Industry and Transportation

7.1

 Summarize the key developments in the

transportation revolution of the early 1800s.  Analyze the rise of industry in the United States in the early 1800s.  Describe some of the leading inventions and industrial developments in the early 1800s.

 Transportation Revolution  Technology Sparks Industrial Growth  Inventions Transform Industry and Agriculture

 Read section 7.1  Fill in the table on pg. 228 with the causes and effects

of the transportation revolution and industrialization.

 When the United States began to expand they learned

quickly that travelling by land was going to be very difficult and costly.  Some states began chartering companies to operate turnpikes, these were roads for which users had to pay a toll.  Most of these turnpikes failed except the National Road that was made of crushed rock.  Funded by the government the road extended west from Maryland to the Ohio River in 1818.

 The first major advance in transportation was the

development of the steamboat.  Robert Fulton designed the first commercially successful steamboat- the Clermont.  The steamboat made it much easier to move upstream.  It used to take four months to go from New Orleans to Louisville Kentucky, once the steamboat arrived it went down to six days.

 A second transportation advance was the construction

of canals.  The most famous during this era was the Erie Canal.  Completed in 1825 it ran 363 miles across New York State from Lake Erie to the Hudson River.  This helped make New York City the nation’s greatest commercial center.

 Railroads were the most dramatic advance in

transportation in the 1800s.  In the United States horses pulled the first American trains.  Quickly inventors figured out how to make steam powered engines.  The American rail network expanded from 13 miles of track in 1830 to 31,000 miles in 1860.

 The transformation of technology and manufacturing

became known as the Industrial Revolution.  This changed the nation’s economy, culture, social life, and politics.  A man named Samuel Slater defied English law and came to the United States and built the first waterpowered textile mill in 1793.

 Francis Cabot Lowell in 1811 toured England’s factory

towns to gather secret information about their manufacturing.  He returned and created a company called the Boston Associates, in 1813 they built their first mill and continued on building them along the Merrimac River.  This is the first time you begin to see commercial factories.

 The company would hire young single women from

local farms to work in the factories under strict rules. They were called “Lowell girls”  This factory work changed the lives of thousands of people.  The machines increased the pace of the work and did most of the difficult work so the companies could high less skilled workers at a lower cost and increase production. Average wage was $1 per week.

 The invention of interchangeable parts by inventor Eli

Whitney changed the world of manufacturing.  This allowed people to get replacement parts for an object rather than disposing of it or having to forge something to replace the part with.

 In 1837 Samuel F.B. Morse invented the electric

telegraph.  This allowed electrical pulses to travel long distance along metal wires as coded signals.  By 1860 the nation had 50,000 miles of telegraph lines.  Despite the growing size and power of the nation’s factories, agriculture still remained the largest industry.