Threshing Machine

The invention of the threshing machine is credited to Andrew Meikle, a Scottish engineer. The threshing machine came about in the 1780s.In the United States, Alexander Anderson created a model in 1782. Since Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned farms, threshing machines were an interest to both of them. Together they went to see the new machine in action in August 1791. A year later, Jefferson ordered one of Meikle’s models from London, In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson shows his excitement over the new machine.I expect every day to receive from Mr. Pinckney the model of the Scotch threshing machine…Mr. P. [Pinckney] writes me word that the machine from which my model is taken threshes 8. quarters (64. bushels) of oats an hour, with 4. horses and 4 men. I hope to get it in time to have one erected at Monticello to clean out the present crop.At his Monticello estate, Jefferson ended up using three threshing machines. One was stationary and worked by water, while the other two could be moved and worked by horses. In a July 6, 1796 letter from Washington to Jefferson, the importance of a portable machine can be seen.If you can bring a moveable threshing machine, constructed upon simple principles to perfection, it will be among the most valuable institutions in this Country; for nothing is more wanting, & to be wished for on our farms.The threshing machine of the yesteryears is the combine of modern times. Both machines remove the grain from the stalks. The main difference is that the combine is self-propelled and eliminates both the man-hours and the threshing crew that the old threshing machines used.The combine allowed farmers to harvest their crops easier and quicker. While the number of acres has risen over the years, the number of farms has dropped. For example, in North Dakota alone, a 1998 study showed that the average farm increased over 1,000 acres but the number of farms have decreased close to 50,000 since 1920.

Mechanical Reaper

Cyrus McCormick of Virginia was responsible for liberating farm workers from hours of backbreaking labor by introducing the farmers to his newly invented mechanical reaper in July, 1831. By 1847, Cyrus McCormick began the mass manufacture of his reaper in a Chicago factory.

The invention of two successful reaping machines - independently by Obed Hussey in Ohio, who obtained the first patent in 1834, and by Cyrus Hall McCormick in Virginia - brought about an end to tedious handiwork and encouraged the invention and manufacture of other labor-saving farm implements and machinery. The first reapers cut the standing grain and, with a revolving reel, swept it onto a platform from which a man walking alongside raked it off into piles. It could harvest more grain than five men using the earlier cradles. The next innovation, patented in 1858, was a self-raking reaper with an endless canvas belt that delivered the cut grain to two men who riding on the end of the platform bundled it. Meanwhile, Cyrus McCormick had moved to Chicago, built a reaper factory, and founded what eventually became the International Harvester Company. In 1872 he produced a reaper, which automatically bound the bundles with wire. In 1880, he came out with a binder which, using a magical knotting device (invented by John F. Appleby a Wisconsin pastor) bound the handles with twine. 

Cotton Gin

In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine that influenced the history of the United States.  He invented a cotton gin that was popular in the South.  The South became the cotton producing part of the country because Whitney’s cotton gin was able to successfully pull out the seeds from the cotton bolls.Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825.  As a young boy he liked to work in his father’s workshop taking things apart, like clocks, and putting them back together again.  When he was a young man, he worked on a Georgian plantation tutoring children.  He noticed the trouble the slaves were having picking seed from cotton bolls.  In his spare time, he put together an instrument that would allow the slaves to clean more cotton in a shorter amount of time.The cotton gin was a very simple invention.  First, the cotton bolls were put into the top of the machine.  Next, you turn the handle, which turns the cotton through the wire teeth that combs out the seeds.  Then the cotton is pulled out of the wire teeth and out of the cotton gin.Farmers were able to plant more cotton.  Cotton is easy to grow but because it was so difficult to clean, cotton was not a cash crop.  Tobacco and indigo were the South’s cash crops.  Tobacco is difficult to grow.  Tobacco wears out the land and the land must be given a rest once every 7 years.  But cotton can grow anywhere, even on land that is drained of its nutrients.Now that cotton is easier to clean and since it grows easily, cotton became the number one cash crop in the South.  The farmers needed more land to grow cotton.  They took the land from the Native Americans.  The farmers needed more workers.  Slaves were the free labor that the farmers needed toharvest the cotton.This growth of cotton production affected the world.  The Northern part of the United States bought more cotton and built more textile mills.  England built more textile mills and demanded much more cotton.  These were two big markets to which the South sold their cotton.  The South was not able to build textile mills because their capital was tied up in their slaves so that they could produce more cotton.  The South also did not have the need or the capital to build up a good transportation system, such as canals and railroads. During the Civil War, the South had many disadvantages over the North.  Large portions of their population were uneducated slaves.  They had no factories to produce goods and to become self sufficient when they separated from the North.  Because the South had not built up a good transportation system, they were not able to move men and supplies easily across the country, as the North was able to do.

By 1860, cotton was a cash crop.  Cotton production in the South had increased.  The number of slaves in the United States had increased.  The dependency on slaves had increased.  Capital had been invested in slaves, not in transportation or factories.  All this happened because of a very simple machine, the cotton gin.

Interchangeable Parts

The system of manufacture involving production of many identical parts and their assembly into finished products came to be called the American System, because it achieved its fullest maturity in the United States. Although Eli Whitney (1765-1825) has been given credit for this development, his ideas had appeared earlier in Sweden, France, and Britain and were being practiced in other arms factories in the United States. In 1798 Eli Whitney acquired the American government's support to fund him to mass-produce 10,000 muskets using interchangeable parts. At this time war with France was a possibility, so the need for weaponry was in high demand.

In 1801, Whitney held a demonstration to show how he could fit ten different lock mechanisms into the same musket. Even though it was later discovered by historians that the demonstration was staged, he still paved the way for other engineers and inventors to improve on the concept. He demonstrated that machine tools - manned by workers who did not need the highly specialized skills of gunsmiths - could produce standardized parts to exact specifications, and that any part could be used as a component of any musket. The firearms factory he built in New Haven, Conn., was thus one of the first to use mass production methods. Principally, Whitney’s method broke down the traditional division of labor into discrete and separate steps accomplished by a worker who performed only that single job.

Eli Whitney’s commitment to interchangeable military musket production was recognized by the US Army Ordnance Department following the War of 1812. Not only was his opinion and support sought by the Ordnance Department for the goal of interchangeable musket production at the national armories, but also his simplified musket design greatly influenced the musket pattern chosen for future interchangeable production.

Mass Production

The factory system changed the world of work.  In addition, new processes further changed how people worked in factories and what they could produce.

The Process of Mass Production—Many changes in industry evolved fully in the United States.  One of these changes was the development of mass production—the system of manufacturing large numbers of identical items.  Elements of mass production, including interchangeable parts and the assembly line, came to be known as the American system.

Interchangeable parts are identical machine-made parts.  They made production and repair of factory-made goods more efficient.  Before industrialization, one skilled worker might have made and entire gun, clock, or other product by himself.  He would make or gather all the parts and assemble them.  The process could be slow, and because the parts were all handmade, the finished products were a little different from each other.  With interchangeable parts, though, one worker could put together many identical products in a short time.  Making repairs was easier, too, because replacement parts did not have to be custom-made to fit.

The other element of mass production related to movement within factories.  In early workshops, the product stayed in one place and workers moved around it, adding parts and making refinements.  An innovation was the assembly line.  Perfected by an American, Henry Ford, in an assembly line, the product moves from worker to worker, as each one performs a step in the manufacturing process.  With this division of labor, workers can make many times quickly.

Effects of Mass Production—Mass production had advantages and disadvantages.  A big advantage was a dramatic increase in production.  Businesses that made many items quickly could charge less per item.  As a result, more people could afford to buy these mass-produced goods.

For employees, however, mass production could lead to more repetitive jobs.  At first, some workers protested, refusing to work quickly.  But the changes could not be stopped, and mass production became the norm in factories.

Textile Mill – A clothing factory

The first factory in the United States was begun after George Washington became President. In 1790, SAMUEL SLATER, a cotton spinner's apprentice who left England the year before with the secrets of textile machinery, built a factory from memory to produce spindles of yarn.

The factory had 72 spindles, powered by nine children pushing foot treadles, soon replaced by waterpower. Three years later, JOHN AND ARTHUR SHOFIELD, who also came from England, built the first factory to manufacture woolens in Massachusetts.

First used by bankers and builders, the corporation concept spread to manufacturing. In 1813, FRANCES CABOT LOWELL, NATHAN APPLETON and PATRICK JOHNSON formed the BOSTON MANUFACTURING COMPANY to build America's first integrated textile factory, that performed every operation necessary to transform cotton lint into finished cloth.

Over the next 15 years they charted additional companies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Others copied their corporation model and by 1840 the corporate manufacturer was commonplace.

Lowell and his associates hoped to avoid the worst evils of British industry. They built their production facilities at Massachusetts. To work in the textile mills, Lowell hired young, unmarried women from New England farms. The "MILL GIRLS" were chaperoned by matrons and were held to a strict curfew and moral code.

Although the work was tedious (12 hours per day, 6 days per week), many women enjoyed a sense of independence they had not known on the farm. The wages were about triple the going rate for a domestic servant at the time.

The impact of the creation of all these factories and corporations was to drive people from rural areas to the cities where factories were located. This movement was well underway by the Civil War. During the 1840s, the population of the country as a whole increased by 36%. The population of towns and cities of 8,000 or more increased by 90%. With a huge and growing market, unconstrained by European traditions that could hamper their development, the corporation became the central force in America's economic growth.

Sewing Machine

Elias Howe was the inventor of the first American-patented sewing machine.Elias Howe was born in Spencer, Massachusetts on July 9, 1819. After he lost his factory job in the Panic of 1837, Howe moved from Spencer to Boston, where he found work in a machinist's shop. It was there that Elias Howe began tinkering with the idea of inventing a mechanical sewing machine.

Elias Howe - Lockstitch Sewing MachineEight years later, Elias Howe demonstrated his machine to the public. At 250 stitches a minute, his lockstitch mechanism out stitched the output of five hand sewers with a reputation for speed. Elias Howe patented his lockstitch sewing machine on September 10, 1846 in New Hartford, Connecticut.

Telegraph

Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland; by 1866, a telegraph line had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. to Europe. Although the telegraph had fallen out of widespread use by the start of the 21st century, replaced by the telephone, fax machine and Internet, it laid the groundwork for the communications revolution that led to those later innovations.

Canal

Inspired by the English and Dutch systems of canals, Americans began to eye the possibility of man-made waterways early in their history. George Washington perhaps spurred the activity by publically wishing that Americans had "the wisdom to improve" our system of waterways. Nevertheless, by the 1790's, small canals were being attempted--slow to construct and under- financed, these canals were supported by such public luminaries as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Mifflin. Thus, despite the problems the canal builders found, improvement of the nation's waterways was inextricably linked with republican sentiment and nationalism.

Much of the difficulty in early canal building was simply a lack of elementary knowledge. Americans were not used to such improvements; engineers were either sent to England for training or, more often, expected to work out for themselves how to take a level, how to dig a channel, remove tree roots, dispose of tons of earth, mix underwater cement, create locks and a hundred other things. The fact that, for the most part, American engineers, surveyors, and laborers were able to build a system of canals from this beginning was widely hailed around the country as further proof that America was an inspired nation whose ingenuity would carry it far.

The earliest canal ventures began in Pennsylvania and Virginia with the common goal of improving transportation to the Ohio Valley. In 1791, the Pennsylvania legislature incorporated a private group of leading citizens and began work on the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Canal. An English engineer, William Weston, was brought to America to supervise construction. As with many canals, the work was done in sections, and the short "portage canal" at the Great Falls on the lower Susquehanna was complete first, in 1797, becoming the first working canal in Pennsylvania.

Similarly, building was begun on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, intended to connect the two bays, in 1803; there work continued until 1805 when the funds were exhausted. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all supported another venture begun in 1785, the Potomac Company. Originally intended to connect the Potomac to the Ohio River, the canal, like many early projects, was scaled back; it eventually came to act as an improvement for the Potomac trade. Numerous other small canals were begun with grand ambitions and became controlled partners to the larger rivers they followed.

It was not until 1825 with the completion of the Erie Canal in New York that canal builders were vindicated. As the model for most subsequent canals, the Erie ushered in the canal era with great fanfare, proving to an excited nation caught up in the Great Jubiliee that the American economy and spirit could indeed benefit from a system of inland waterways.

Steam Engine

While Thomas Savery patented the first crude steam engine in 1698. Thomas Newcomen improved on this design. However, it wasn't until Scotsman James Watt improved on the steam engine in the second half of the 18th century that it became a truly viable piece of machinery that helped start the Industrial Revolution.

Details about the Steam Engine:Basically, a steam engine is able to harness the energy of steam to move machinery. It is a fairly clean source of energy. Steam engines were used to great effect to run locomotives and steamships.

Historical Significance of the Steam Engine:The steam engine was central to the industrial revolution. Only through providing a convenient source of energy could major forms of transportation grow and prosper. Steamships and steam locomotives allowed for the quicker transportation of raw materials that could be used to produce finished goods.

Interesting Facts:Steam engines are still used today to help run nuclear power plants.The Watt - a unit of power familiar today when dealing with light bulbs - was named after James Watt.James Watt came up with the term 'horsepower' as a way to help explain how much work his steam engines could do for a potential buyer.

Steel Plow (Not wooden!)

John Deere developed the first American cast steel plow. The implements being used by pioneer farmers of that day were cumbersome and ineffective for cutting and turning the prairie soil. To alleviate the problem, Deere and a partner, Major Leonard Andrus, designed three new plows in 1838. Their cutting part was made from steel cut from an old sawmill blade and shaped by bending it over a log. The moldboard, used for lifting and turning, was made of wrought iron and polished on the upper surface to prevent clogging. 

Invention Impact

The plow was so successful that by 1846 Deere and his partner were selling a thousand a year. Deere then sold his interest in the Grand Detour enterprise to Andrus and organized a plow company in Moline, Illinois. After experimenting with imported English steel, he had a cast steel plow made for him in Pittsburgh. By 1855 he was selling more than 13,000 such plows a year. 

Inventor Bio

Born in Rutland, Vermont, Deere served a four-year apprenticeship to a blacksmith and worked in that trade until 1837, when he moved to Grand Detour, Illinois. In 1868 his business was incorporated as Deere & Company, which is still in existence today. 

Steam Boat

In 1769, the Scotsman James Watt patented an improved version of the steam engine that ushered in the Industrial Revolution. The idea of using steam power to propel boats occurred to inventors soon after the potential of Watt's new engine became known.The era of the steamboat began in America in 1787 when John Fitch (1743-1798) made the first successful trial of a forty-five-foot steamboat on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787, in the presence of members of the Constitutional Convention. Fitch later built a larger vessel that carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey.

John Fitch was granted his first United States patent for a steamboat on August 26, 1791. However, he was granted his patent only after a battle with James Rumsey over claims to the same invention. Both men had similar designs.

Robert Fulton was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1765. His early education was limited, but he displayed considerable artistic talent and inventiveness. At the age of 17, he moved to Philadelphia, where he established himself as a painter. Advised to go abroad because of ill health, he moved to London in 1786. His lifelong interest in scientific and engineering developments, especially in the application of steam engines, supplanted art as a career. Fulton secured English patents for machines with a wide variety of functions. He was also interested in canal systems. In 1797, European conflicts led Fulton to begin work on weapons against piracy, including submarines, mines, and torpedoes.

He soon moved to France, where he worked on canal systems. In 1800, he built a successful "diving boat," which he named the Nautilus. Neither the French nor the English were sufficiently interested to induce Fulton to continue his submarine design. His interest in building a steamboat continued. In 1802, Robert Fulton contracted with Robert Livingston to construct a steamboat for use on the Hudson River; over the next four years, he built prototypes in Europe.

He returned to New York in 1806. On August 17, 1807, the Clermont, Robert Fulton's first American steamboat, left New York for Albany, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

Paddle Wheels

As the first successful steam engines were developed in the 1700s, many inventors wondered how these new machines could be harnessed to drive boats. The problem was to transfer the motion of the engine to some device that would propel the boat. Several odd arrangements were tried, like mechanical oars and mechanical duck feet. It was natural for many early inventors to try paddlewheels. They took their inspiration from water wheels, which spun around under the power of running water. If paddles were attached to a boat and made to spin in such a way that they dug into the water, they might provide forward motion.

Paddlewheels were first combined with a mechanical power source in the United States and Europe in the late 1700s. An American engineer, John Fitch, built a steamboat in 1788 that had stern paddles that moved like ducks' feet, and operated a ferry service with this boat between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey, beginning in 1790. Fitch continued to improve the paddlewheels until they resembled a more modern configuration.

Two other American inventors, Samuel Morey and Oliver Evans, also introduced vehicles with paddlewheels in the late 1700s. While Morey designed a steamboat with paddlewheels, Evans used paddlewheels to power a strange amphibious vehicle. He built this vehicle--a floating, steam-driven dredge--at the request of the city of Philadelphia to dig and clear out the harbor area. It could move on land with wheels, switching to a paddlewheel for river travel.

Power Loom

The power loom was a steam-powered, mechanically operated version of a regular loom, an invention that combined threads to make cloth.

In 1785, Edmund Cartwright patented the first power loom and set up a factory in Doncaster, England to manufacture cloth. A prolific inventor, Edmund Cartwright also invented a wool-combing machine in 1789, continued to improve his power loom, invented a steam engine that used alcohol and a machine for making rope in 1797, and aided Robert Fulton with his steamboats.

Cartwright's power loom needed to be improved upon and several inventors did just that. It was improved upon by William Horrocks, the inventor of the variable speed batton (1813) and American, Francis Cabot Lowell. The power loom became commonly used after 1820.View Image: Power Loom When the power loom became efficient, women replaced most men as weavers in the textile factories.

The first American power loom was constructed in 1813 by a group of Boston merchants headed by Francis Cabot Lowell. The city of Lowell and other early industrial American cities grew supporting a nearby Francis Cabot Lowell's designed power loom, an amended version of the British power loom invented by Edmund Cartwright. The power loom allowed the wholesale manufacture of cloth from ginned cotton, itself a recent innovation of Eli Whitney's.

According to the Lowell National Historical Park Handbook, for the first two centuries of American history, the weaving of cloth was a cottage industry, even after the introduction of power spinning frames in 1790. Yarn produced by machines in water-powered factories was still put out for weaving on hand looms in homes. All cloths were woven in basically the same way, although weavers followed patterns to produce cloths with intricate weaves. Because the operations of a loom focus on such a small working area, its movements must be exact. And weaving, as opposed to spinning, requires a cycle of sequential steps and involves reciprocal movement as well as circular. In a power loom, movements coordinated by human hand and eye have to be replicated through the precise interaction of levers, cams, gears, and springs. For these reasons, weaving was the last step in textile production to be mechanized.

Successful power looms were in operation in England by the early 1800s, but those made in America were inadequate. Francis Cabot Lowell realized that for the United States to develop a practical power loom, it would have to borrow British technology. While visiting English textile mills, he memorized the workings of their power looms. Upon his return, he recruited master mechanic Paul Moody to help him recreate and develop what he had seen. They succeeded in adapting the British design, and the machine shop established at the Waltham mills by Lowell and Moody continued to make improvements in the loom. With the introduction of a dependable power loom, weaving could keep up with spinning, and the American textile industry was underway.

Railroad

The development of RAILROADS was one of the most important phenomena of the Industrial Revolution. With their formation, construction and operation, they brought profound social, economic and political change to a country only 50 years old. Over the next 50 years, America would come to see magnificent bridges and other structures on which trains would run, awesome depots, ruthless rail magnates and the majesty of rail locomotives crossing the country.

The railroad was first developed in Great Britain. A man named GEORGE STEPHENSON successfully applied the steam technology of the day and created the world's first successful locomotive. The first engines used in the United States were purchased from the STEPHENSON WORKS in England. Even rails were largely imported from England until the Civil War. Americans who had visited England to see new STEAM LOCOMOTIVES were impressed that railroads dropped the cost of shipping by carriage by 60-70%.

Baltimore, the third largest city in the nation in 1827, had not invested in a canal. Yet, Baltimore was 200 miles closer to the frontier than New York and soon recognized that the development of a railway could make the city more competitive with New York and the Erie Canal in transporting people and goods to the West. The result was the BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD, the first railroad chartered in the United States. There were great parades on the day the construction started. On July 4, 1828, the first spadesful of earth was turned over by the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, 91-year-old CHARLES CARROLL.

New railroads came swiftly. In 1830, the SOUTH CAROLINA CANAL AND RAIL-ROAD COMPANY was formed to draw trade from the interior of the state. It had a steam locomotive built at the West Point Foundry in New York City, called THE BEST FRIEND OF CHARLESTON, the first steam locomotive to be built for sale in the United States. A year later, the Mohawk & Hudson railroad reduced a 40-mile wandering canal trip that took all day to accomplish to a 17-mile trip that took less than an hour. Its first steam engine was named the DeWitt Clinton after the builder of the Erie Canal.

Although the first railroads were successful, attempts to finance new ones originally failed as opposition was mounted by turnpike operators, canal companies, stagecoach companies and those who drove wagons. Opposition was mounted, in many cases, by tavern owners and innkeepers whose businesses were threatened. Sometimes opposition turned to violence. Religious leaders decried trains as sacrilegious. But the economic benefits of the railroad soon won over the skeptics.