Threshing Machine
The invention of the threshing machine is credited to Andrew Meikle, a Scottish engineer. The threshing machine came about in the 1780s.
In the United States, Alexander Anderson created a model in 1782. Since Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned farms, threshing machines were an interest to both of them. Together they went to see the new machine in action in August 1791. A year later, Jefferson ordered one of Meikle’s models from London, In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson shows his excitement over the new machine.
I expect every day to receive from Mr. Pinckney the model of the Scotch threshing machine…Mr. P. [Pinckney] writes me word that the machine from which my model is taken threshes 8. quarters (64. bushels) of oats an hour, with 4. horses and 4 men. I hope to get it in time to have one erected at Monticello to clean out the present crop.
At his Monticello estate, Jefferson ended up using three threshing machines. One was stationary and worked by water, while the other two could be moved and worked by horses. In a July 6, 1796 letter from Washington to Jefferson, the importance of a portable machine can be seen.
If you can bring a moveable threshing machine, constructed upon simple principles to perfection, it will be among the most valuable institutions in this Country; for nothing is more wanting, & to be wished for on our farms.
The threshing machine of the yesteryears is the combine of modern times. Both machines remove the grain from the stalks. The main difference is that the combine is self-propelled and eliminates both the man-hours and the threshing crew that the old threshing machines used.
The combine allowed farmers to harvest their crops easier and quicker. While the number of acres has risen over the years, the number of farms has dropped. For example, in North Dakota alone, a 1998 study showed that the average farm increased over 1,000 acres butthe number of farms have decreased close to 50,000 since 1920.
Mechanical Reaper
Cyrus McCormick ofVirginiawas responsible for liberating farm workers from hours of backbreaking labor by introducing the farmers to his newly inventedmechanicalreaper in July, 1831.By 1847, Cyrus McCormick began the mass manufacture of his reaper in a Chicago factory.
The invention of two successful reaping machines - independently by Obed Hussey in Ohio, who obtained the first patent in 1834, and by Cyrus Hall McCormick in Virginia - brought about an end to tedious handiwork and encouraged the invention and manufacture of other labor-saving farm implements and machinery. The first reapers cut the standing grain and, with a revolving reel, swept it onto a platform from which a man walking alongside raked it off into piles. It could harvest more grain than five men using the earlier cradles. The next innovation, patented in 1858, was a self-raking reaper with an endless canvas belt that delivered the cut grain to two men who riding on the end of the platform bundled it. Meanwhile, Cyrus McCormick had moved to Chicago, built a reaper factory, and founded what eventually became the International Harvester Company. In 1872 he produced a reaper, which automatically bound the bundles with wire. In 1880, he came out with a binder which, using a magical knotting device (invented by John F. Appleby a Wisconsin pastor) bound the handles with twine.
Cotton Gin
In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine that influenced the history of the United States. He invented a cottonginthat was popular in the South. The South became the cotton producing part of the country because Whitney’s cottonginwas able to successfully pull out the seeds from the cotton bolls.
Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825. As a young boy he liked to work in his father’s workshop taking things apart, like clocks, and putting them back together again. When he was a young man, he worked on a Georgian plantation tutoring children. He noticed the trouble the slaves were having picking seed from cotton bolls. In his spare time, he put together an instrument that would allow the slaves to clean more cotton in a shorter amount of time.
The cottonginwas a very simple invention. First, the cotton bolls were put into the top of the machine. Next, you turn the handle, which turns the cotton through the wire teeth that combs out the seeds. Then the cotton is pulled out of the wire teeth and out of the cotton gin.
Farmers were able to plant more cotton. Cotton is easy to grow but because it was so difficult to clean, cotton was not a cash crop. Tobacco and indigo were the South’s cash crops. Tobacco is difficult to grow. Tobacco wears out the land and the land must be given a rest once every 7 years. But cotton can grow anywhere, even on land that is drained of its nutrients.
Now that cotton is easier to clean and since it grows easily, cotton became the number one cash crop in the South. The farmers needed more land to grow cotton. They took the land from the Native Americans. The farmers needed more workers. Slaves were the free labor that the farmers needed toharvestthe cotton.
This growth of cotton production affected the world. The Northern part of the United States bought more cotton and built more textile mills. England built more textile mills and demanded much more cotton. These were two big markets to which the South sold their cotton. The South was not able to build textile mills because theircapitalwas tied up in their slaves so that they could produce more cotton. The South also did not have the need or thecapitalto build up a good transportation system, such as canals and railroads.
During the Civil War, the South had many disadvantages over the North.Large portions of their population were uneducated slaves. They had no factories to produce goods and to become self sufficient when they separated from the North. Because the South had not built up a good transportation system, they were not able to move men and supplies easily across the country, as the North was able to do.
By 1860, cotton was a cash crop. Cotton production in the South had increased. The number of slaves in the United States had increased. The dependency on slaves had increased.Capitalhad beeninvestedin slaves, not in transportation or factories. All this happened because of a very simple machine, the cottongin.
Interchangeable Parts
The system of manufacture involving production of many identical parts and their assembly into finished products came to be called the American System, because it achieved its fullest maturity in the United States. Although Eli Whitney (1765-1825) has been given credit for this development, his ideas had appeared earlier in Sweden, France, and Britain and were being practiced in other arms factories in the United States. In 1798 Eli Whitney acquired the American government's support to fund him to mass-produce 10,000 muskets using interchangeable parts. At this time war with France was a possibility, so the need for weaponry was in high demand.
In 1801, Whitney held a demonstration to show how he could fit ten different lock mechanisms into the same musket. Even though it was later discovered by historians that the demonstration was staged, he still paved the way for other engineers and inventors to improve on the concept. He demonstrated that machine tools - manned by workers who did not need the highly specialized skills of gunsmiths - could produce standardized parts to exact specifications, and that any part could be used as a component of any musket. The firearms factory he built in New Haven, Conn., was thus one of the first to use mass production methods. Principally, Whitney’s method broke down the traditional division of labor into discrete and separate steps accomplished by a worker who performed only that single job.
Eli Whitney’s commitment to interchangeable military musket production was recognized by the US Army Ordnance Department following the War of 1812. Not only was his opinion and support sought by the Ordnance Department for the goal of interchangeable musket production at the national armories, but also his simplified musket design greatly influenced the musket pattern chosen for future interchangeable production.
Mass Production
The factory system changed the world of work. In addition, new processes further changed how people worked in factories and what they could produce.
The Process of Mass Production—Many changes in industry evolved fully in the United States. One of these changes was the development of mass production—the system of manufacturing large numbers of identical items. Elements of mass production, including interchangeable parts and the assembly line, came to be known as the American system.
Interchangeable parts are identical machine-made parts. They made production and repair of factory-made goods more efficient. Before industrialization, one skilled worker might have made and entire gun, clock, or other product by himself. He would make or gather all the parts and assemble them. The process could be slow, and because the parts were all handmade, the finished products were a little different from each other. With interchangeable parts, though, one worker could put together many identical products in a short time. Making repairs was easier, too, because replacement parts did not have to be custom-made to fit.
The other element of mass production related to movement within factories.In early workshops, the product stayed in one place and workers moved around it, adding parts and making refinements. An innovation was the assembly line. Perfected by an American, Henry Ford, in an assembly line, the product moves from worker to worker, as each one performs a step in the manufacturing process. With this division of labor, workers can make many times quickly.
Effects of Mass Production—Mass production had advantages and disadvantages. A big advantage was a dramatic increase in production. Businesses that made many items quickly could charge less per item. As a result, more people could afford to buy these mass-produced goods.
For employees, however, mass production could lead to more repetitive jobs. At first, some workers protested, refusing to work quickly. But the changes could not be stopped, and mass production became the norm in factories.
Textile Mill – A clothing factory
The first factory in the United States was begun after George Washington became President. In 1790,SAMUEL SLATER, a cotton spinner's apprentice who left England the year before with the secrets of textile machinery, built a factory from memory to produce spindles of yarn.
The factory had 72 spindles, powered by nine children pushing foot treadles, soon replaced by waterpower. Three years later,JOHN AND ARTHUR SHOFIELD, who also came from England, built the first factory to manufacture woolens in Massachusetts.
First used by bankers and builders, the corporation concept spread to manufacturing. In 1813,FRANCES CABOT LOWELL,NATHAN APPLETONandPATRICK JOHNSONformed theBOSTON MANUFACTURING COMPANYto build America's first integrated textile factory, that performed every operation necessary to transform cotton lint into finished cloth.
Over the next 15 years they charted additional companies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Others copied their corporation model and by 1840 the corporate manufacturer was commonplace.
Lowell and his associates hoped to avoid the worst evils of British industry. They built their production facilities at Massachusetts. To work in the textile mills, Lowell hired young, unmarried women from New England farms. The "MILL GIRLS" were chaperoned by matrons and were held to a strict curfew and moral code.
Although the work was tedious (12 hours per day, 6 days per week), many women enjoyed a sense of independence they had not known on the farm. The wages were about triple the going rate for a domestic servant at the time.
The impact of the creation of all these factories and corporations was to drive people from rural areas to the cities where factories were located. This movement was well underway by the Civil War. During the 1840s, the population of the country as a whole increased by 36%. The population of towns and cities of 8,000 or more increased by 90%. With a huge and growing market, unconstrained by European traditions that could hamper their development, the corporation became the central force in America's economic growth.
Sewing Machine
Elias Howe was the inventor of the first American-patented sewing machine.
Elias Howe was born in Spencer, Massachusetts on July 9, 1819. After he lost his factory job in the Panic of 1837, Howe moved from Spencer to Boston, where he found work in a machinist's shop. It was there that Elias Howe began tinkering with the idea of inventing a mechanicalsewing machine.
Elias Howe - Lockstitch Sewing Machine
Eight years later, Elias Howe demonstrated his machine to the public. At 250 stitches a minute, his lockstitch mechanism out stitched the output of five hand sewers with a reputation for speed. Elias Howe patented his lockstitch sewing machine on September 10, 1846 in New Hartford, Connecticut.
Telegraph
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland; by 1866, a telegraph line had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. to Europe. Although the telegraph had fallen out of widespread use by the start of the 21st century, replaced by the telephone, fax machine and Internet, it laid the groundwork for the communications revolution that led to those later innovations.
Canal
Inspired by the English and Dutch systems of canals, Americans began to eye the possibility of man-made waterways early in their history. George Washington perhaps spurred the activity by publically wishing that Americans had "the wisdom to improve" our system of waterways. Nevertheless, by the 1790's, small canals were being attempted--slow to construct and under- financed, these canals were supported by such public luminaries as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Mifflin. Thus, despite the problems the canal builders found, improvement of the nation's waterways was inextricably linked with republican sentiment and nationalism.
Much of the difficulty in early canal building was simply a lack of elementary knowledge. Americans were not used to such improvements; engineers were either sent to England for training or, more often, expected to work out for themselves how to take a level, how to dig a channel, remove tree roots, dispose of tons of earth, mix underwater cement, create locks and a hundred other things. The fact that, for the most part, American engineers, surveyors, and laborers were able to build a system of canals from this beginning was widely hailed around the country as further proof that America was an inspired nation whose ingenuity would carry it far.
The earliest canal ventures began in Pennsylvania and Virginia with the common goal of improving transportation to the Ohio Valley. In 1791, the Pennsylvania legislature incorporated a private group of leading citizens and began work on the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Canal. An English engineer, William Weston, was brought to America to supervise construction. As with many canals, the work was done in sections, and the short "portage canal" at the Great Falls on the lower Susquehanna was complete first, in 1797, becoming the first working canal in Pennsylvania.
Similarly, building was begun on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, intended to connect the two bays, in 1803; there work continued until 1805 when the funds were exhausted. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all supported another venture begun in 1785, the Potomac Company. Originally intended to connect the Potomac to the Ohio River, the canal, like many early projects, was scaled back; it eventually came to act as an improvement for the Potomac trade. Numerous other small canals were begun with grand ambitions and became controlled partners to the larger rivers they followed.
It was not until 1825 with the completion of the Erie Canal in New York that canal builders were vindicated. As the model for most subsequent canals, the Erie ushered in the canal era with great fanfare, proving to an excited nation caught up in the Great Jubiliee that the American economy and spirit could indeed benefit from a system of inland waterways.
Steam Engine