Technology, Culture, and Everyday Life

1
Technology, Culture, and Everyday Life

• 1840-1860

2
Agricultural Advancement

• 1837 John Deere invents the steel-tipped plow
• Halved the labor required to clear acres
• 1834 Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical
  reaper
• Harvesting 7 times more rapidly, half the labor
• By 1860 80,000
• By Civil War more than 250,000
• Novel Marketing Sold on credit buy back
  guarantees
• Significance Helped the North win the civil war
• Fertilizers
• Guano bird bat droppings
• Plaster left over from canal projects

3
Technology Industrial Progress

• American System Interchangeable parts
• Replacement parts
• Quicker mass production
• Continuous Process Manufacture
• Samuel Morse (1844) invents the Telegraph
• By 1852 15,000 miles of telegraph wire

4
Railroad Boom

• Stunning Transformation
• Flat roofed cars
• Kerosene lamps
• More powerful engines
• Contributed to City Growth
• Example Chicago overtakes New Orleans as main
  commercial hub

5
Rails transform Business

• Governments contributed with rights of way, or
  grants of public land
• Turns to Wall Street
• Selling stocks and bonds to raise capital
• By 1860s all major railroads were sold on New
  York Stock Exchange

6
Rising Prosperity

• Drop in commodity prices increases buying power
• Urbanization offers year round employment
  increasing real wages
• Year round factory work
• Women and children have paid work
• Yeoman farmers ok tenant farmers increasingly
  exposed to market
• Contributes to urbanization