1. The Expansion of Industry:
The accumulation of
capital allowed
investments in the
conception and
application of new
technologies,
enabling the
industrialization
process to continue
to evolve.
The industrialization
process formed a
class of industrial
workers who had
more money to
spend than their
agricultural cousins.

2. Natural Resources Fuel
Industrialization:
• Three major factors
contribute to an
Industrial boom in the
U.S.
– Wealth of natural
resources
– Government support
for business
– Growing urban
population that
provided both cheap
labor and markets for
new products

3. Innovations and Inventions
• Black Gold, or otherwise
known as oil, wasn’t
practical for consumption
until 1859, when Edwin L.
Drake successfully used a
steam engine to drill for oil
• This break through started
an oil boom, at first for
kerosene, but would later
lead to gasoline as the most
important form of the oil

4. Innovations and Inventions
continued…
• The Bessemer steel
process, developed
independently by British
manufacturer Henry
Bessemer and American
iron-maker William Kelly,
created a process that
removed carbon from iron
by injecting air into molten
iron which produced steel

5. The Rise of the Modern City
• Steel became the
skeleton for large U.S.
cities and the nations
railroad infrastructure
• William Le Baron Jenney
designed the first
skyscraper with a steel
frame, a new era of
expansion upward as well
as outward begins

6. Inventions Promote Change:
• By capitalizing on natural
resources and their own
ingenuity, inventors
changed more than the
landscape. Their
inventions affected the
very way people lived
and worked

7. Inventors
• In 1876, Thomas Alva Edison
became a pioneer on the new
industrial frontier when he
established the world’s first
research laboratory in Menlo
Park, New Jersey
• Edison perfected the
incandescent light bulb-
patented in 1880-and later
invented an entire system for
producing and distributing
electrical power

8. Inventors continued…
• George
Westinghouse,
along with Edison,
added inventions
that made
electricity safer
and less expensive
Air Brake

9. Inventors continued…
• Christopher
Sholes invented
the typewriter
in 1867 and
changed the
world of work

10. Inventors continued…
• Alexander Graham Bell
and Thomas Watson in
1867 unveiled the
telephone which
opened the way for a
worldwide
communications
network

11. The Legacy of Early Inventions and
Innovations
• The typewriter and the telephone particularly
affected office work and created new jobs for
women
• Industrialization freed some factory workers
from backbreaking labor and helped improve
workers’ standard of living