4 Inventions From the Industrial Revolution Created by Sophia Caramagno and Michelle Kennedy

Locomotive What It Does: Locomotives, or trains, use steam power to move an engine over train tracks. Trains could pull thousands of pounds of load over 35 mph (horses could only go 25 mph) and became the main form of transportation for goods and people in the US. How It Changed Lives: The locomotive could move faster than all other forms of transportation and it could carry considerably more load in the form of people and goods. Companies could ship the products they made to new buyers. Food could be brought from farms to the cities before it spoiled. People could visit relatives and friends or travel safely for business. Indeed, once the Transcontinental Railroad was built between Sacramento and the New York, a trip across the country that would have taken nearly a year was shortened to a few weeks and even pioneers on the prairie could get factory made goods like farm equipment, stoves and other necessities. Native Americans who has success fighting settlers on foot, were nearly powerless against the speed and strength of the locomotives.

Telegraph What It Does: The telegraph used electric pulses traveling down a wire to send coded messages over long distances almost instantaneously. Using Morse Code, a language of long and short pulses that represent letters, people could communicate from one telegraph station to another. How It Changed Lives: The telegraph revolutionized communication for the people of the US. Before, people could only send letters to each other, and letters only went as fast as the Pony Express. Months could go by if a letter was lost or a letter might not arrive at all if the mail rider was attacked. Often weddings would happen before the announcements even arrived. The Telegraph changed that. With the telegraph, a message could be sent in a matter of minutes for short distances and hours for the longest ones. For only a few cents, people could stay in contact with their friends and families. People could even send messages under the ocean to Europe. This also let people send news about happenings right away. They could report on a disaster, warn people about a coming storm, or even stop a train robbery by sending a message to the town ahead of the train for help.

Cotton Gin What It Does: The cotton gin uses a set of rollers with teeth to pull the seeds out of a cotton flower, leaving the soft cotton fibers clean and ready to be prepared for making thread and cloth. How It Changed Lives: Without the cotton gin, it takes a person a whole day of back breaking labor to pull the seeds from one pound of cotton. With the cotton gin, a person can clean 50 pounds of cotton in a day without too much effort. This machine saved the hands and backs of countless farm workers, many of whom were slaves in the southern US. It also increased the production of cotton which provided an easy natural resource for the cloth industry. Soon more thread and cloth factories were built to keep up with the available cotton. This also made growing cotton more profitable than growing food. That in turn created some problems in feeding the population of the south when no farmer wanted to grow corn instead of cotton. Instead, people used the money from selling cotton to by food from the north and west. As the need to farm and prepare more cotton plants became the only means of survival in the south, slaves were in high demand to do the hard work of planting and harvesting. The dying institution of slavery was revived.

Light Bulb What It Does: The light bulb uses an electric current run through a very thin filament (wire) in a vacuum created by a sealed glass bulb to create a bright light to see by. How It Changed Lives: Before the light bulb, people used gas lamps and candles to light dark places. In homes, these could be knocked over and start a fire. In mines and tunnels, they could ignite explosive gases. Both candles and gas lamps produced low levels of light, so many people experienced eye strain when using them to read or do fine work. Also, they were expensive. The light bulb changed that. It was 25 – 60% brighter than a candle, creating a good deal of light to work and live by. People could even light outdoor spaces and streets because the light bulb could not be blown out. This helped cut down on crime and accidents at night. It did not catch things on fire and it was safe to use in coal mines and tunnels. It was also relatively inexpensive. However, when light bulbs were put in factories, factory owners began to require their workers to work longer hours, often long into the night and early in the morning. Without the expense of candles, factory owners increased the average work day from 10 hours to 14 hours a day.

Citing this PPT Caramagno, Sophia, Michelle Kennedy. 4 Inventions From the Industrial Revolution. Mt. View High School. Mountain View. Nov.30, 2010.