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Period: to
Urbanization of American Culture 1865-1929
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The Golden Spike at Promontory Point
The transcontinental railroad is completed. The ability to rapidly move people, livestock and goods across the continent is now a reality. This opens up massive potential for the movement of resources and lays the foundation for a connected nation. -
Standard Oil
Rockefeller creates Standard Oil. Petroleum would become one of the major foundations of an urban America. This energy source would fuel electricity, machines and automobiles and make possible the near future America that world become the leader of industrial nations. -
The Electric Building
The World Fair in Chicago represents the beginning of a new world that would bring with it electricity and the advent of the incandescent bulb, Americans would use electricity to fire up an entire industry of machines that spread across the nation bringing new inventions and a growing urban poplulation. -
L.M. Ericsson Skeleton Telephone 1900
In 1880 Hundreds of thousands of miles of communication lines stretched across the Atlantic. As technologies like the telegraph and the telephone emerged the world was rapidly connected. In the twenty years between 1880 and 1900, telephones in America increased 1.35 million. As they spread across America, the once isolated rural continent of America was brought together by this new innovation. -
America Going to War!
Zimmerman Telegraph intercepted and decoded: Germany asking Mexico to invade U.S. Considered the final straw that has McKinney and congress pass war resolution, America's involvement in WWI meant a great leap in industrialization and manufacturing for the nation. By the end of the war, America would become a world power and a nation built on manufacturing and the wealth of war. This further concentrated populations into urban areas. -
15th Million Ford
Ford revolutionizes the urban landscape. Paying decent wages and making affordable cars that his workers could afford, soon cars were connecting urban areas across America. Enormous industries: oil, glass and rubber grew out of the success of mass produced automobiles. Due to earlier petroleum industrialists like Rockefeller, the foundation was laid for the success of cheap mass produced automobiles.
