In the period of 1813-55, the United States was not known for achievements in pure science. Most of the major advances in physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences had been taking place in Europe. In Britain, Michael Faraday researched electromagnetism and Charles Darwin began to develop his theory of evolution; in Germany, Friedrich Wohler made the first synthetic organic compound; in France, Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault constructed a pendulum that demonstrated the rotation of the Earth. Americans of this period showed an interest in such investigations, but, as pragmatic citizens of a young and growing nation, they were more prone to distinguish themselves as inventors and adapters of practical technology. American innovations of the period included the telegraph, the mechanical reaper, the six-shooter, and ether anesthesia. In the meantime, through the foundation of professional societies and journals, the nation took steps toward establishing itself as the scientific power it would become in the 20th century.
An important example of American ingenuity was the electromagnetic telegraph, patented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1837. This device for transmitting messages via wire greatly increased humanity’s capacity to communicate swiftly over long distances. Morse and his assistant Alfred Vail also developed Morse code, a system for encoding messages to be telegraphed. In 1844, Morse demonstrated the practicality of his invention by sending the telegraph message “What hath God wrought!” from Washington, D. C., to Baltimore, Maryland. Morse was indebted to earlier scientists and rivaled by contemporaries, notably Charles Wheatstone and W. F. Cooke in England. But his business sense and his system’s practical advantages soon made it the world’s standard.
In 1831 Cyrus Hall McCormick invented a mechanical, horse-drawn reaper that greatly improved the efficiency of harvesting. For McCormick, as it had been for Morse, business acumen was key to supplanting rivals and making his machine the leader in its market. In 1835-36, another skillful entrepreneur, Samuel Colt, patented his six-shooter, a pistol with six revolving chambers. The Colt revolver would become popular worldwide and became identified in folklore with the nation’s “Wild West.”
Some inventors were better at inventing than at profiting from their technology. In 1839, Charles Goodyear discovered a process for vulcanizing rubber, through which it kept its elasticity in all weather. Previously, rubber had tended to become sticky in warm weather and brittle in cold. Goodyear’s process made rubber a much more practical material for industrial and consumer uses, but it did not make him rich. What with debts and failure to keep control of his patents, he died in poverty.
In 1852, Elisha Graves Otis patented an automatic safety device to prevent an elevator from falling. His safety elevator would become vital to the spread of multistory buildings, but not until after his death in 1861.
A technology with more immediate uses was anesthesia. Previously, surgery and dental work had been accompanied by unavoidable pain. In 1846, dentist William Thomas Morton publicly demonstrated the effectiveness of ether as an anesthetic, or pain-deadening agent, in tooth extraction. That same year, collaborating with surgeon John Warren, Morton also used ether for the first time in surgery, during an operation to remove a neck tumor.
Americans were resourceful adapters of existing technology. The steam engine had been invented in Britain in 1769, but it was American engineer Robert Fulton who, in 1807, used it to launch the first commercially viable steamboat, the Clermont. Throughout the years 1813-55, the steamboat was improved and adapted for many purposes, including war: Fulton introduced the first steam warship in 1814-15. In 1819, the USS Savannah, traveling from Georgia to Liverpool, England, completed the first transatlantic trip powered by a combination of sail and steam. With the steamboat’s spread, canals became increasingly important. In 1819, Rome and Utica, New York, were joined in the opening of the first part of the Erie Canal. In 1825, the full length of the canal, spanning over 300 miles, opened for business, linking the Hudson River to the Great Lakes and inspiring other canal projects.
Steam locomotives had been operating on railroads in Britain since 1804, but American engineers added refinements. In 1830, Robert Livingston Stevens invented the T-rail, which would become standard equipment on rail lines. That same year, the first U. S.-built locomotive, the Tom Thumb, was introduced, and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) began using steam locomotives for rail service. Based in Baltimore, the B&O steadily extended its reach, to St. Louis, Missouri, by 1857.
During the early years of American railroads, locomotives were imported from England, but these imported engines proved poorly adapted to the uneven rails, sharp curves, and heavy grades of the early American railroads. American locomotive designs and manufacture soon developed engines to meet the American needs, with headlights, cowcatchers, and the Baldwin “flexible beam” truck to hold locomotives and cars on the track in sharp curves. The American locomotive builders Matthias Baldwin and William Norris of Philadelphia began as jewelers and then shifted to machine shops. The Baldwin Locomotive Works, first in Philadelphia and then in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, became the largest builder in the nation and Norris’s railroad engines were exported around the world. The two companies produced a sizable portion of all the locomotives that carried freight and passengers in South America, Australia, Russia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Another important step in transportation technology was the wire-cable suspension bridge, which German-American engineer John Augustus Roebling pioneered in the 1840s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia).
American innovations of the period were as varied as Americans themselves. Dentist Anthony Plantson introduced the dental plate in 1817-18. A few years later, in 1824, Shakers in Hancock, New York, built the first round barn, a design that became popular with dairy farmers. Other inventions included the platform scale or Fairbanks scale, produced by Thaddeus Fairbanks, 1830; a compression machine for cooling water, a precursor of modern refrigerators, Jacob Perkins, 1834; a corn harvester, Henry Blair (the first African American to receive a patent, 1836); a steam-powered thresher, John and Hiram Pitts, 1837; a safety pin, Walter Hunt, 1849; prefabricated homes, James
The Delaware Aqueduct, one of several suspension bridges designed by John A. Roebling, was built and operational by 1848. It is still in service more than 150 years later as a vehicular bridge. (Library of Congress)
Bogardus, 1849; and a process for condensing milk, Gail Borden, 1855.
Despite the emphasis on technology, the young United States did produce some advances in pure science. In 1831, American physicist Joseph Henry and British physicist Michael Faraday independently discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction. In the course of doing so, they invented the dynamo, or electric generator, which would make possible the widespread use of electric power from the late 19th century onward. Henry also improved the electromagnet, built one of the first electric motors, and was important in institutionalizing and stimulating scientific research in America. He was a professor at Princeton (1832-46), the first secretary and director of the Smithsonian Institution (1846-78), and a founder of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1847. At the Smithsonian, he set up a weather-reporting system that led to the creation of the U. S. Weather Bureau.
Medical science was advanced by physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, father of the Supreme Court justice of the same name. In 1843, the elder Holmes demonstrated, based on many case studies, that puerperal fever, or childbed fever, was contagious, a finding supported four years later by the studies of Hungarian physician Ignaz P. Semmelweis.
More generally during this period, science was being transformed from the hobby of amateurs, known as natural philosophers, to the profession of specialized scholars called scientists (a word coined at this time by British philosopher William Whewell). The founding of the AAAS was a key step in that direction, as was the founding of other scientific and professional societies, including the American Medical Association, established in 1847; and the American Psychiatric Association, started in 1844. Earlier, in 1818, chemist Benjamin Silliman had founded the American Journal of Science and Arts, which prided itself on publishing serious scientific research, even when too arcane for the general public. Silliman also became important in the 1850s for his distillation of crude oil and his report of the many uses to which it could be put—a prescient view, given that the invention of the petroleum-driven internal combustion engine was still years away.
Despite the growing shift toward professional science, there was still ample scope for the dedicated amateur in early 19th-century America, particularly when it came to natural observation and collection rather than theory and experiment. Astronomy, paleontology, geology, botany, and zoology were all areas in which gentlemen could dabble, whether they were clergymen, lawyers, doctors, merchants, or planters. Sometimes the results were astonishing. From 1827 to 1838, one-time storekeeper John James Audubon published his landmark, multivolume collection of ornithological drawings, Birds of America. In the Connecticut Valley in 1818, Solomon Ellsworth, Jr., and Nathan Smith discovered fossil bones of the dinosaur Anchisaurus without understanding the significance of their find. From 1818 to 1858, no fewer than 13 academies of science were founded in the Middle West alone, from Ohio to Wisconsin. Most of their members were amateur natural scientists.
Despite their more restricted opportunities, women too could achieve impressive results. Maria Mitchell, librarian and amateur astronomer, established the orbit of a newly discovered comet in 1847. For this feat, she became the first woman admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Archaeology and oceanography were fields of growing interest. Ephraim George Squier and Edwin H. Davis made the first major exploration of the earthworks of the Native American Mound Builders in Ohio in 1845-47. In 1854, naval officer Matthew Fontaine Maury discovered Telegraph Plateau, a shallow section of the Atlantic Ocean, while searching for an undersea route for the transatlantic cable. Maury charted the Gulf Stream and wrote Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), the first textbook of modern oceanography.
In Democracy in America (1835), French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville devoted a chapter to the subject “Why Americans Prefer the Practice Rather Than the Theory of Science.” Tocqueville was probably right that Americans were more interested in practical inventions than in theoretical findings, yet there was popular interest in loftier matters. Through newspapers, books, and popular lectures (often in a local lyceum), Americans learned about findings in astronomy, botany, chemistry, physics, and other areas. The passage of the Great Comet of 1843 was eagerly followed. Much of this popular science was confined to “curiosities” and “wonders” rather than deep inquiry into the causes of phenomena. But it showed that Americans at this time were not averse to scientific learning. In fact, many viewed it as morally uplifting. Naturalist Increase A. Lapham, lecturing in Milwaukee in 1840, said: “Teach young persons to relish the pure and simple beauties of nature—excite in their bosoms an ardent and enthusiastic love of the wonderful works of the Great Creator and you have one of the surest safeguards against immorality and vice.”
Further reading: Donald Cardwell, The Norton History of Technology (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995); George Ochoa and Melinda Corey, The Wilson Chronology of Science and Technology (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1997); Nathan Reingold, ed., Science in America Since 1820 (New York: Science History Publications, 1976).
—George Ochoa
Scott, Winfield (1786-1866) Mexican-American war hero, politician
U. S. Army general and Whig politician, Winfield Scott’s victories during the Mexican-American War made him a national hero. Scott was born in Petersburg, Virginia, on June 13, 1786, the son of a Revolutionary War veteran. He attended William and Mary College briefly in 1806, but dropped out the following year to study law. Scott joined the U. S. Army as a captain in 1808. He proved himself a studious and capable individual, but extremely sensitive about matters concerning personal honor. In 1810, for pub-lically denouncing his superior, General James Wilkinson,
Winfield Scott (National Archives)
Scott was court-martialed and suspended for a year. More determined than ever to be a good officer, he spent that interval reading and mastering several European manuals on the art of war. He reemerged as one of the most promising young officers in the American army.
When the War of 1812 commenced in June 1812, Scott was a lieutenant colonel of the Second U. S. Artillery. In October that year, he fought with great bravery at the debacle at Queenston Heights on the Niagara frontier and was captured. Exchanged the following year, and promoted to full colonel, he accompanied General Henry Dearborn’s amphibious expedition against Fort George in May 1813 and was conspicuous in its capture. Scott pursued the defeated enemy vigorously and would have taken them prisoner but for Dearborn’s premature order to withdraw. He spent the balance of the year along the Niagara Frontier before joining General Wilkinson’s ill-fated St. Lawrence expedition that fall.
As one of several junior officers to acquire distinction in service, in March 1814 Scott became the youngest brigadier general in the army. He was then assigned to the Left Division under General Jacob Brown at Buffalo, New York, where he instituted the first systematized training regimen for American troops. On July 5, 1814, his intense drilling paid dividends when his brigade won an overwhelming victory over a larger British force at Chip-pawa Creek, Canada. This was the first time in the War of 1812 that American troops had defeated their professional adversaries in an open field and proof of their growing professionalism. Three weeks later, Scott commanded the American front line at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane. The battle was a draw, and Scott was seriously wounded. Sent to Baltimore to convalesce, he saw no further fighting, but he had acquired a military reputation second only to Andrew Jackson.
After the war, Scott convinced the War Department to send him to Europe to study military institutions there. Thus began a 50-year quest for promoting and sustaining military professionalism in the U. S. Army. In this capacity, Scott authored several widely read drill manuals and regulations, some of which remained in use until 1861. H owever, he remained stubbornly opinionated about personal affairs and publicly quarreled with General Edmund P. Gaines over seniority. This row resulted in the selection of Alexander Macomb as commanding general of the army in 1828. Such was Scott’s insistence on military protocol that he was widely derided as “Old Fuss and Feathers.”
Scott continued to function effectively as a soldier, and he was actively involved in the Second Seminole War, the Cherokee removal, and border disputes with Canada. He became the army’s senior military leader in 1841, and six years later he led the decisive campaign of the Mexican-American War. Landing at Veracruz, he bested a series of larger Mexican armies in a brilliant campaign of maneuvers that included cutting off his own lines of communication. Mexico City was subsequently taken, and the government of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna sued for peace.
As a national hero, Scott tried to secure the Whig Party’s nomination for president in 1848, but lost to Zachary Taylor. He achieved his quest in 1852, but badly lost the election that year to Franklin Pierce. He was nonetheless honored the following year by being elevated to lieutenant general, the first officer to hold such a distinction since George Washington.
Scott remained the nation’s senior military figure until the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, when he was succeeded by General George McClellan. Before retiring, he promulgated the so-called Anaconda Plan for defeating the Confederacy. This entailed establishment of a naval blockade coupled with a series of western advances down the Mississippi River that carved up enemy territory methodically and slowly strangled the South. The strategy brought him into direct conflict with younger officers like McClellan, who sought to attack immediately before the army was properly trained. Much lampooned at first, Scott’s strategy eventually triumphed. The old soldier died at West Point on 29 May 1866, having bequeathed to the U. S. Army traditions of professionalism and victory that it heretofore had not possessed.
Further reading: Richard V. Barbuto, Niagara, 1814: America Invades Canada (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); John S. D. Eisenhower, Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of Winfield Scott (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); John C. Fredriksen, “Niagara, 1814: The United States Army Quest for Tactical Parity in the War of 1812 and Its Legacy” (unpublished dissertation, Providence College, 1993); Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott and the Quest for Military Glory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998); Allan Peskin, Winfield Scott and the Profession of Arms (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
