American Industrial Revolution Research Articles

Social and Technological Impacts of Samuel Slater and Eli Whitney’s Innovations

The first American Industrial Revolution was a period of technological innovations that led to the mechanization of American industries along with the proliferation of factories. This essay introduces the inventions and innovations of Samuel Slater and Eli Whitney, and analyzes the effects of their inventions on Industrialization and the textile industry. Eli Whitney and Samuel Slater’s innovations influenced Industrialization in America and mechanized the textile and cotton industry, leading to prominent social impacts such as reorienting the roles of women and increasing the utilization of child labor. This paper will demonstrate the social impacts brough forth by Whitney and Slater’s innovations, while also articulating their impacts on the American Industrial Revolution.

More than a ‘Curious Cultural Sideshow’: Samuel Slater's Sunday School and the Role of Literacy Sponsorship in Disciplining Labor

This article investigates the concept of literacy sponsorship through the introduction of textile factories and mill villages in New England during the American Industrial Revolution. Specifically, the article focuses on Samuel Slater’s mill villages and his disciplining and socialization of workers via the ‘family’ approach to factory production, and, in particular, his support of the Sunday school. As an institution key to managerial control and new to rural New England, the Sunday school captures the complicated networks of moral and literacy sponsorship in the transition to factory production.

The University Campus in the United States\u2014As a Designed Work to Produce Knowledge; and as an Artefact of Cultural Heritage

The university campus in the United States is a unique architectural and landscape architecture typology. Nothing like it existed until Harvard University was established in 1638. Invented during in the 17th century by the American colonists and later developed during the American Industrial Revolution, the American campus is a community devoted to teaching and generating knowledge. It can be urban, suburban, and/or rural in form and its planning directly correlates with a university’s research mission and the pedagogy of the American university system. Its buildings and landscapes are embedded with iconography, which the founding builders used to convey their values to future generations. This paper presents the history of how this designed work first emerged in American society and then evolved in ways that responded to changes that occurred in America. At the end of the 20th century, universities conserved parts of them as cultural heritage monuments. Originally, the university campus was built to disseminate a classical education, but later, the campus was built for technical and agricultural education. By the beginning of the 20th century, professional education and sport changed its architecture and landscape. The paper briefly discusses that while it has inspired how universities are built to teach and generate knowledge throughout the world. It concludes by reaffirming its value to cultural heritage and that it should be conserved.

アメリカ産業革命と木綿工業 (二) : 十九世紀前半のアメリカ資本主義の構造把握のための一視点

アメリカ産業革命と木綿工業 (二) : 十九世紀前半のアメリカ資本主義の構造把握のための一視点

アメリカ産業革命と木綿工業 (一) : 一九世紀前半のアメリカ資本主義の構造把握のための一視点

アメリカ産業革命と木綿工業 (一) : 一九世紀前半のアメリカ資本主義の構造把握のための一視点

The History of Metallography at Lehigh University

Although the science and art of metallography was founded in Germany by Rose and Vogel, and in England by Sorby, it rapidly developed in the United States in parallel with the growth of the American Industrial Revolution. This was especially true with the growth of railroads, shipping, tall buildings construction (steel, copper alloys) and then automobiles and civilian and military aircraft (aluminum). The pioneers in light optical microscopy were from Harvard (Sauveur), Columbia University (Howe), and Lehigh University (Stoughton, Pulsifer, and Kehl). Lehigh then became a world leader in both scanning and transmission electron microscopy (Goldstein and Williams, among others). The Summer Microscopy School at Lehigh is now the world leader in this area and has operated for over 46 years. Students and graduates of Lehigh have been awarded more prizes at the International Metallographic Contest of IMS than any other institution, academic or industrial. This paper highlighted the developments in equipment, the research programs, and the people who participated in these endeavors.

Ingenious Machinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American Industrial Revolution by Anthony J. Conners

Ingenious Machinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American Industrial Revolution by Anthony J. Conners

Ingenious Machinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American Industrial Revolution by Anthony J. Connors (review)

Ingenious Machinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American Industrial Revolution. By Anthony J. Connors.

Ingenious Machinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American Industrial Revolution. By Anthony J. Connors. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2014. Pp. xii, 282. $75.00, cloth; $24.95, paper

Ingenious Machinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American Industrial Revolution. By Anthony J. Connors. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2014. Pp. xii, 282. 24.95, paper - Volume 75 Issue 1

Preparing Teachers for Place-Based Instruction at the Tsongas Industrial History Center

In spite of the economic climate which has led to financial retrenchment in school districts, the Tsongas Industrial History Center (TIHC) in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was formed through a collaboration between the National Park Service Lowell National Historical Park and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Graduate School of Education, continues to see high rates of visitation from elementary, middle and high schools. The TIHC offers workshops on a variety of topics linked to the American Industrial Revolution and provides a unique site for teacher candidates enrolled at the university to craft their skills in developing units of study that integrate place-based learning into the K-12 curriculum.

Unveiling Collar City: A Conversation with Brenda Ann Kenneally

This interview with Brenda Ann Kenneally took place during her six-month residency at VSW. Kenneally came to VSW to build a series of books of photographs from her ongoing project Upstate Girls, in which she investigates the hallmarks of the permanent culture of class disparity in the US by documenting the lives of a group of working-class young women living on the same block in Troy, New York (near where Kenneally herself grew up). The city of Troy is one of the earliest centers of the American industrial revolution, and Kenneally incorporates the city's history into her hard and intimate look at post-industrial life in Troy. Kenneally worked with students at VSW to build a historical timeline. She also worked with students at Rochester Institute of Technology (PIT) to build a layered documentary website incorporating the videos, photographs, and historical documents she has made and collected. Kenneally is the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Award, a Soros Criminal Justice Fellowship, and the Mother Jones Award for her in-depth and intimate coverage of complex social issues and injustice. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her work covering Hurricane Katrina. MEREDITH DAVENPORT: Let's start with who you are and what you're doing here at VSW. BRENDA ANN KENNEALLY: I'm a visual journalist, now that everybody is, and I am living here now at VSW, fulfilling the print portion of one of my lifelong dreams. In my twenty-year career I have been juggling photography, video, and now visual history projects. This project, called Upstate Girls, I started in 2004. It just snowballed into a participatory media project, doing scrapbooks with the young women I've been documenting, collecting historic ephemera, audio interviews, and contextualization from the town they live in, Troy, New York. About a year ago, I met Tate Shaw [Director of VSW1 after doing a talk at nearby RIT. We hit it off immediately and decided that this kind of project is something that has so many layers that it's very open for a lot of students to work on. I need lots of help. Here I am, a few months later, and I've come with a carload full of digital material. What I'm working on here specifically, in conjunction with RIT, is a web database project, and in conjunction with VSW, a series of five print books that will be about a hundred pages each--really cheaply printed and not precious at all--that are the stories of these eight young women in Troy. The birth of a child, De Anthony (Tony) Stocklas, was the genesis of the project. It was a relationship that started with two young women who were fourteen years old at the time, who were romantically and physically involved with each other. One girl, Kayla, became pregnant by the other girl's cousin. I was on an editorial assignment close to the neighborhood where I grew up and I was invited to photograph Kayla's labor and delivery of her son, Tony. And it is a history of prison and incarceration surrounding the family, because the boy, the cousin of Sabrina, the other young woman, went to prison, and the two girls teamed up basically to parent Tony, who is now nine years old. That is the genesis of the project, but I began to see all these connections: the prison culture, the fact that these were not the only young girls sometimes deliberately having babies. I started to think of the incarceration figures, the fact that we still continue to imprison more people than any other country in the world. Of course it's men--it's seeping over into women, but it's men: black men, Hispanic men, poor white men--and then working its way up the socioeconomic scale to women in that color spectrum. I began to think about the real boots-on-the-ground impact of just having fewer men around, the way men were thought about, the way relationships changed between mother and son. The emasculation of men, the fact that they really didn't have control in their own homes or their own lives, but largely they would answer to the authorities who were outside the home--and that authority was the paternal influence in the home--but really the physical influence was the women. …

The dawn of innovation: the first American industrial revolution

In the thirty years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan walked the earth. But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer, and the most intensely commercialized society in history. The War of 1812 jumpstarted the great New England cotton mills, the iron centers in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and the forges around the Great Lakes. In the decade after the War, the Midwest was opened by entrepreneurs. In this beautifully illustrated book, Morris paints a vivid panorama of a new nation buzzing with the work of creation. He also points out the parallels and differences in the nineteenth century American/British standoff and that between China and America today.

Reconstructing historical atmospheric mercury deposition in Western Europe using: Misten peat bog cores, Belgium

Four sediment cores were collected in 2008 from the Misten ombrotrophic peat bog in the Northern part of the Hautes Fagnes Plateau in Belgium. Total mercury (Hg) concentrations were analyzed to investigate the intra-site variability in atmospheric Hg deposition over the past 1500years. Mercury concentrations in the four cores ranged from 16 to 1100μgkg−1, with the maxima between 840 and 1100μgkg−1. A chronological framework was established using radiometric 210Pb and 14C dating of two cores (M1 and M4). Pollen horizons from these two cores were correlated with data from two additional cores, providing a consistent dating framework between all the sites. There was good agreement between atmospheric Hg accumulation rates in the four cores over time based on precise age dating and pollen chronosequences. The average Hg accumulation rate before the influence of human activities (from 500 to 1300AD) was 1.8±1μgm−2y−1 (2SD). Maximum Hg accumulation rates ranged from 90 to 200μgm−2y−1 between 1930 and 1980AD. During the European–North American Industrial Revolution, the mean Hg accumulation rate exceeded the pre-Industrial values by a factor of 63. Based on comparisons with historical records of anthropogenic activities in Europe and Belgium, the predominant regional anthropogenic sources of Hg during and after the Industrial Revolution were coal burning and smelter Hg emissions. Mercury accumulation rates and chronologies in the Misten cores were consistent with those reported for other European peat records.

On The Eagle’s Wings: Textiles, Trenton, and a First Taste of the Industrial Revolution

This paper relates the rise, fluctuating fortunes and eventual fall of the Eagle Factory, Trenton's first major textile manufacturing enterprise, located on the Assunpink Creek in the heart of New Jersey's capital city. Established in 1814 at the dawn of the American Industrial Revolution and controlled throughout by the Walns, a prominent Quaker merchant family of Philadelphia, the Eagle Factory began by producing yarns and hand-woven goods. Following the introduction of power looms in the 1820s the factory shifted into the mass production of a variety of machine-made fabrics, including plaids, checks, muslin, gingham, ticking and a number of more distinctive cloths. However, this strictly family-run enterprise was never entirely successful, falling victim to broader global economic forces and regional competition, as well as several floods and fires. The plant closed altogether following a devastating fire in 1845. In tracing the checkered history of the Eagle Factory, liberal use is made of the letter book of Lewis Waln and the Waln family papers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, as well as insurance records, newspaper advertisements and land records.

Immigration and the American industrial revolution from 1880 to 1920

In this study, we measure the contribution of immigrants and their descendents to the growth and industrial transformation of the American workforce in the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920. The size and selectivity of the immigrant community, as well as their disproportionate residence in large cities, meant they were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce. Immigrants and their children comprised over half of manufacturing workers in 1920, and if the third generation (the grandchildren of immigrants) are included, then more than two-thirds of workers in the manufacturing sector were of recent immigrant stock. Although higher wages and better working conditions might have encouraged more long-resident native-born workers to the industrial economy, the scale and pace of the American industrial revolution might well have slowed. The closing of the door to mass immigration in the 1920s did lead to increased recruitment of native born workers, particularly from the South, to northern industrial cities in the middle decades of the 20th century.

The American System: A Schumpeterian History of Standardization (Part I)

Standards can create intra-firm and inter-firm efficiencies. They facilitate economies of scale in manufacturing and promote interoperability between a variety of complementary products. In the final analysis, standards provide means for promoting stability over uncertainty, and for managing the complexities of industrial production. The creation and adoption of de facto standards - and the discarding of old standards for newer standards - illustrate perfectly the dynamic characteristics of the perennial gale of Schumpeterian creative destruction. This essay first traces the history of de facto standards within firms in the beginning decades of the American industrial revolution. It then looks at examples of de facto standards spreading beyond their points of origin through market mechanisms and ad hoc relationships. Finally, it discusses the status of de facto standards in the global networks of firms that are active in the Third Industrial Revolution that emerged in the latter decades of the twentieth century.

The Mechanisms of Monticello: Saving Labor in Jefferson's America

In November of 1812, Dr. Robert Patterson wrote to the recently retired Thomas Jefferson relating the peculiar and amusing events surrounding fellow Philadelphia native Charles Redheffer and his ill-fated perpetual motion machine. Patterson, a friend who shared Jefferson's fascination for machines and scientific inquiry, would have recalled the throngs of intrigued spectators who had paid admission to witness the demonstration of Redheffer's ambitious device, for throughout the American industrial revolution, a machine that would operate in perpetuity without an external, expendable power source represented the holy grail of mechanics, engineers, and optimistic tinkerers of all stripes. Indeed, Jefferson himself received dozens of letters from would-be designers of such fanciful machinery. But Redheffer's machine employed a heretofore unexamined source of generation. What paying customers saw, through a barred window, was a gravity-driven pendulum affair that presumably provided the energy to power another, separate machine through a set of interlocking gears. Hidden from view, however, and locked in an adjacent windowless room was an old bearded man, connected to Redheffer's contrivance via a long catgut belt and actually supplying power through a simple hand crank. Redheffer, it soon became clear, was feeding the poor fellow bread and water and forcing him to operate the crank drive all day long—thankless drudge work for meager wages. A bemused Jefferson noted that the "sham machinery" relied on [End Page 377] an "extensive delusion" among the general public concerning the efficacy of such inventions, for "the almighty himself could not construct a machine of perpetual motion while the laws exist which he has prescribed for the government of matter in our system; that the equilibrium established by him between cause and effect must be suspended to effect that purpose." Jefferson's response, although conversational and almost jocular, reveals a startling number of the core issues surrounding how Americans came to regard the forces of mechanization and enslavement in the fledgling union. And Jefferson's personal views not only reveal the interconnection between the two but also exemplify the various intellectual and ideological attempts to reconcile a crucial cultural dilemma, defining many of the most basic debates regarding the limits of liberty, the nature of human agency, and the proper direction of American society.1 Redheffer's thwarted deception illustrates nicely many of the themes that confronted Americans at the turn of the nineteenth century: the intoxicating promise of progressive thought, especially in science and the mechanical arts, to deliver a new order through the manipulation of labor and production; a burgeoning ethos of exhibitionism that publicized and transferred into spectacle many of the more controversial aspects of American culture; the subtly intrinsic interconnection between machinery and slavery (or the veritable enslavement of an indispensable yet increasingly degraded workforce, whatever its legal status); and the intellectualization, rationalization, and aestheticization of these themes by important cultural and literary figures. To interpret Jefferson's views and recognize their connection to the main currents of thought in the intellectual and cultural life of early America is to confront an enigmatic figure primarily through his language. It is a task that must appreciate the curious nature of literacy and communication during Jefferson's lifetime and one that must also recognize the rhetorical power and cultural force of Jefferson's public texts as well as the more searching, introspective character of his personal [End Page 378] correspondences and documents. Jefferson's letter to Patterson exemplifies an intuitive association between the textual and the material, between his rhetorical methods and the mechanical essence of the spectacle he is describing and interpreting. What brings these two strands together, in the end, is the manner in which Jefferson and Americans of this era proposed to save labor, to produce capital and goods more effectively and efficiently through the twin modes of technology and slavery. I wish to demonstrate that Jefferson's lifelong struggle to make sense of and to articulate...

Lessons from Lowell, Massachusetts (1821–62): The Shifting Sands of Managerial Beneficence

Far more than a mechanism to voyeuristically delve into the past to satisfy trivial interests, management history can be used to provide insight into contemporary practices and guide us away from repeating past mistakes. Using historiography, this paper offers a glimpse into the nature of the employer–employee relationship, comparing events from the earliest days of industrialization to the present. Set in the historical site of Lowell, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, this research addresses the progression of events that seem to predictably occur when well-meaning entrepreneurial enterprises face environmental turbulence and subsequently alter their labor philosophy from paternalism to social Darwinism. In the early 1800s, Lowell's textile mills represented a progressive environment. A close-knit, planned community was created which allowed the women opertives to grow socially and intellectually. However, economic downturns resulted in cycles of wage-cutting and cost-saving efforts. Eventually, the women were replaced with immigrants who were willing to tolerate substandard working conditions. By the 1860s, the owners had completely abandoned their concept that corporations should have souls. In history, market forces are continually in flux and often so is management's perception about whether the worker is a valuable asset or an easily discarded econom ic liability. Reactions to this unpredictability are addressed.

The Skills of the Unskilled in the American Industrial Revolution

Were ordinary factory workers unskilled and was technology de-skilling during the Industrial Revolution? I measure foregone output to estimate the human capital investments in mule spinners and power loom tenders in ante-bellum Lowell. These investments rivaled those of craft apprentices, suggesting a different view of industrial technology. Accounting for skill, multi-factor productivity growth was negligible, contrary to previous findings. From 1834-55, firms made increasing investments in skill, allowing workers to tend more machines and generating rapid growth of per-capita output. This growing investment was motivated partly by changing factor prices and more by a changing labor supply. Calculations show that firm policy and social conditions, including literacy, influenced the investment in factory skills. When skills are considered, technological change at Lowell appears as a broad social process, dependent as much on innovation in institutions as on invention of machines.

Can and need educational technology become a postmodern enterprise?

the United States realized its largest period of capital growth and immigration. Public schools multiplied and the profession of teacher education and educational research became permanently established in colleges and universities across the country (Brubacher & Rudy, 1968; Kliebard, 1987). In this period, the second wave of the American industrial revolution, the modern social and cultural era reached its apex. An American version of modernity produced values such as a belief in technology as progress, a faith in unlimited expansion of new frontiers, self-determinacy, utilitarianism, and empiricism (Wiebe, 1995). Life in the classroom and the academy reflected these beliefs, and academic researchers who were part of that rich, modern milieu naturally espoused learning theories and classroom practices that expressed their modern values.