Unit 9: Technology in America

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Introduction

In the 19th and 20th centuries, America was the source of many different inventions from air-conditioners to zippers. Of course some of these inventions, such as the electric light bulb, were more socially significant than others, such as the mechanical lawn mower. Yet the technologies that developed around these inventions were more important.

A technology is a system of practices, often involving a physical device that accomplishes some result desired by some influential segments of society: government planners, military leaders, businessmen, or even a large proportion of citizen consumers. To understand the development of America from a crude, backward, agricultural country in the early 19th century to the modern, high technology and consequently highly productive world power in the late 20th century, we should examine the role some inventions had in the rise of modern technological systems.

Early Nineteenth Century

Whitney's Cotton Gin

History is more vivid, and more easily remembered, if it is cast as a series of great achievements by heroic inventors. Thus, schoolchildren are familiar with Eli Whitney's triumph in inventing the cotton gin around 1793. Some children are even familiar with Whitney's development of the system of mass production of weapons with interchangeable parts. Yet few schoolchildren, and probably few teachers, are aware that Whitney's gin did not perform very well with most kinds of cotton being grown at that time, nor that Whitney's success in manufacturing interchangeable parts was mostly a public relations exaggeration. If there was one individual who can be credited with developing the so-called American system of production, it would be the little known director of the Rifle Works at the Harpers Ferry Armory, John H. Hall. Hall was an inventor himself, yet as is often the case, he was clever enough to borrow ideas from the developing systems in France and Great Britain. He was also an entrepreneur, and was able to obtain contracts from the U.S. Government even when his products cost as much as handmade weapons. With the support of the military branch of the government, which seemed not to be very cost conscious, Hall was able to improve and develop his system of manufacture, and eventually there were cost savings. There was also the displacement of skilled craftsmen who formerly handmade the rifles, their replacement being made by less skilled machine tenders. Hall's system was soon deployed in the manufacture of newly invented mass consumption items, such as sewing machines, typewriters, and bicycles.

Schoolchildren also know about Cyrus H. McCormick and his mechanical reaper, which harvested countless acres of wheat in the mid-western plains. Yet when McCormick constructed his first model in 1831, it did not work very well and had to be constantly adjusted so it would not shred the plants. Also, at that time, there were no large farms; farmers sowed what they (and their hired laborers) could reap by hand. After twenty years of development and improvement, McCormick could exhibit at the great London Exhibition of 1851, a model reaper that was genuinely effective in harvesting large fields of wheat. To take advantage of the efficiencies of such a machine, many farmers joined together in cooperative enterprises to minimize individual costs, and so benefit from higher profits. U.S. agriculture was moving away from subsistence farming towards a food marketing enterprise.

Yet in order to transport the vast quantities of grains harvested by the farmer cooperatives and the gigantic corporate farms, something more than the barge and canal system of the Northeast was needed. Of course,

The Erie Canal

railroads were the answer. But railroads were not a new invention, even when steam power was finally tamed for locomotion. Nor were they distinctively American. What significant developments in railroading were made by Americans during the period when McCormick was improving his mechanical reaper?

The significant role of the Stevens family in the history of transportation in early nineteenth century America is little appreciated. The father John Stevens, who not only worked on improving railroads but also joined with Robert Fulton and the early work with steamboats, and his two sons, Robert Livingston Stevens and Edwin Augustus, made possible cost-effective long

John Stevens	Robert Fulton	Robert L Stevens

distance railroading. Their contributions were not concerned as much with the locomotive and the carriages as they were with the mundane yet essential problem of railroad tracks, the fundamental constraint on the size and speed of trains. The shape of tracks, the bonding where two lengths of track join, the firm setting of ties, and protecting the roadbed from water erosion were some of the problems in addition to obvious ones such as the proper banking of curves that were slowly solved and improved upon during this century. Without such gradual development of the technology, the long distance, many carriage freight trains would not have been feasible.

Bell Telephone

Because of the natural tendency to focus on human heroes, it is well to emphasize that inventors such as Samuel F. B. Morse needed a web of supporting technology dealing with mundane matters such as erecting poles to support telegraph wires, to more esoteric issues such as minimizing signal strength losses over large distances. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone would not be of much use without some means of connecting different callers to different instruments, a switchboard at first, and then automatic switching devices. Regardless of how one allocates importance to individuals in the new technology of telecommunications, the fact remains that this technology altered the very texture of business, war, and politics. Information and messages could now be circulated at a faster pace over larger distances than was ever dreamed of. Just as the railroads led to the virtual abandonment of the newly constructed barge and canal system, so did the telegraph undercut the short-lived Pony Express system, the source of mythic stories and movies about the Wild West.

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