The American Industrial Revolution

NOTE PAGE 28

Important Terms

• What is a corporation?– Business owned by many people

• What is a monopoly?– 1 person or company who controls almost

all of an industry

Oil Industry:• Crude oil: unusable oil that

comes out of the ground• Refined oil: usable oil that has been

“refined” or processed to remove impurities

• First discovered in America by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania.– Ohio businessman who realized that

refining oil was the key to the oil industry

John D. Rockefeller

• He built his 1st refinery

to make kerosene with

4 partners

• He bought them out and

created Standard Oil

Company.

• Oil began being used in

all types of machines.

• John D. Rockefeller

became the richest man

in the world in the oil

business.

-horizontal integration —type of monopoly formed by controlling all of the same type of business

John D. Rockefeller

Standard Oil Co.

Standard Oil Co.

Standard Oil Co.

Railroads: Cornelius Vanderbilt

• Understood the steam engine from steam boats and applied knowledge to railroads

• Expanded railroads across the nation

Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC

Homestead Act• Passed by Congress in 1862• Gave free land in the West to anyone

who would farm it for 5 years.• Oklahoma Land Rush – former native lands

• Why is this important to the railroads?

Transcontinental Railroad• Railroad connecting the Atlantic

and the Pacific coasts of US• US government lent each company $16,000

for every mile of track it laid on level ground & $48,000 for every mile built in the mountains.

• Two major railroad companies that built it were the Union Pacific (built westward from Omaha) and Central Pacific (built eastward from San Francisco) Railroads beginning in 1863.– Met in Ogden, Utah on May 10, 1869

JP Morgan: Finances

• Made money through

financing-raising

money for companies

to do business

• Helped to reorganize

the businesses he

financed to make them

more efficient

• Bails out the US

government financially.

Steel Industry:

• Made by purifying iron ore using the Bessemer process or open-hearth process

• Steel was much harder than iron, which would bend if made too tall.

• Steel was lighter and easier to shape than iron

• It does not rust easily so it lasts longer.

Andrew Carnegie

• Figured out how to mass produce steel

• became a millionaire in the steel business by putting all his competitors out of business.

• He created U.S. Steel in Pittsburg.

-vertical integration —monopoly formed by controlling businesses related to the primary business

Andrew CarnegieSteel Manufacturing

Automobile Industry:

• Henry Ford invented the first practical car, the Model T, in 1903.

• The car had been invented earlier, but Ford was the first to make the car affordable.

Henry Ford - Industrialist• Set up automobile factory• Used Eli Whitney’s idea of

interchangeable parts– built machines to turn out car parts that fit

as well on one car as on another• Created the assembly line

– workers placed a single part on the frame of a car as it passed by on a moving belt

– able to produce 146 cars per hour by 1927

Airplane Industry:• The Wright brothers

(Orville & Wilber) were the first men to successfully fly an airplane.

• The flight lasted only twelve seconds and went 100 ft, but it proved men could fly.

• First Flight• Dec. 17, 1903: 1st airplane flight

• Where: Kill Devil Hill in NC

Telephone• Alexander Graham Bell patented the first

telephone in 1876.

Telecommunications

Thomas EdisonGreat American

Inventor• Thomas Edison invented the electric

light.• Thomas Edison also invented many

other things, like the phonograph, motion picture camera, and electric

power plant. Over 1000 patients to his company’s name….

The American Industrial Revolution

NOTE PAGE 28

The End