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Samuel Slater opens the first factory in America
Video Samuel Slater-Slater was born in England and wanted to move to America with plans to textile machine
-Was told he wasn't allowed to leave with the plans
-decided to memorize the plans
-started the first profitable factory in America
-set the groundwork for american industrial factories
-"father of the American industrial revolution" -
Eli Whitney invents the Cotton Gin
Video about Eli Whitney-Whitney was born in 1765 in Massachusetts
-he invented the cotton gin in 1793
-this invention revolutionized cotton production
-greatly sped up process of removing seeds from cotton
-Made cotton the leading export by mid 1800's
- Whitney did not make much money off of the cotton gin because of patent-infringement issues
-It offered the south a justification to expand slavery
-"Gin" short for "engine"
-led to him getting the job where he invented interchangable parts -
Eli Whitney creates interchangable parts
-Helped make the change in factories from people to machinery
-First used to assemble muskets in early years of 19th century
-Allowed for unskilled workers to produce large number of weapons quickly and at a lower cost
-Made repairs much easier
-Challenges, skeptic that he actually was the one to come up with the idea first, but he did spend the most effort pushing for it -
Robert Fulton-The Steamboat
-A painter-engineer named Robert Fulton installed a powerful steam engine into a boat (named Clermont)
-1807: the first steam boat went from New York City up the Hudson River toward Albany
-Clermont went 150 miles in 32
-this intentioned allowed for the defiance of wind, wave, tide, and downstream current
-Fulton changed all of America’s navigable streams into two-way routes
-He thus doubled the streams' carrying capacitities thus increasing domestic trade -
Cyrus Mcormick: Mechanical Reaper
Video over Mccormick's ReaperVideo-Cyrus born in Shenandoah Valley of Virginia
-invented in 1834
-Farmers using hand-operated sickles and scythes could only harvest half an acre of wheat a day
-McCormick’s reaper: two men could work twelve acres a day
-pulled by Horses and worked by cutting the grain and then using a revolving reel to sweep it onto a platform
-This made farming more efficient and profitable -
John Deere invents the Steel plow
steel plow video
-light enough to be pulled by horses, rather than oxen
-solved obstacle that frustrated the farmers by being sharp enough to break through the thickly matted soil of the West, which snagged and snapped fragile wooden plows
-useful for Great Plain farmers
-the steel plow could cut through sticky soil without clogging
-this invention allowed pioneers in the west to farm the tough, virgin soil in the west (made agriculture profitable) -
Elias Howe: sewing machine
-sewing machine became the first widely advertised consumer product
-The sewing machine became the foundation of the ready-made clothing industry
-Howe invented a sewing machine that could make two hundred and fifty stitches a minute
-Isaac Singer perfected Elias Howe's sewing machine
-Singer company introduced an installment buying plan, which helped to place a sewing machine in middle-class households
-this invention allowed for the use of the mass amounts of cotton because of the cotton gin -
The first transatlantic cable
-first transatlantic telegraph cable crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Foilhommerum, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Heart's Content, in eastern Newfoundland
- transatlantic cable bridged North America and Europe, and expedited communication between the two
-changed the old method of sending messages where it would normally take at least ten days to deliver a message by ship
- now messages were sent in amatter of minutes by telegraph
