Early US Inventions

I N D E P E N D E N C E T O 1 9 2 0

US Inventions

CREATED BY Ms. LIU for Mr. Haskvitz’s class

Lightning Rod1752

Benjamin Franklin invented it to protect ships & buildings from lightning

Most Christians were afraid to get it b/c they thought lightning was the wrath of GOD & it shouldn’t be tampered with

Ben Franklin was tired of switching between his near-sighted & far-sighted glasses so he made glasses w/ both concave & convex lenses

Bifocals1784

Given to William Pollard of Philadelphia, his machine roves & spins cotton

First US Patent1790

Eli Whitney patents his Cotton Gin which separates big & small seeds from the cotton

Led to rise of slavery & “King Cotton”

Farmers duplicated his invention w/out his permission

Cotton Gin1794

Fairmount Water Works uses steam-power to supply water for Philadelphia

Steam-Powered Pumping Station1801

Robert Fulton’s Clermont, the 1st full-sized steamboat, goes 150 mi upstream from NY to Albany

Moves more efficiently, against currents & wind, and lower transportation costs

Steamboat1807

Peter Cooper’s small locomotive, Tom Thumb, races against a horse, but lost b/c it broke down

Caused transportation to be more efficient & cheaper

RR Fever-by 1860’s, most major cities were linked w/ RR’s, RR companies grow very powerful in US

Steam Train1830

Replaced the scythe & guts grain faster

Prospered in Chicago selling 10,000 every year

McCormick use new ways (ads, demonstrations & buying on credit) to encourage sales

Mechanical Reaper1831

Samuel F. B. Morse’s telegraph uses electric pulses to send messages through the wire to distant places

In the Morse Code, a series of dots (short pulse) & dashes (long pulse) are used to represent a letter/#

Samuel Morse tried many times to prove his telegraph was genuine & finally succeeded when news of the president candidate for the 1844 Democratic National Convention was wired through the telegraph

Telegraph1832

John A. & Hiram Abial Pitts invented the machine to separate the chaff from the grain for farmers

Threshing Machine1834

Samuel Colt made the revolving firearm which has a rotating cylinder that could hold lots of bullets so people don’t need to reload between every shot

Revolver1836

Electro-Magnetic Motor originally invented by Professor Joseph Henry

Thomas Davenport of Brandon found practical uses for it

He used it to power shop machinery & built the 1st

electric model railroad car

Power Tools1837

John Deere (blacksmith) replaced the iron plows w/ steel making plowing thick soil easier for farmers

Steel Plow1837

Crawford Williamson Long, from Jefferson Georgia, used ether anesthesia to remove a tumor from Mr. James Venable’s neck

He didn’t tell anyone until 1849

Ether Anesthesia1842

In its natural state, rubber melted if it was hot and froze with it was cold

Charles Goodyear found a way to vulcanize rubber by combining it with sulfur so it’s unaffected by temperature

Vulcanized Rubber1843

Walter Hunter invented the 1st sewing machine, but debt forced him to sell the patent to Elias Howe who improved

Isaac Singer improved it further & his company was the world’s biggest sewing machine maker

Sewing Machine1845

Walter Hunt invented the Safety to prevent finders from injury & to pay off his $15 debt

Safety Pin1949

The world gather at the Crystal Palace in London, England for the Great Exhibition

Crystal Palace1851

Henry Bessemer blasted hot air through melt iron to get rid of the other stuff in there & called it the Bessemer Process

Now making steel is faster, cheaper, & more efficient

Bessemer Process1854

Elisha Graves Otisdemonstrates the passenger elevator he invented at the Crystal Palace by cutting its cords as it goes up a 300 ft tower

He new brake system stops the elevator from falling

Safety Escalator1857

Edwin Drake had drilled 69.5 ft into the ground when he striked oil in Titusville, Pennyslvania

Before this, oil was only collected where it seeped through the ground

Oil Well1859

Samuel van Syckel built a 5 mi pump-operated oil pipeline to make transporting oil, a whole lot easier

The Teamsters saw this a threat to their business & destroyed it, but van Syckel repaired it & hire Pipeline Protectors

Oil Pipeline1864

Joseph F. Glidden from Dekalb, Illinois invented barbed wire

Before barbed wire, people used wood, thorny bush, etc. to make a fence, but in the Great Plains there wasn’t a lot of that

Barbed Wire1867

John Roebling, the Engineer in Chief, built the first steel-wire suspension bridge

The bridge was built in New York City

Brooklyn Bridge1869

Christopher Latham Sholes was inspired by the Scientific American article about a Britshattempt to make a typing machine

He sold the prototype to Remington & Sons who mass produced it

Typewriter1873

Edison was trying to use paraffin to improve telephone tape when he accidently found a way to make document copies

Mimeograph1875

The telegraph sends coded messages that only trained people can read

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone (built with the assistance of self-trained Thomas A. Watson can be used by everyone

Telephone1876

Edison & his team of engineers invent the phonograph in a lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey

The 1st recording made with the device was “Mary Had a Little Lamb”

Phonograph1877

Thomas Edison built the durable light bulb, but could only supply electricity to big cities with his power company, Edison Electric

Incandescent Light Bulb1879

William Le Baron Jenneyfinishes his skyscraper a ten-story Home Insurance Co. Building

He was the first to use a steel frame or girder

Skyscraper1885

George Eastman introduces the portable hand-held camera in Rochester, NY

Kodak Camera1888

Horizontal Integration: ownership of businesses producing similar products in the same field

Ex: Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. provided 90% of US’ refined oil

Vertical Integration: owning all the businesses required to build the product from raw material

Ex: Carnegie owned the iron ore mines, coal fields, & RR’s that supply his steel mills

Horizontal & Vertical IntegrationLate 1800’s

Charles & J. Frank Duryea built the first gas-power car in Springfield, Massachusetts

Gasoline-Powered Car1893

The 1st subway in US opened

It ran from Boston under the Boston Harbor to East Boston

Subway1897

J. P. Holland’s torpedo boat co. launches the 1st submarine for U.S.

Submarine1898

Wilbur & Orville Wright built the 1st motorized plane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

It increases demand for oil

Airplane1903

Henry Ford mass produced interchangeable parts for the Model T & they were put together on the assemble line (picture on the left), making cars afFordable for the general public

Model T (Tin Lizzie)1908

Alexander Graham Bell’s Hydrofoil IV uses underwater fins to elevate boat’s hull, decrease the drag, & make the boat go faster (70 mph, broke the world record)

Hydrofoil1919

the AM station KDKA delivers results of the Harding-Cox election, beginning 1st regular commercial radio broadcasts

KDKA1920