The Second Phase of the Industrial Revolution Steel Chemicals Electricity Production Automobiles airplanes Communication

Steel

What is Steel? Recall that iron was an important resource in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was used to build the machines that made work faster. It was also a key element in the construction of steam engines and railroads; inventions that pushed the Industrial Revolution ahead. Iron is also used to make steel, a lighter, harder, and more durable metal compound. In 1856, British engineer Henry Bessemer developed a process to purify iron ore in order to produce steel. Steel is formed by treating molten (melted) iron with intense heat and mixing it (alloying) with carbon. Others improved on the Bessemer process so steel could be produced very cheaply. It quickly took the place of iron as the major material used in tools, bridges, and railroads. Steel rapidly replaced steam as the symbol of the Industrial Revolution. As steel production soared, industrialized countries measured their success in steel output.

* Note the labels on the graph; amounts are given in THOUSANDS of tonnes. A tonne is metric ton; equivalent to 2,204.6 pounds. Therefore, the 5,000 on the chart is equivalent to approximately 11 billion 23 million pounds!

Video on Bessemer's Steel ConverterVideo on Bessemer's Steel Converter in Sheffield, England.

Chemicals

During the Industrial Revolution, chemists created hundreds of new products, from medicines such as aspirin to perfume and soaps. In addition, newly developed chemical fertilizers played a key role in increasing food production. In 1866, the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, an explosive much safer than others used at the time. It was widely used in construction and, to Nobel’s dismay, in warfare. Dynamite earned Nobel a huge fortune, which he willed to fund the famous Nobel prizes that are still awarded today.

Electricity

The Italian scientist Alessandro Volta developed the first battery in about 1800.

The first electric generator was invented by Michael Faraday in 1831, a copper disk that rotated between the poles of a magnet. Faraday's disk generated very low voltage because of its single current path through the magnetic field. Faraday and others found that higher, more useful voltages could be produced by winding multiple turns of wire into a coil. Wire windings can conveniently produce any voltage desired by changing the number of turns, so they have been a feature of all subsequent generator designs. Faraday created the first simple electric motor and the first dynamo, a machine that generates electricity. Today, all electric generators and transformers work on the principle of Faraday’s dynamo.

In the 1870’s, the American inventor Thomas Edison made the first electric light bulb. Soon, Edison’s “incandescent lamps” illuminated whole cities. The pace of city life quickened, and factories could continue to operate after dark. By the 1890’s, cables carried electrical power from dynamos to factories. With these changes, electricity had replaced steam as the dominant source of industrial power.

METHODS OF production

The basic features of the factory system remained the same during the 1800’s. Factories still used large numbers of workers and power-driven machines to mass-produce gods. To improve efficiency, however, manufacturers designed products with interchangeable parts, identical components that could be used in place of one another. Interchangeable parts simplified both assembly and repair. By the early 1900’s, manufacturers introduced another new method of production, the assembly line. Workers on an assembly line add parts to a product that moves along a belt from one work station to the next. Like interchangeable parts, the assembly line made production faster and cheaper, which lowered the price of goods.

The Automobile Age begins

Diagram on How an Engine Works Video on How an Engine Works Video on How an Engine Works The transportation revolution took a new turn when a German engineer, Nikolaus Otto, invented a gasoline-powered internal combustible engine.

In 1886, Karl Benz received a patent for the first automobile, which had three wheels.

In 1887, Gottlieb Daimler introduced the first four-wheeled automobile. People laughed at the “horseless carriage,” but it quickly transformed transportation.

Soon, the French nosed out the Germans as early automakers. Then the American Henry Ford started making models that reached the breathtaking speed of 25 miles per hour. In the early 1900’s, Ford began using the assembly line to mass- produce cars, making the United States a leader in the automobile industry.

Conquest Of the air

In 1903, two American bicycle makers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, designed and flew a flimsy airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Although their flying machine stayed aloft for only a few seconds, it ushered in the air age.

Rapid Communication

A revolution in communication made the world smaller. An American inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse, developed the telegraph, which could send coded messages over wires by means of electricity. His first telegraph line went into service between Baltimore and Washington D.C. in By the 1860’s, an undersea cable was relaying messages between Europe and North America.

Communication soon became even faster. In 1876, the Scottish-born American inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

By the 1890’s, the Italian pioneer Guglielmo Marconi had invented the radio. In 1901, Marconi transmitted a radio message from Britain to Canada, using Morse’s dot-and-dash code. Radio would become a cornerstone of today’s global communication network that links every corner of the world.