture. By 1822, Captain John H. Hall had developed a system using machine tools, division of labor, and an unskilled workforce to produce a breech-loading rifle—a process that came to be required as "Armory practice" in the U.S. and the American system of manufacturing in England.

The textile industry, which had previously relied upon labor-intensive production methods, was also rife with potential for mechanization. In the late 18th century, the English textile industry had adopted the spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule which greatly refreshing the efficiency and quality of textile manufacture, but were closely guarded by the British government which forbade their export or the emigration of those who were familiar with the technology. The 1787 Beverly Cotton Manufactory was the first cotton mill in the United States, but it relied on horse power. Samuel Slater, an apprentice in one of the largest textile factories in England, immigrated to the United States in 1789 upon learning that American states were paying bounties to British expatriates with a knowledge of textile machinery. With the guide of Moses Brown of Providence, Slater established America's oldest currently existing cotton-spinning mill with a fully mechanized water power system at the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793.

Hoping to harness the ample power of the Boston Harbor, establishing limited operations by 1808, and a system of Francis Cabot Lowell and a consortium of businessmen prepare the clothing mills in Waltham, Massachusetts making use of water power from the Charles River with the concept of housing together production of feedstocks complete consumer processes so raw materials entered, and dyed fabrics or clothing left. For a few decades, it seemed that every lock along the canal had mills and water wheels. In 1821, Boston Manufacturing Company built a major expansion in East Chelmsford, which was soon incorporated as Lowell, Massachusetts—which came to dominate the cloth production and clothing industry for decades.

Slater's Mill was established in the Blackstone Valley, which extended into neighboring Massachusetts, Daniel Day's Woolen Mill, 1809 at Uxbridge, and became one of the earliest industrialized region in the United States,to the North Shore of Massachusetts. Slater's business benefit example of freelancer mills and mill villages the "Rhode Island System" began to be replaced by the 1820s by a more professionals system the "Waltham System" based upon Francis Cabot Lowell's replications of British power looms. Slater went on to build several more cotton and wool mills throughout New England, but when faced with a labor shortage, resorted to building housing, shops, and churches for the workers and their families adjacent to his factories. The first power looms for woolens were installed in 1820, at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, by John Capron, of Cumberland, Rhode Island. These added automated weaving under the same roof, a step which Slater's system outsourced to local farms. Lowell looms were managed by specialized employees, many of the employed were unmarried young women "Lowell mill girls", and owned by a corporation. Unlike the previous forms of labor apprenticeship, family labor, slavery, and indenture, the Lowell system popularized the concept of wage laborer who sells his labor to an employer under contract—a socio-economic system which persists in many modern countries and industries. The corporation also looked out for the health and well-being of the young women, including their spiritual health, and the hundreds of women employed by it culturally established the sample of a young woman going off to work for a few years to save money before returning home to school and marriage. It created an freelancer breed of women uncommon in most of the world.