ndustry
A diagram of the Bessemer converter. Air blown through holes in the converter bottom creates a violent reaction in the molten pig iron that oxidizes the silicon and excess carbon, converting the pig iron to either pure iron or steel, depending on the residual carbon.
The concept of interchangeable parts had been implemented in the early 19th century by inventors including Honoré Blanc, Henry Maudslay, John Hall, and Simeon North. Interchangeable parts in firearms had been developed by the armories at Springfield and Harper's Ferry by the mid 19th century and mechanics familiar with armory practice introduced the concept to other industries, mainly in New England. The system relied on machine tools, jigs for guiding the tools and fixtures for properly holding the work and gauge blocks for checking the fit of parts. This method eventually became known as the American system of manufacturing.[3] Application of the American system to the sewing machine and reaper industries in the 1880s resulted in substantial increases in productivity. The American system was applied in the bicycle industry almost from the beginning. A later concept developed during the period was scientific management or Taylorism developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor and others. Scientific management initially concentrated on reducing the steps taken in performing work such as bricklaying or shoveling by using analysis such as time and motion studies, but the concepts evolved into fields such as industrial engineering manufacturing engineering and business management that helped to completely restructure the operations of factories, and later, entire segments of the economy.
The use of wood for making paper freed paper makers from using cotton and linen rags, which had been the limiting factor in paper production since the invention of the printing press (ca. 1440). Finding a more abundant source of pulp became particularly important after a machine was invented for continuous paper making (Ptd. 1799). The first wood pulp (ca. 1840) was made by grinding wood, but by the 1880s chemical processes were in use, becoming dominant by 1900.
The petroleum industry, both production and refining, began in 1859 with the first oil well in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. The first primary product was kerosene for lamps and heaters.[4] [5] Kerosene lighting was much more efficient and less expensive than vegetable oils, tallow and whale oil. Although town gas lighting was available in some cities, kerosene produced a brighter light until the invention of the gas mantle. Both were replaced by electricity for street lighting following the 1890s and for households during the 1920s. Gasoline was an unwanted byproduct of oil refining until automobiles were mass produced after 1914, and gasoline shortages appeared during World War I. The invention of the Burton process for thermal cracking doubled the yield of gasoline, which helped alleviate the shortages.[4]
Electrification allowed the final major developments in manufacturing methods of the Second Industrial Revolution, namely the assembly line and mass production.[6] The importance of machine tools to mass production is shown by the fact that production of the Ford Model T used 32,000 machine tools, most of which were powered by electricity.[3] Henry Ford is quoted as saying that mass production would not have been possible without electricity because it allowed placement of machine tools and other equipment in the order of the work flow.[7]
Electrification also allowed the inexpensive production of electro-chemicals, a few of the more important ones being: aluminum, chlorine, sodium hydroxide and magnesium.[5]
Railroads overtook steamboats operating on rivers and canals as the main transport infrastructure.[8] The building of railroads accelerated after the introduction of inexpensive steel rails, which lasted considerably longer than wrought iron rails. Railroads lowered the cost of shipping to 0.875 cents/ton-mile from 24.5 cents/ton-mile by wagon.[9] This increased the population of many towns. Improved roads such as the Macadam pioneered by John Loudon McAdam, were developed in the first Industrial Revolution, but the road network was greatly expanded during the second Industrial Revolution with a few hard surfaced roads being built around the time of the bicycle craze of the 1890s.
Iron had been used in ship building for a relatively short time before the development of inexpensive steel, after which steel quickly displaced iron.[5]
The gasoline powered automobile was patented by Karl Benz in 1886, although others had independently built cars around that time.[5] Henry Ford built his first car in 1896 and worked as a pioneer in the industry, with others who would eventually form their own companies, until the founding of Ford Motor Company in 1903.[6] Ford and others at the company struggled with ways to scale up production in keeping with Henry Ford's vision of a car designed and manufactured on a scale so as to be affordable by the average worker.[6] The solution that Ford Motor developed was a completely redesigned factory with machine tools and special purpose machines that were systematically positioned in the work sequence. All unnecessary human motions were eliminated by placing all work and tools within easy reach, and where practical on conveyors, forming the assembly line, the complete process being called mass production. This was the first time in history when a large, complex product consisting of 5000 parts had been produced on a scale of hundreds of thousands per year.[3][6] The savings from mass production methods allowed the price of the Model T to decline from $780 in 1910 to $360 in 1916. In 1924 2 million T-Fords were produced and retailed $290 each.[10]
[edit]Technology
Three-phase rotating magnetic field of an AC motor. The three poles are each connected to a separate wire. Each wire carries current 120 degrees apart in phase. Arrows show the resulting magnetic force vectors. Three phase current is used in commerce and industry.
By the middle of the 19th century there was a scientific understanding of chemistry and a fundamental understanding of thermodynamics and by the last quarter of the century both of these sciences were near their present day basic form. Thermodynamic principles were used in the development of physical chemistry. Understanding chemistry and thermodynamics greatly aided the development of basic inorganic chemical manufacturing and the aniline dye industries.
Control theory is the basis for process control, which is used in many forms of automation, particularly for process industries such as oil refining, paper and chemical manufacturing and for controlling ships and airplanes.[11] Control theory was developed to analyze the functioning of centrifugal governors on steam engines. These governors had been used on wind and water mills to correctly position the gap between mill stones with changes in speed. The governor was adapted to steam engines by James Watt. Improved versions were used to stabilize automatic tracking mechanisms of telescopes and to control speed of ship propellers and rudders. However, these governors were sluggish and oscillated around the set point. James Clerk Maxwell wrote a paper mathematically analyzing the actions of governors, which marked the beginning of the formal development of control theory. The science was continually improved and evolved into an engineering discipline. See: Control system
Another beneficiary of chemistry was steel making with development of the Gilchrist-Thomas process (or basic Bessemer process) which involved lining the converter with limestone or dolomite to remove phosphorus, an impurity in most iron ores. Chemistry also benefited metallurgy by identifying and developing processes for purifying various elements such as chromium, molybdenum, titanium, vanadium and nickel which could be used for making alloys with special properties, especially with steel. Vanadium steel, for example, is strong and fatigue resistant, and was used in half the automotive steel.[12] Other important alloys are used in high temperatures, such as steam turbine blades, and stainless steels for corrosion resistance.
The developing science of metallurgy was able to solve the problem of rail failures in the U.S. by the mid 1880s by properly controlling the temperature range of steel while rolling into rails, although this had been understood in Europe some decades earlier.[13]
One of the most important developments of chemistry was the Haber process for producing ammonia (ca. 1913); however, the process did not become widespread until the Second World War. Today world food supply is critically dependent on inexpensive nitrogen fertilizers produced by the Haber-Bosch process.[14]
The Corliss steam engine (1849) was a significant improvement in efficiency, and later steam engines were designed with multiple expansions (stages) which resulted in even greater efficiency. The steam turbine was developed by Charles Parsons in 1884. Unlike steam engines the turbine produced rotary power rather than reciprocating power that required a crank and heavy flywheel. The large number of stages of the turbine allowed for high efficiency and reduced size by 90%. The turbine's first application was in shipping followed by electric generation in 1903.
The first widely used internal combustion engine was the Otto type (1876). From the 1880s until electrification it was successful in small shops because small steam engines were inefficient and required too much operator attention.[2] The Otto engine soon began being used to power automobiles, and remains as today's common gasoline engine.
The diesel engine was designed by Rudolf Diesel in 1897 using thermodynamic principles with the specific intention of being highly efficient. It took a number of years to perfect and to catch on, but found application in shipping before powering locomotives. It remains the world's most efficient prime mover.[2]
One of the most important scientific advancements in all of history was the unification of light, electricity and magnetism through Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. A scientific understanding of electricity was necessary for the development of efficient electric dynamos, generators, motors and transformers. Heinrich Hertz's 1887 experiments confirmed and explored the phenomenon of electromagnetic waves that had been predicted by Maxwell.[2] This would lead to the development of radio before the end of the 2nd I.R., but radio was mainly used in shipping until the early 1920s when commercial broadcasts began. Radio as we know it depended on the development of the vacuum tube (thermionic valve) (ca. 1906-08) which allowed amplification. The vacuum tube was essential for most electronics until the transistor became available in the 1950s.
Electrification was called the "most the most important engineering achievement of the 20th century" by the National Academy of Engineering.[15] In 1881, Sir Joseph Swan, inventor of the first feasible incandescent light bulb, supplied about 1,200 Swan incandescent lamps to the Savoy Theatre in the City of Westminister, London, which was the first theatre, and the first public building in the world, to be lit entirely by electricity.[16][17] Electricity was used for street lighting in the early 1880s. Electric lighting in factories greatly improved working conditions, getting rid of the heat and pollution caused by gas lighting and reducing the fire hazard to the extent that costs of the electricity to power lights was often offset by the reduction in fire insurance premiums. Frank J. Sprague developed the first successful DC motor in 1886 which he successfully adapted to power street railways and by 1889 there were 110 electric railways either in operation and using his equipment or in planning. The electric street railway became a major infrastructure before 1920. AC motors were developed by Nikola Tesla (Westinghouse) and others in the 1890s and soon began to be used in the electrification of industry.[18] Household electrification did not become common until the 1920s, and then only in cities. Fluorescent lighting did not even come of age until commercially introduced at the 1939 World's Fair.
Telegraph lines were installed along rail lines initially for communicating with trains and evolved into a communications network. The first commercial electrical telegraph was co-developed by Charles Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke, and was first successfully demonstrated on 25 July 1837 between Euston railway station and Camden Town in London.[19] The first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable was laid by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ship the SS Great Eastern in 1866.[20] By the 1890s there was an international telegraph network connecting major cities worldwide, which greatly facilitated international commerce, travel and diplomacy.[21]
The telephone was patented in 1876; and like the early telegraph, it was used mainly to speed business transactions.[22]
Hollerith 1890 tabulating machine and sorter
The tabulating machine, which read data stored on punched cards by allowing electrical contact through the holes and keeping running totals with electro-mechanical counters, was invented by Herman Hollerith in the mid 1880s. Tabulating machines were used for the U.S. 1890 census, which was completed in less than a year and at great reduction in labor compared to the 8 years for the 1880 census using hand counts. Hollerith founded a company to make and lease the machines; it was renamed "International Business Machines" (IBM) in 1924. Tabulating machines and other unit record equipment was widely used by census bureaus, insurance companies, railroads and numerous other businesses. Unit record equipment remained the dominant form of data management until the 1960s.[23]
Studies by biologists led farmers such as Henry A. Wallace to use genetic biology to create hybrid corn in the 1920s. It was the first application of biotechnology and was followed by the Green revolution.[24]
The germ theory of disease was developed and was accompanied by advances in microbiology, such as staining bacteria to make them identifiable under a microscope.
