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The Second Phase of
the Industrial Revolution
1850-1900
Steel
Electricity
Chemicals
Automobiles airplanes
Production
Communication
Steel
What is Steel?
Recall that iron was an important resource in the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution. It was used to build the machines that made work faster. It was
also a key element in the construction of steam engines and railroads;
inventions that pushed the Industrial Revolution ahead.
Iron is also used to make steel, a lighter, harder, and more durable metal
compound. In 1856, British engineer Henry Bessemer developed a process to
purify iron ore in order to produce steel. Steel is formed by treating molten
(melted) iron with intense heat and mixing it (alloying) with carbon.
Others improved on the Bessemer process so steel could be produced very
cheaply. It quickly took the place of iron as the major material used in tools,
bridges, and railroads.
Steel rapidly replaced steam as the symbol of the Industrial Revolution. As steel
production soared, industrialized countries measured their success in steel
output.
* Note the labels on the graph; amounts are given in THOUSANDS of tonnes.
A tonne is metric ton; equivalent to 2,204.6 pounds.
Therefore, the 5,000 on the chart is equivalent to approximately 11 billion 23 million pounds!
Video on Bessemer's
Steel Converter in
Sheffield, England.
Chemicals
During the Industrial Revolution, chemists created hundreds of new
products, from medicines such as aspirin to perfume and soaps. In
addition, newly developed chemical fertilizers played a key role in
increasing food production.
In 1866, the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, an
explosive much safer than others used at the time. It was widely
used in construction and, to Nobel’s dismay, in warfare. Dynamite
earned Nobel a huge fortune, which he willed to fund the famous
Nobel prizes that are still awarded today.
Electricity
The Italian scientist
Alessandro Volta
developed the first
battery in about 1800.
The first electric generator was invented by
Michael Faraday in 1831, a copper disk that
rotated between the poles of a magnet.
Faraday's disk generated very low voltage
because of its single current path through the
magnetic field. Faraday and others found that
higher, more useful voltages could be produced
by winding multiple turns of wire into a coil.
Wire windings can conveniently produce any
voltage desired by changing the number of
turns, so they have been a feature of all
subsequent generator designs.
Faraday created the first simple electric
motor and the first dynamo, a machine that
generates electricity. Today, all electric
generators and transformers work on the
principle of Faraday’s dynamo.
In the 1870’s, the American inventor
Thomas Edison made the first electric
light bulb. Soon, Edison’s “incandescent
lamps” illuminated whole cities. The
pace of city life quickened, and factories
could continue to operate after dark. By
the 1890’s, cables carried electrical
power from dynamos to factories.
With these changes, electricity had
replaced steam as the dominant source
of industrial power.
METHODS OF
production
The basic features of the factory system remained the same during the 1800’s. Factories
still used large numbers of workers and power-driven machines to mass-produce gods.
To improve efficiency, however, manufacturers designed products with interchangeable
parts, identical components that could be used in place of one another. Interchangeable
parts simplified both assembly and repair.
By the early 1900’s, manufacturers
introduced another new method of
production, the assembly line.
Workers on an assembly line add parts
to a product that moves along a belt
from one work station to the next.
Like interchangeable parts, the
assembly line made production faster
and cheaper, which lowered the price
of goods.
The Automobile
Age begins
The transportation revolution took a new turn when a German engineer,
Nikolaus Otto, invented a gasoline-powered internal combustible engine.
Diagram on How
an Engine Works
Video on How an
Engine Works
Video on How an
Engine Works
In 1886, Karl Benz received a patent for the
first automobile, which had three wheels.
In 1887, Gottlieb Daimler introduced the first four-wheeled automobile. People
laughed at the “horseless carriage,” but it quickly transformed transportation.
Soon, the French nosed out the Germans as early automakers. Then the American
Henry Ford started making models that reached the breathtaking speed of 25
miles per hour. In the early 1900’s, Ford began using the assembly line to massproduce cars, making the United States a leader in the automobile industry.
Conquest Of the air
In 1903, two American bicycle makers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, designed and
flew a flimsy airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Although their flying
machine stayed aloft for only a few seconds, it ushered in the air age.
Rapid Communication
A revolution in communication made the world smaller. An American inventor,
Samuel F. B. Morse, developed the telegraph, which could send coded messages
over wires by means of electricity. His first telegraph line went into service
between Baltimore and Washington D.C. in 1844. By the 1860’s, an undersea
cable was relaying messages between Europe and North America.
Communication soon became even faster. In 1876, the Scottish-born
American inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.
By the 1890’s, the Italian pioneer Guglielmo Marconi had invented the radio.
In 1901, Marconi transmitted a radio message from Britain to Canada, using
Morse’s dot-and-dash code. Radio would become a cornerstone of today’s
global communication network that links every corner of the world.