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 * Inventions and their Impact on American Life **

//New technology was an integral part of the Industrial Revolution. Read about the inventions listed below and complete the chart provided for you. Make sure you complete the entire chart, some of the impacts you may have to come up with from your head. Remember the impact could be negative or positive.//

= John Deere - Steel Plow - 1838 =

John Deere was an Illinois blacksmith and manufacturer. Early in his career, Deere and an associate designed a series of farm plows. In 1837, on his own, John Deere designed the first cast steel plow that greatly assisted the Great Plains farmers. The large plows made for cutting the tough prairie ground were called "grasshopper plows." The plow was made of wrought iron and had a steel share that could cut through sticky soil without clogging. By 1855, John Deere's factory was selling over 10,000 steel plows a year. In 1868, John Deere's business was incorporated as [|Deere & Company] , which is still in existence today.

= Elias Howe - Sewing Machine - 1846 =



Elias Howe was the inventor of the first American-patented sewing machine.

Elias Howe's machine had a needle with an eye at the point. The needle was pushed through the cloth and created a loop on the other side; a shuttle on a track then slipped the second thread through the loop, creating what is called the lockstitch. However, Elias Howe later encountered problems defending his patent and marketing his invention.

= Cyrus McCormick - The Reaper - 1831 =

Cyrus McCormick of Virginia was responsible for liberating farm workers from hours of back-breaking labor by introducing the farmers to his newly invented mechanical reaper in July, 1831. By 1847, Cyrus McCormick began the mass manufacture of his reaper in a Chicago factory. The first reapers cut the standing grain and, with a revolving reel, swept it onto a platform from which it was raked off into piles by a man walking alongside. It could harvest more grain than five men using the earlier cradles.



= Samuel Morse - Telegraph - 1844 =

While a professor of arts and design at New York University in 1835, Samuel Morse proved that signals could be transmitted by wire. He used pulses of current to deflect an electromagnet, which moved a marker to produce written codes on a strip of paper - the invention of [|Morse Code] . The following year, the device was modified to emboss the paper with dots and dashes. He gave a public demonstration in 1838, but it was not until five years later that Congress (reflecting public apathy) funded $30,000 to construct an experimental telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, a distance of 40 miles.



= Eli Whitney - Interchangeable Parts - 1798 =

During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, machines took over most of the manufacturing work from men, and factories replaced craftsmen's workshops. The event that laid the groundwork for this monumental change was the introduction of interchangeable parts, or pre-manufactured parts that were for all practical purposes identical, into the firearms industry. Interchangeable parts, popularized in America when Eli Whitney used them to assemble muskets in the first years of the 19th century, allowed relatively unskilled workers to produce large numbers of weapons quickly and at lower cost, and made repair and replacement of parts infinitely easier

= Eli Whitney - Cotton Gin - 1794 =



Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States. Prior to his invention, farming cotton required hundreds of man-hours to separate the cottonseed from the raw cotton fibers. Simple seed-removing devices have been around for centuries, however, Eli Whitney's invention automated the seed separation process. His machine could generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily, making cotton production profitable for the southern states.



= Peter Cooper - Steam Engine - 1830 = Peter Cooper and the Tom Thumb steam locomotive are important figures in the history of railroads in the United States. The coal-burning engine led to the replacement of horse-drawn trains. It was the first American-built steam locomotive to be operated on a common-carrier railroad.

Peter Cooper was born Feb. 12, 1791, in New York City and died on April 4, 1883. He was an inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist from New York City. The Tom Thumb locomotive was designed and built by Peter Cooper in 1830. Cooper bought land along the route of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and prepared it for the train route. He found iron ore on the property and founded the Canton Iron Works to produce iron rails for the railroad. His other businesses included a iron rolling mill and a glue factory. The Tom Thumb was built to convince the railroad owners to use steam engines. It was cobbled together with a small boiler and spare parts that included musket barrels. It was fueled by anthracite coal.

The Tom Thumb and the First U.S. Railway Chartered to Transport Freight and Passengers
On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transport of passengers and freight. There were skeptics who doubted that a steam engine could work along steep, winding grades, but the Tom Thumb, designed by Peter Cooper, put an end to their doubts. Investors hoped a railroad would allow Baltimore, the second largest U.S. city at the time, to successfully compete with New York for western trade. The first railroad track in the United States was only 13 miles long, but it caused a lot of excitement when it opened in 1830. Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the first stone when construction on the track began at Baltimore harbor on July 4, 1828 Baltimore and the Ohio River were connected by rail in 1852, when the B&O was completed at Wheeling, West Virginia. Later extensions brought the line to Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland. In 1869, the Central Pacific line and the Union Pacific line joined to create the first transcontinental railroad. Pioneers continued to travel west by covered wagon, but as trains became faster and more frequent, settlements across the continent grew larger and more quickly.

=<span style="color: #008080; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Robert Fulton - Steamboat - 1807 = Robert Fulton (1765–1815) was an American engineer and inventor who is widely known for developing a commercially successful steamboat called Clermont. In 1807, that steamboat took passengers from New York City to Albany and back again, a round trip of 300 miles, in 62 hours. //All information came from about.com//

View the power point below and complete the worksheet given to you.
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