A
the successful Bessemer process was bettered by the 1860s. It
was eventually replaced by the open-hearth process,
enabling manufacturers to produce quality steel from scrap
metal as well as from raw materials.
NEW USES FOR STEEL
The railroads, with thousands of
miles of track, became the biggest customers for steel, but
inventors soon found additional uses for it. Joseph
Glidden’s barbed wire and McCormick’s and Deere’s farm
machines helped transform the plains into the food pro-
ducer of the nation.
Steel changed the face of the nation as well, as it made
innovative construction possible. One of the most remark-
able structures was the Brooklyn Bridge. Completed in
1883, it spanned 1,595 feet of the East River in New York
City. Its steel cables were supported by towers higher than
any man-made and weight-bearing structure except the
pyramids of Egypt. Like those ancient marvels, the com-
pleted bridge was called a wonder of the world.
Around this time, setting the stage for a new era of
expansion upward as well as outward, William Le Baron
Jenney designed the first skyscraper with a steel frame—the
Home Insurance Building in Chicago. Before Jenney had his
pioneering idea, the weight of large buildings was support-
ed entirely by their walls or by iron frames, which limited
the buildings’ height. With a steel frame to support the
weight, however, architects could build as high as they
wanted. As structures soared into the air, not even the sky
seemed to limit what Americans could achieve.
Inventions Promote Change
By capitalizing on natural resources and their own ingenuity,
inventors changed more than the landscape. Their inven-
tions affected the very way people lived and worked.
THE POWER OF ELECTRICITY
In 1876, Thomas Alva Edison became a pio-
neer on the new industrial frontier when he established the world’s first research
laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. There Edison perfected the incandescent
light bulb—patented in 1880—and later invented an entire system for producing
and distributing electrical power. Another inventor, George Westinghouse, along
with Edison, added innovations that made electricity safer and less expensive.
The harnessing of electricity completely changed the nature of business in
America. By 1890, electric power ran numerous machines, from fans to printing
presses. This inexpensive, convenient source of energy soon became available in
homes and spurred the invention of time-saving appliances. Electric streetcars made
urban travel cheap and efficient and also promoted the outward spread of cities.
More important, electricity allowed manufacturers to locate their plants
438 C
HAPTER 14
Radio
Light Bulb
Phonograph
Telephone
Motion Pictures
X-Ray
Airplane
Electric Motor
Typewriter
Dynamite
Internal-
Combustion
Engine
1860184618371831 1867
1873
1879
1877
1876
1895
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1826
1903
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
A
Summarizing
What natural
resources were
most important for
industrialization?
Vocabulary
incandescent:
giving off visible
light as a result of
being heated
A. Answer
oil, coal, iron
ore, water
The Technological Explosion, 1826–1903
ILLUMINATING THE
LIGHT BULB
Shortly after moving into a long
wooden shed at Menlo Park,
Thomas Alva Edison and his
associates set to work to develop
the perfect incandescent bulb.
Arc lamps already lit some city
streets and shops, using an elec-
tric current passing between two
sticks of carbon, but they were
glaring and inefficient.
Edison hoped to create a long-
lasting lamp with a soft glow, and
began searching for a filament
that would burn slowly and stay
lit. Edison tried wires, sticks,
blades of grass, and even hairs
from his assistants’ beards.
Finally, a piece of carbonized
bamboo from Japan did the trick.
Edison’s company used bamboo
filaments until 1911, when it
began using tungsten filaments,
which are still used today.
