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Bessemer process
The Bessemer process was the first method by which steel could be mass produced. Developed and patented in the 1850s by Henry Bessemer, the process involved injecting air into molten pig iron to remove impurities. The resulting steel, relatively easy and inexpensive to produce, was also lighter and stronger than iron; steel rails for railroads, for example, lasted 17 or 18 times longer than wrought-iron rails. The Bessemer process was succeeded by open-hearth steel production. -
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Industrial Revolution
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John D. Rockefeller
As the moving force behind the Standard Oil Company, John D. Rockefeller helped create the American petroleum industry. Reform journalist Ida Tarbell pilloried him; others called him, as many still do, the greatest business leader in American history. He also pioneered in large-scale, systematic philanthropy, giving away millions of dollars for the advancement of education, medicine, and science -
Edwin Drake
In the mid-1800s, oil became an increasingly necessary component of American life, as it was included in medicine, lubricants, special chemicals such as naphtha, and kerosene for lighting—kerosene being the major product. After Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania in August 1859, small oil companies sprang up throughout northwestern Pennsylvania to capitalize on the new venture. -
Christopher Sholes
Christopher Sholes invented the first practical and commercially marketable typewriter, also offered women better paying employment. -
Credit mobilier scandal
Poeple working on the Union pacific Railroad took money from the government for themselves, when a constitutional investigation began to shape in 1867 a leader of the company attempted to buy off key politicians including Schuyler Colfax, but the scandal was discovered. -
Transcontinental Railroad
A railroad spanning most of the US was completed in 1869, The companys first railroad was trhe Central Pacific Railroad, which served as the first transcontinental railroad, -
J.P. Morgan
He remained with his father's firm in varying capacities until 1871, when he became a partner in his own firm, Drexel, Morgan and Co., which had offices on the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, at the heart of America's financial district.Morgan's firm enjoyed enormous success, particularly after he merged his business with his father's banking house after the latter's death in 1890. The new firm—J.P. Morgan and Company—was one of the largest and most stable banking houses -
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell industrialized worlds only means of long distance vocal communication when he invented the telaphone. -
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison contributed to the invention of the telegraph, telephone, phonoghaph and invented the lightbulb. -
Munn V. Illinois
Munn v. Illinois involved the question of whether Illinois had the authority to regulate the prices charged by grain elevators. Elevator owners argued that such regulation interfered with federal commerce powers and deprived them of due process of law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the Court. -
Haymarket Riot
When a bomb exploded among a group of policemen as they attempted to disperse a giant labor rally in the city's Haymarket Square.The explosion killed seven policemen and injured 70 people. The incident received considerable nationwide publicity and seriously damaged the image of the growing labor movement, which was branded as a breeding ground for political dissidents rather than an organization of workers trying to secure better conditions for themselves and their families. -
Interstate Commerse act
The Interstate Commerce Act attempted to regulate the growing railway industry in the United States and established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the first federal regulatory commission. The second half of the 19th century witnessed an explosion in the growth of railroads in the United States. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
First federal law to regulate large corporations and trusts and eliminate monopolies. It was the first of a series of antitrust laws based on the constitutional power of Congress to oversee interstate commerce. Promoted by Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the act outlawed any contract, combination, or conspiracy that restrained trade or monopolized any market. -
homestead strike
Employees of the Carnagie steel manufacturing plant in Homestead Pennsylvania went on strike and seized the manufacturing plants because they were unhappy from pay cuts. -
Eugene Debs
Debs turned to socialism as a result of the severe depression of the 1890s and what he saw as the increasing use of government power against the rights of labor—first to break a new union he had helped form, then to put him in jail as a labor first to break a new union he had helped form, then to put him in jail as a labor agitator. By 1893, Debs had organized the American Railway Union (ARU), the nation's first industrial union. Emplyoees went on strike against Debs advice. -
Pullman strike
4000 employees joined Eugene V. Debs' American Railroad Unionand initiated a strike against George Pullman and his company. -
Henry Ford
Henry Ford made a breakthrough in the automibile industry by making the Ford model T. assmebly line which made it easier to ship parts around the work place. He was also the founder of the company Ford. His invention of the -
Mother Jones
Jones began her crusade by organizing women's auxiliaries to unions and attacking child labor practices in the South. In the 1890s, she became affiliated with the United Mine Workers. In 1902, Jones attracted widespread public attention to a coal miners' strike by directing strikers' wives to attack strikebreakers with brooms and mops. -
Wright Brothers
First flight by airplane, The Wright Brothers' first flight in the Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. Orville Wright is at the controls, while Wilbur stands to the right. -
Lochner v. NY decision
Issue was a New York law limiting the work hours of bakers to 10 hours a day and six days a week, this epitomized an era of U.S. Supreme Court decision making.
