Recording: HIST-1302 8/31

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CLASS DISCUSSION

Chapter 17 Late Nineteenth Century Inventions

Electricity
● the US is making the transition from gas lights to electrical lights.
○ Gas lights
■ A wall sconce with a gas pipe attached to a wall.
■ A valve is turned and a lighter is placed on a hatch to lighten up the gas.
○ Electrical Lighting
■ One way of lighting without heating.
■ Incandescent bulbs give off a bright light

Direct Current
● It was used by Edison.
● It is an electrical source that only gives current from one particular source.

Alternating Current
● There are two electrical sources that alternate back and forth and are able to give off a
significant warm power.

Transformers
● It helps slow down the current to prevent overload.
● You see transformers on power lines nowadays.
● It looks like big cylinders.

Timeline
● Edison
○ It is an illuminating company that gave about 85 customers in New York City
electricity for the first time.
● Edison General Electric Company
○ It was established within a few years.
● General Electric
○ It is also called GE.
○ It makes everything from light bulbs to washing machines.
George Westinghouse
● He did not invent the idea of alternating current but his warehouses and factories are the
first ones to utilize it.
● He invented the airframe.
○ It is the sound heard from 18-wheelers or school buses when they stop.
● Nowadays, Westinghouse makes TVs which is a lesser known brand.

Nikola Tesla
● He invested in the alternating current motor.
● He worked alongside Westinghouse.
● He has gotten a significantly larger following in the recent years because of his
inventions.
○ Most of the ideas that we had in terms of inventions were not able to be put to
use at the time because the technology was not there yet.
● Examples of Tesla’s ideas that exist today
○ Internet: He envisioned the concept of a global network that he referred to as a
gigantic brain where we would have the largest repository of human knowledge
that is free and accessible to everybody.
○ Smartphone: He envisioned the concept of a small device we would be able to
carry around in our pockets where we can communicate with one another
instantaneously and even see video images.
● Other examples of Tesla’s ideas
○ Death Ray: It is a laser cannon that could be fired at something and melt it.
○ Earthquake Machine: It is a means to demolish a structure by matching its
molecular vibrations.

Edison vs Tesla
● The two became rivals to a certain extent.
● Edison has been accused of stealing a lot of Tesla’s ideas, taking them to the next level,
and then trying to claim that he was the one who came up with them.

William Henry Vanderbilt

● He is the founder of the railroad system in the United States.

Railroad System
● One of the biggest elements of change that came around America during the 19th
century
● It is the biggest impetus for America to change over from an agricultural society to an
industrial one
● It became a means of transporting goods all across the continent.
● Towns are created based on where the railroad goes.
● Once it was built, it was sent to largely unorganized territories like the West Coast.
● It was referred to as the first form of a big business.
○ People began investing in the railroad industry on Wall Street in the stock
 market.
● It was once the largest employer in the United States
○ Example: There were around 186,000 who worked for Vanderbilt when he
started the railroads.

Characteristics of the Railroad System

● It is the fastest form of transportation.
● It is a heavily mechanized system.
○ A lot of logistical difficulties.

Effects of the Railroad System

● Positive
○ It facilitated westward expansion.
○ It caused America to become more industrialized.
■ It was a means of shipping supplies from one side of the country to the
next.
● Negative
○ It caused the decline in the native American population.
■ As the country continued to industrialize, it become more encroaching
and aggressive in grabbing territories or ancestral lands.
○ Working conditions are extremely dangerous and cause multiple accidents.
■ People were working outdoors all the time
■ They can drop dead of exhaustion due to heat waves.
■ They can get into a quicksand.
■ They can get attacked by animals.
■ They can get killed by pissed the local native American tribes
○ It was a source of political corruption
■ A lot of railroads that are not necessarily needed are built as a kind of
political favor.

Transcontinental Railroad
● It had its beginnings when the civil war started.
● It was also called the Pacific Railroad.
● It happened after the South seceded from the Union.
● There were two crews that are starting opposite: one in Omaha and one in Sacramento.

Central Pacific Railroad

● It starts in California and has to go east through the Sierra Nevada mountains.
● There were a lot of logistical problems and accidents that went with it.
● It was completed around the same time when the war comes to an end.

Construction Process
1. A surveyor looks at the map looks and the topography of an area.
2. Engineers come along and decide how to work around natural obstacles.
 ● Do we have to blast through things?
● Do we have to go up the mountains?
● Do we have to build a snow shed?
○ Snow shed
It is a covered tunnel to prevent an avalanche from burying a train going
through the mountain.
3. Workers will come in with giant steel spikes and sledgehammer to pound the ground.
4. Other workers will shovel the ground to weigh it down.

Risks
● Dynamite, gunpowder, and black powder were used to blast away rocks, cultivate
tunnels, blast mountains entirely out of the way, and flatten the space to get the railroad
tracks through it
● Worker Exploitation
○ Railroad workers were largely made up of:
■ Unmarried civil workers
■ Ex-slaves
■ Irish, German, and Chinese immigrants
○ They were persecuted because of their language, race, religion
○ Many of them end up losing their lives through accidents, violence, and other
incidents.
● Famous Example: Phineas Gage
○ He became a focal point for psychologists because of the impact the accident
actually makes on studying the human brain.
○ The accident happened in 1848 before the Pacific Railway Act.
○ His job was to take an iron handling rod and take an area where there are many
rocks.
○ The iron rod ignites the powder and turned it into a missile that went up under his
zygomatic bone and cheekbone on the left side of his face. It launched straight
up through the top of his head and hit the frontal lobe of his brain.
■ Frontal Lobe
● It is referred to as the seat of reason
● It is where all of the behavioral aspects of the human brain are
located.
● Damages on the frontal lobe can cause personality changes.
○ His personality changed after the accident.
■ From being a very reliable worker to having trouble coming to work.
○ He was employed by a carnival-type group that went around telling about his
accident.
■ He carries the rod with him and shows it to the public.
○ He lost his left eye and has a fractured skull.
○ He only lived about 12 years after the accident.
○ His skull was donated to a medical school along with the rod.
Mass Production
● Factories began to have exexchangeable parts for certain machines.
● People can buy replacement parts.
● It has become influential in politics.

Capitalism
● Opposition is a big feature of capitalism
● It causes capitalism to come under fire
● It is a work for a business name.

Social Darwinism
● A theory states that some people do not like competition but prefer cooperation instead.

Oil
● It became a big deal in the United States before automobiles come along because it has
so many uses

Johnny Rockefeller
● He became rich and famous due to the oil industry.
● He established Standard Oil in 1870
● He is known for being extremely focused on streamlining the process.
○ Used two methods to streamline:
■ Horizontal Integration
It is where he ends up cornering the market.
The concept of a monopoly comes into play.
■ Vertical Integration
Not only does he own and operate the factories, but he also owns the
means in the process of refining the oil at every single stage along the
way.
○ Established a trust company
■ Trust Company
It is designed to exist as a separate company with a separate name that
can then turn around and purchase shares in the competition.
○ He then creates a holding company
■ It doesn't produce anything.
■ It's designed to control other companies by holding stocks.

Steel
● a strong material that is able to withstand the weather
● associated with anything that has to do with factories or railroad

Andrew Carnegie
● He cornered the steel market in the United States.
 ● He was from Scotland and was born into a poor family.
● He came to the United States in 1848
● Adopted a steel process invented by Henry Bessemer
○ Henry Bessemer
■ He started to create a new way to make steel stronger, lighter, and
cheaper to make it.
■ It does not have to be from raw iron anymore.
● It allowed the United States to enter its first arms race
● He started making steels for the railroad industry in 1870
● Carnegie Steel became the largest industrial company anywhere in the world.

John Piedmont Morgan

● Also known as JP Morgan
○ JP Morgan Chase
■ It is a famous banking system today.
● He was born to a wealthy family in Connecticut.
● He creates J. P. Morgan and Company in New York City to invest European money in
the American market.
● He created the United States Steel Corporation.
○ This is the first billion-dollar corporation.

Consumer Products
● This is a thing that America was gradually turning to.
● After the civil war has come to an end, especially different companies start to come up
with different items and things with different brand names that are recognizable.
● We start to see logos and slogans for the first time.
● Warehouses were set up all over the place.
○ Eric Montgomery Ward
■ He realized that not only having a storefront will help make money, but
also the idea of sending away catalogs.
● Catalog
○ It is a list of all the things you could potentially sell.
■ Montgomery Ward catalog sells everything from medicines to the
blueprints for houses
○ Richard Warren Sears
■ It was a very famous department store.
■ Sears just went out of business a couple of years ago.
● Sears and Roebuck catalog.
○ It had about 786 pages when it first came out.
○ It established free rural mail delivery
○ It was once the second most red book in the country after
the bible.
Societal Evolution
● A lot of industrial leaders think that even though they have screwed over workers and
used very large tactics to get money, they feel justified.
● They feel like the end justifies the need here.
○ This shows the concept of Social Darwinism or the survival of the fittest.
■ Charles Darwin himself actually did not come up with the phrase.
■ He hated this concept and publicly disvalued it.
○ Andrew Carnegie
■ He wrote a book called the gospel of wealth in his retirement as a kind of
apology letter to the American people.
■ “Worshiping money is something that will really not get you anywhere in
the long run.”
■ “Capitalism has brought enough goods to society, he says, but it needs to
be moderated.”
■ Carnegie gave away most of his wealth
○ Johnny Rockefeller
■ He became a philanthropist.
■ He donated more than $500,000,000 in his lifetime.
■ Established the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913.