Technology

Although America’s technological position was far behind that of Great Britain during the colonial era and the early years of the republic, the nation made great strides. Prior to the Revolution, the American Philosophical Society had been formed in Philadelphia for the purpose of encouraging useful knowledge. In 1824 the Franklin Institute attempted to mesh business and professional interests for the

Purpose of stimulating economic growth. Furthermore, the publication of the important technical journal Scientific American aided the spread of technical knowledge. The journal had 14,000 subscribers by the middle of the 19th century.40 Indeed, in 1790 the United States established a patent office, modeled somewhat on the British example, to register inventions and protect the intellectual property of the inventors. The initial law was weak and had to be modified several times. However, its records indicate a steady stream of inventions: 3 patents in 1790, 158 patents in 1808, 544 patents in 1830, 1,050 patents in 1850, and 4,588 patents in 1860. Even women were able to obtain patents. The first U. S. patent to a woman was issued in 1809, and thereafter the issuance of patents to women averaged about one per year. By the late 19th century the situation had changed. In 1887 to 1888 the number had mushroomed to 250. Most patents by women had a connection to ladies apparel, but several achieved real technical sophistication such as patents for modified screw propellers, reaping machines, and furnaces for smelting ores.41 Despite this activity, by 1850, for every two British workers toiling on the land three worked in manufacturing enterprises. At the same time the United States had only 15% of its workforce in industry. But the greater diversity of British manufacturing efforts, the specialization of labor, and the larger pool of business talent was on the brink of being outpaced by the United States. As previously stated, the United States had originally imported British technology by legal or illegal means. However, by the mid-19th century Great Britain was somewhat lethargic, as mill owners and workers tended to maintain equipment and procedures that had proven themselves rather than risking this security for new and possibly better techniques and inventions. The United States did have some advantages, including a growing ingenuity in a variety of technical fields and no fear of experimentation to seek newer and more efficient methods of production. The propensity for such unhampered approaches to technological development had its origins in colonial times. American farmers and craftsmen had to rely on trial and error and their own ingenuity to create new and improved tools and implements. No guilds or government regulation placed prohibitions on their efforts to save labor and improve efficiency. Productivity had increased by at least 50% as the nation shifted, albeit slowly, from agriculture to industry and began to rely more on machine power for production. Indeed, machines had become accepted aspects of the daily life of people.

This same attitude prevailed as more sophisticated machinery appeared in the nation’s growing manufacturing sector. The variety of machine manufactured consumer goods seemed endless—cast iron stoves, window shades, flush toilets, gaslights, and standard furniture to mention a few—items that went in one generation from being unheard of or too costly to commonplace. As a further indication of the nation’s appetite for new consumer goods, at least 1000 new patents had been approved by the government between the years 1840 and 1860. For example, in just over a decade after Elias Howe’s 1846 patent for the sewing machine, the United States counted fifteen times as many of these devices as Great Britain. This single invention transformed the manufacture of clothing from a handicraft to machine production industry and thus drove the prices down substantially, so that even the lower classes could afford extra garments. A further stimulus to the growth of American technical ingenuity was the perfection of the concept of interchangeable parts. This development ensured the sustainability and profitability of mass production and virtually erased the pre-existing reliance on a large scale handicraft industry in America. The technology of interchangeable parts relied on the concept that components of a finished good are so uniform that they could be substituted for one another and still have a complete article produced. To be sure, the first idea in this vein was not American but rather British and French. Because neither country pursued the possibility in the late 18th century, the American inventor, Eli Whitney, was able to claim the process as his own. His financial frustrations over patent infringements with the cotton gin led him to pursue profit in arms-making and ultimately led to his successful demonstration of the disassembly and re-assembly of muskets for President Adams and Vice-President Jefferson in 1801 (see Biographies).

Even Whitney did not comprehend the ultimate impact of his procedure. Before this time machinists had to cut each nut individually, and the cylinders in the steam engine might have errors in uniformity up to 1/32 of an inch. In time the use of interchangeable parts not only made the process of creating like components for finished goods simple and rapid but it also led to the creation of uniform machine parts to produce the articles themselves, a transformation that was the real boon to industry. It ultimately revolutionized production costs, increased efficiency, and reduced the expense of finished goods to the consumer. The concept soon became referred to as the ‘‘American System’’ and spread to other industries such as clockmaking, sewing machines, farm items, watches, and even pistols. Even with the obvious benefits of interchangeable parts, fewer than two dozen industries employed the technique prior to the Civil War. Interestingly, the success of the American System did not immediately rebound on Great Britain and the continent. As U. S. manufacturers set up their operations in Great Britain following the Civil War, British observers expressed awe at the concept.42

In one respect, the nation’s continued reliance on bringing new land under cultivation fostered the growth of inventions to make the harvesting of crops faster and more efficient. In fact the amount of land under cultivation doubled from 1850 to 1900 and increased three times by 1910. The farm population also increased by 50%, but its percentage of the overall labor force actually declined because of the growth of industry. In 1800 most farm work was done by hand, whereas by 1900 farm operations had become mechanized and power tools were the norm. Over the course of the 1830s and 1840s a series of devices appeared to make farm work more efficient and productive. The most significant invention was Cyrus H. McCormick’s improved horse-drawn reaper in 1854. McCormick’s reaper featured revolving blades that efficiently sliced the wheat and increased the harvesting capability from two acres a day to two acres an hour. As a further indication of the productivity increase, particularly after the application of steam and then diesel power to farm equipment, in 1800 it took approximately fifty-six man hours per acre to raise wheat, of which forty man hours were devoted to harvesting. By 1900 that total had been dramatically reduced to fifteen and nine man hours, respectively. Indeed, in 1800 the productivity of one farm could support just over four families. In 1900 the same farm could feed seven families.

Several other technical developments in the 19th century contributed to the acceleration of the United States to it eventual leadership in the industrial world after 1900. The appearance of the bicycle in 1878, for example, revolutionized transportation for individuals and families living in the crowded cities. By 1900 American factories produced one million bicycles a year. Two breakthroughs in communication technology, however, made a dramatic impact and deserve emphasis. The first was the perfection of the telegraph system by Samuel Finley Breese Morse (see Biographies) in 1844. Within his lifetime, telegraphic communication not only linked all of the nation’s states but also wedded Europe and America by transatlantic cable. The second was the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Building on the work of other pioneer scientists in electricity and magnetic fields, Bell envisioned the transmission of speech electronically. In March 1876 he patented the first telephone in which sound wave vibration could be transformed into a fluctuating electric current and carried across wires and reconverted into identical sound waves at the other end of the circuit. The telephone’s commercial and personal value became readily apparent. In 1883 there were 100,000 telephone subscribers, almost all in urban areas. In New York City there was one telephone for every 500 persons, as compared to one per 1,000 in Paris, one per 3,000 in London and Berlin, and one per 4,000 in St. Petersburg. By 1917 the

Unites States had twelve million telephones in operation.43 In 1879 New Haven, Connecticut published the first commercial phone book listing 50 names and no numbers since all calls were operator assisted until a later date.44 These two inventions—telegraph and telephone— revolutionized communications and sped up the sharing of important knowledge and influenced developments in Europe that resulted in the invention of the wireless radio in 1901. Another major technical advance was the incandescent light bulb developed by Thomas Alva Edison. Of humble origins, Edison was an inquisitive youth and established his first laboratory at the age of 12. In 1868 he became a telegraph operator for Western Union. By 1874 he had devised the quadruplex telegraph capable of sending two messages simultaneously in two directions. He established laboratories first in New York City and then his famous facility at Menlo Park, New Jersey. In the course of his life Edison obtained 1093 patents, including ones that resulted in the improved clarity and volume of the Bell telephone (1877), Wall Street stock ticker (1869), phonograph (1870), motion pictures (1888), and the device that won him international acclaim, the incandescent light bulb (1879). This latter invention resulted in the eventual creation of the General Electric Company in 1892 and the establishment of commercial electric lighting systems in the United States and abroad. By the late 19th century the force of electricity had found a variety of purposes. Industries supplied electricity and illuminated their formerly dimly lit assembly lines and powered motors and engines in the factories. The first electric trolley appeared in 1895, replacing the former horse-drawn trolleys, and within several years 10,000 miles of track were in place. Electric lighting appeared in homes as well as on city streets. By the early 20th century, electricity prepared the way for its eventual use as a power source for household appliances such as irons, washing machines, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners, a development that eventually freed up more women to enter the U. S. workforce once again.45

One other technical innovation also contributed to the United States emergence as the industrial leader in the world by the early 20th century. Frank and Charles Duryea developed the gas powered engine in 1893, which resulted in the production of the earliest automobile. This development had grown from the discovery of petroleum and experiments with its potential earlier in the century. Interestingly, one of the first assessments was that fluid petroleum would have no functional purpose ‘‘except as a lotion for bruises and rheumatic afflictions.’’ 6 Although it was acknowledged that petroleum could produce substantial light, its pungent odor was considered too offensive. In 1896 the Duryea brothers made and sold thirteen cars. In the same year a mechanic in his early thirties named Henry Ford created his first automobile, which resulted in the sale of more than 10,000 Model Ts in 1909. Two decades later he had established the largest industry in the nation with nearly 2,500 plants. These factories had an assembly line operation that married the product and process to mass produce cheap automobiles for consumption by a large segment of the American population. In 1929 more than 20 million automobiles traveled U. S. roadways, one for every five Americans, and nearly 17% of all U. S. patents had some connection to the automobile industry.