![]() Tin cans and, later, Clarence Birdseye’s experiments with frozen food, eventually changed how women shopped for, and prepared, food for their families, despite initial health concerns over preserved foods. These indoor “water closets” improved public health through the reduction in contamination associated with outhouses and their proximity to water supplies and homes. The vacuum cleaner arrived during this era, as well as the flush toilet. ![]() Inventions also slowly transformed home life. These tools made it easier than ever to keep up with the rapid pace of business growth. In offices, worker productivity benefited from the typewriter, invented in 1867, the cash register, invented in 1879, and the adding machine, invented in 1885. Here, a knitting factory promotes the fact that its machines make seamless hose, while still acknowledging the traditional role of women in the garment industry, from grandmothers who used to sew by hand to young women who now used machines. From 1880 to 1920, the number of industrial workers in the nation quadrupled from 2.5 million to over 10 million, while over the same period urban populations doubled, to reach one-half of the country’s total population.įigure 18.3 Advertisements of the late nineteenth century promoted the higher quality and lower prices that people could expect from new inventions. Immigration, urbanization, and industrialization coincided to transform the face of American society from primarily rural to significantly urban. In turn, newly arrived immigrants sought employment in new urban factories. However, the development of commercial electricity by the close of the century, to complement the steam engines that already existed in many larger factories, permitted more industries to concentrate in cities, away from the previously essential water power. As late as 1880, fully one-half of all Americans still lived and worked on farms, whereas fewer than one in seven-mostly men, except for long-established textile factories in which female employees tended to dominate-were employed in factories. AN EXPLOSION OF INVENTIVE ENERGYįrom corrugated rollers that could crack hard, homestead-grown wheat into flour to refrigerated train cars and garment-sewing machines ( Figure 18.3), new inventions fueled industrial growth around the country. While many of these patents came to naught, some inventions became lynchpins in the rise of big business and the country’s move towards an industrial-based economy, in which the desire for efficiency, comfort, and abundance could be more fully realized by most Americans. But between 18, that number exploded to nearly 450,000, with another 235,000 in the last decade of the century. ![]() By 1860, the office had issued a total of 60,000 patents. Patent Office, which, in 1790-its first decade of existence-recorded only 276 inventions. To understand the scope of this zeal for creation, consider the U.S. Inventions often provided the answers, even as the inventors themselves remained largely unaware of the life-changing nature of their ideas. ![]() In retrospect, harnessing the power of steam and then electricity in the nineteenth century vastly increased the power of man and machine, thus making other advances possible as the century progressed.įacing an increasingly complex everyday life, Americans sought the means by which to cope with it. Building upon the mid-century Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, as well as answering the increasing call from Americans for efficiency and comfort, the country found itself in the grip of invention fever, with more people working on their big ideas than ever before. The late nineteenth century was an energetic era of inventions and entrepreneurial spirit.
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