Technological and industrial history of the United States

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Apollo 11 launch.

The technological and industrial history of the United States describes the United States' emergence as one of the largest nations in the world as well as the most technologically powerful nation in the world. The availability of land and labor, the diversity of climate, the ample presence of navigable canals, rivers, and coastal waterways, and the abundance of natural resources facilitating the cheap extraction of energy, fast transport, and the availability of capital all contributed to America's rapid industrialization.

Most historians agree that the period in which the greatest economic and technological progress occurred was between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th. During this period the nation was transformed from a primitive 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 total industrial production, with increased from only 4.29 in 1790 to 1975 in 1913, an increase of 460 times (base year 1850 - 100).[1]

American colonies gained independence in 1781 just as profound changes in industrial production and coordination were beginning to shift production from artisans to potters. Growth of the nation's transportation infrastructure and a confluence of technological innovations before the Civil War facilitated an expansion in organization, coordination, and scale of industrial production. Around the turn of the 20th century, American industry had superseded its European counterparts economically and the nation began to assert its military power.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 World War II as one of two global superpowers. In the second half of the 20th century as the United States was drawn into competition with the Soviet Union for political, economic, and military primacy, the government investing heavily in scientific research and technological development which spawned advances in spaceflight, computing, and biotechnology.

Science, technology, and industry have not only profoundly shaped America's economic success, but have also contributed to its distinct political institutions, social structure, educational system, and cultural identity. American values of meritocracy, entrepreneurialism, and self-sufficiency are drawn from its legacy of pioneering technical advances.

Contents

[hide]
  • 1Pre-European technology
  • 2European exploration and settlement
  • 2.1Agriculture
  • 2.2Artisanship
  • 3Early industrialization
  • 3.1Factories and mills
  • 3.2Turnpikes and canals
  • 3.3Steamboats
  • 3.4Mining
  • 3.5Civil War
  • 4Technological systems and infrastructure
  • 4.1Railroads
  • 4.2Iron and steel-making
  • 4.3Telegraph and telephone
  • 4.4Petroleum
  • 4.5Electricity
  • 4.6Automobiles
  • 5Effects of industrialization
  • 5.1Agricultural production
  • 5.2Urbanization
  • 5.3Labor issues and immigration
  • 5.4Banking and trading
  • 5.5Regulation
  • 5.6Great Depression
  • 6Military-industrial-academic complex
  • 6.1Research universities
  • 6.2World wars
  • 6.3Cold War and Space Race
  • 6.4Computers and networks
  • 7Service industry
  • 7.1Health care and biotechnology
  • 7.2Media and entertainment
  • 8Technology and society
  • 9See also
  • 10References
  • 11Further reading
  • 12External links

[edit]Pre-European technology

See also: Native Americans in the United States

Monk's Mound is a large structure built by the indigenous peoples in the Plains.

North America has been inhabited continuously since approximately 10,000 BC. The earliest inhabitants were nomadic, big-game hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering land bridge. These first Native Americans relied upon chipped stone spearheads, rudimentary harpoons, and boats clad in animal-hides for hunting in the Arctic. As they dispersed within the continent, they encountered the varied temperate climates in the Pacific northwest, central plains, Appalachian woodlands, and arid southwest where they began to make permanent settlements. The peoples living in the Pacific northwest built wooden houses, used nets and weirs to catch fish, and practiced food preservation, although substantial agriculture was not developed.[2] Peoples living on the plains remained largely nomadic (some practiced agriculture for parts of the year) and became adept leather workers as they hunted buffalo while people living in the arid southwest built adobe buildings, fired pottery, domesticated cotton, and wove cloth. Tribes in the eastern woodlands and Mississippian Valley developed extensive trade networks, built pyramid-like mounds, and practiced substantial agriculture while the peoples living in the Appalachian Mountains and coastal Atlantic practiced highly sustainable forest agriculture and were expert woodworkers. However, the populations of these peoples were small and their rate of technological change was very low.[3] Indigenous peoples did not domesticate animals for drafting or husbandry, develop writing systems, or create bronze or iron-based tools like their European/Asian counterparts.

[edit]European exploration and settlement

See also: European colonization of the Americasand The First European colonization wave

The discovery of the "New World" by Europeans explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries and subsequent Columbian Exchange profoundly changed the direction of technological development in North America. State-sponsored explorers like the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the New World with technology unknown to the native inhabitants — caravels, domesticated horses, iron armour and swords.

[edit]Agriculture

Main article: Agricultural history of the United States

A farmer using a horse-drawn plow.

In the 17th century, Pilgrims, Puritans, 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, oats as well as rendering potash and maple syrup for trade.[4] In the more temperate southern climates, large-scale plantations grew labor-intensive cash crops like sugarcane, rice, cotton, and tobacco requiring native and imported African slave labor to maintain. Early American farmers were not self-sufficient; they relied upon other farmers, specialized craftsman, and merchants to provide tools, process their harvests, and bring them to market.[5]

[edit]Artisanship

Colonial artisanship emerged slowly as harsh travel and living conditions in America discouraged skilled craftsman from crossing the Atlantic and bringing their tools with them. However, because of this, American craftsmen were unencumbered by the various long-standing allegiances of European craft guilds that sometimes stifled advances in technology out of economic self-interest. American artisans developed their own apprenticeship system for educating and employing the young. Despite the fact that mercantilist, export-heavy economy impaired the emergence of a robust self-sustaining economy, these craftsman and merchants developed a growing interdependence on each other for their trades.[6] In the mid-18th century, attempts by the British to subdue or control the colonies by means of taxation sowed increased discontent among these artisan and merchants in urban Boston, New York, and Philadelphia who increasingly advocated independence from British rule.

[edit]Early industrialization

American industrialization was facilitated by a unique confluence of geographical, social, and economic factors. The post-Revolution American population remained low relative to its European counterparts and the demand for manual labor created strong incentives to mechanize labor-intensive tasks. The eastern seaboard of the United States, with a great number of rivers and streams along the Atlantic seaboard, provided many potential sites for constructing mills and infrastructure necessary for early industrialization. In addition, the United States' perpetually limited labor supply and vast supply of natural resources removed the primary obstacles to industrialization in European nations.

After the close of the American Revolution in 1783, the new government provided strong property rights and a nonrigid class structure. The idea of issuing patents was brought to North America by English, French, and Dutch settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries and adopted into Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution authorizing Congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

[edit]Factories and mills

In the mid 1780s, Oliver Evans invented the grain elevator and hopper boy that would eventually replace the traditional gristmills. By the turn 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.[7] While Whitney did not realize financial success from his invention, he moved on to manufacturing rifles and other armaments under government contract that could be made with "expedition, uniformity, and exactness" — the foundational ideas for interchangeable parts.[8]

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 increase the speed with which a complete 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 employing special machines, division of labor, and an unskilled workforce to produce a breech-loading rifle — a process that came to be known as "Armory practice" in the U.S. and the "American system of manufacture" in England.[9]

Francis Cabot Lowell's Boston Manufacturing Company revolutionized the role of manufactories.

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 improved 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 1788 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.[10] With Beverly's Moses Brown, Slater established America's first commercially viable cotton-spinning mill with a fully mechanized water power system at the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793. 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. Slater's business model of independent mills and mill villages (the "Rhode Island System") began to be replaced by the 1820s by a more efficient system (the "Waltham System") based upon Francis Cabot Lowell's replications of British power looms. 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, employed with unmarried young women ("mill girls"), and owned by a corporation.[11] 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.

[edit]Turnpikes and canals

Main article: History of turnpikes and canals in the United States

A lock on the Erie Canal.

USA canals circa 1825

Highways in the USA circa 1825

The United States likewise controlled a greater area (from New Hampshire to Georgia) than any European nation since the fall of the Roman Empire.[citation needed] Even as the country grew even larger with the admission of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio by 1803, the only means of transportation between these landlocked western states and their coastal neighbors was by foot, pack animal, or ship. Recognizing the success of Roman roads in unifying that empire, political and business leaders in the United States began to construct roads and canals to connect the disparate parts of the nation.[12]

Early toll roads were constructed and owned by joint-stock companies that sold stock to raise construction capital like Pennsylvania's 1795 Lancaster Turnpike Company. In 1808, Secretary of the TreasuryAlbert Gallatin's Report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals suggested that the federal government should fund the construction of interstate turnpikes and canals. While many Anti-Federalists opposed the federal government assuming such a role, the British blockade in the War of 1812 demonstrated the United States' reliance upon these overland roads for military operations as well as for general commerce.[13] Construction on the National Road began in 1815 in Cumberland, Maryland and reached Wheeling, Virginia in 1818, but political strife thereafter ultimately prevented its western advance to the Mississippi River. Nevertheless, the road became a primary overland conduit through Appalachian Mountains and was the gateway for thousands of antebellum westward-bound settlers.

Numerous canal companies had also been chartered; but of all the canals projected, only three had been completed when the War of 1812 began: the Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia, the Santee Canal in South Carolina, and the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts. It remained for New York to usher in a new era in internal communication by authorizing in 1817 the construction of the Erie Canal. This bold bid for Western trade alarmed the merchants of Philadelphia, particularly as the completion of the national road threatened to divert much of their traffic to Baltimore. In 1825, the legislature of Pennsylvania grappled with the problem by projecting a series of canals which were to connect its great seaport with Pittsburgh on the west and with Lake Erie and the upper Susquehanna on the north.[14]

Like the turnpikes, the early canals were constructed, owned, and operated by private joint-stock companies but later gave way to larger projects funded by the states. The Erie Canal, proposed by Governor of New YorkDe Witt Clinton, was the first canal project undertaken as a public good to be financed at the public risk through the issuance of bonds.[15] When the project was completed in 1825, the canal linked Lake Erie with the Hudson River through 83 separate locks and over a distance of 363miles (584km). The success of the Erie Canal spawned a boom of other canal-building around the country: over 3,326 miles of artificial waterways were constructed between 1816 and 1840.[16] Small towns like Syracuse, New York, Buffalo, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio that lied along major canal routes boomed into major industrial and trade centers, while exuberant canal-building pushed some states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana to the brink of bankruptcy.[16]

The magnitude of the transportation problem was such, however, that neither individual states nor private corporations seemed able to meet the demands of an expanding internal trade. As early as 1807, Albert Gallatin had advocated the construction of a great system of internal waterways to connect East and West, at an estimated cost of $20,000,000. But the only contribution of the national government to internal improvements during the Jeffersonian era was an appropriation in 1806 of two percent of the net proceeds of the sales of public lands in Ohio for the construction of a national road, with the consent of the states through which it should pass. By 1818 the road was open to traffic from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, West Virginia.[17]

In 1816, with the experiences of the war before him, no well-informed statesman could shut his eyes to the national aspects of the problem. Even President Madison invited the attention of Congress to the need of establishing "a comprehensive system of roads and canals". Soon after Congress met, it took under consideration a bill drafted by Calhoun which proposed an appropriation of $1,500,000 for internal improvements. Because this appropriation was to be met by the moneys paid by the National Bank to the government, the bill was commonly referred to as the "Bonus Bill". But on the day before he left office, President Madison vetoed the bill because it was unconstitutional. The policy of internal improvements by federal aid was thus wrecked on the constitutional scruples of the last of the Virginia dynasty. Having less regard for consistency, the House of Representatives recorded its conviction, by close votes, that Congress could appropriate money to construct roads and canals, but had not the power to construct them. As yet the only direct aid of the national government to internal improvements consisted of various appropriations, amounting to about $1,500,000 for the Cumberland Road.[18]

As the country recovered from financial depression following the Panic of 1819, the question of internal improvements again forged to the front. In 1822, a bill to authorize the collection of tolls on the Cumberland Road had been vetoed by the President. In an elaborate essay Monroe set forth his views on the constitutional aspects of a policy of internal improvements. Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it might not undertake the actual construction of national works nor assume jurisdiction over them. For the moment the drift toward a larger participation of the national government in internal improvements was stayed. Two years later, Congress authorized the President to institute surveys for such roads and canals as he believed to be needed for commerce and military defense. No one pleaded more eloquently for a larger conception of the functions of the national government than Henry Clay. He called the attention of his hearers to provisions made for coast surveys and lighthouses on the Atlantic seaboard and deplored the neglect of the interior of the country. Of the other presidential candidates, Jackson voted in the Senate for the general survey bill; and Adams left no doubt in the public mind that he did not reflect the narrow views of his section on this issue. Crawford felt the constitutional scruples which were everywhere being voiced in the South, and followed the old expedient of advocating a constitutional amendment to sanction national internal improvements.[19]