![]() In 1838, he gave the first public demonstration of his method of conveying electric pulses over a wire, using the basis of what became known as Morse code. Born in Massachusetts in 1791, Morse first gained renown as a painter before turning his attention to the development of a method of rapid communication in the 1830s. Samuel Morse added the telegraph to the list of American innovations introduced in the years before the Civil War. In short order, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois all become major agricultural states. Agriculture north of the Ohio River became the pantry that would lower food prices and feed the major cities in the East. McCormick’s bigger machine could harvest grain faster, and Deere’s plow could cut through the thick prairie sod. McCormick-and also John Deere, who improved on the design of plows-opened the prairies to agriculture. By the 1850s, McCormick’s mechanical reaper had enabled farmers to vastly increase their output. More farmers began using it in the 1840s, and greater demand for the McCormick reaper led McCormick and his brother to establish the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago, where labor was more readily available. In 1831, he and the enslaved persons on his family’s plantation tested a horse-drawn mechanical reaper, and over the next several decades, he made constant improvements to it. Virginia-born Cyrus McCormick wanted to replace the laborious process of using a scythe to cut and gather wheat for harvest. The reaper mechanized the labor-intensive use of scythes to harvest wheat. This sketch is from the 1845 patent for an improved grain reaper invented by Cyrus Hall McCormick. The steamboat facilitated the rapid economic development of the massive Mississippi River Valley and the settlement of the West.įigure 3. Steamboats also arrived with much greater dependability. Steamboats could travel faster and more cheaply than sailing vessels or keelboats, which floated downriver and had to be poled or towed upriver on the return voyage. By the 1830s there were over one thousand of these vessels, radically changing water transportation by ending its dependence on the wind. Soon, a fleet of steamboats was traversing the Hudson River and New York Harbor, later expanding to travel every major American river including the mighty Mississippi. Fulton’s first steamship, the Clermont, used paddle wheels to travel the 150 miles from New York City to Albany in a record time of only thirty-two hours. ![]() Fulton’s steamboat the Clermont transformed the speed, cost, and dependability of water transportation in the United States.Īnother influential new technology of the early 1800s was the steamship engine, invented by Robert Fulton in 1807. His creative genius served as a source of inspiration for many other American inventors.įigure 2. Whitney’s machine tools to manufacture parts for muskets enabled guns to be manufactured and repaired by people other than skilled gunsmiths. Whitney also worked on machine tools, devices that cut and shaped metal to make standardized, interchangeable parts for other mechanical devices like clocks and guns. This innovation led to greater efficiency, and the textile industry greatly benefited. The raw cotton with seeds was placed in the cotton gin, and with the use of a hand crank, the seeds were extracted through a carding device that aligned the cotton fibers in strands for spinning. ![]() Whitney’s seemingly simple invention cleaned the seeds from the raw cotton far more quickly and efficiently than could slaves working by hand. He hoped the cotton gin would render slavery obsolete. Whitney, who was born in Massachusetts, had spent time in the South and knew that a device to speed up the production of cotton was desperately needed so cotton farmers could meet the growing demand for their crop. One of the most influential advancements of the early nineteenth century was the cotton engine or gin, invented by Eli Whitney and patented in 1794. The republic seemed to be a laboratory of innovation, and technological advances appeared unlimited. In the 1800s, a frenzy of entrepreneurship and invention yielded many new products and machines. economy did nothing to dampen the creative energies of its citizens in the years before the Civil War. What do you think the artist was trying to convey with this image? Sheppard, shows the first use of a cotton gin “at the close of the last century.” African American slaves handle the gin while White men conduct business in the background. The First Cotton-Gin, an 1869 drawing by William L.
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