Chapter XXV

Inventions Near the End of the 19th Century

After the Civil War, there were many new inventions. In 1866, Cyrus W. Field was able to lay a cable across the Atlantic Ocean. This made it possible to send telegrams between Europe and America.

Between 1870 and 1880, Alexander Graham Bell worked on inventing the telephone. By 1880, his telephone was good enough so that rich people and businesses began installing them. By 1900, there were nearly half a million telephones in America. However, at that time, they did not have telephones in rural areas, nor was it possible to make long distance calls.

Some inventions helped business very much. Among them were the typewriter (By Christopher Sholes in 1868), the cash register (by James Rittis in 1879), and the calculating or adding machine (by William Burroughs in 1891).

An important development during this period was electricity. Between 1870 and 1880, they began bringing electricity into the cities. By the end of the century, 2774 cities and towns had electricity. In addition to lighting buildings and streets, electricity was used for power. Electric elevators were invented and installed in taller buildings. In addition, electric trams were invented. These replaced the horse drawn trams in the cities. Transportation in the cities became much faster. During the 1890's, they began building a subway system in New York. The subways were rapid and efficient. Today, the subway stations in New York are very old and ugly.

By 1890, new ideas about architecture began to develop. Architects such as Louis Sullivan began to understand that steel was cheap and strong and could be used as the framework around which skyscrapers could be built. He also understood that the invention of the elevator made it convenient to have tall buildings. In 1890-91, he built his first skyscraper in St. Louis. During that decade, Sullivan designed the twelve story Carson-Pirie-Scott Department store in Chicago. In the next few years, other architects followed in his footsteps and built much taller skyscrapers. In 1931, they finished building the Empire State Building. It has 102 floors and its height was 381 meters. Later a 68-meter television tower was added to it. Until 1954, it was the tallest building in the world.

An important invention near the end of the nineteenth century was refrigeration. They began building refrigerated freight cars for the railroads. This made it possible to send food long distances without the food spoiling. The meat packing industry developed. Chicago became the first meatpacking center. Live cows and pigs from the West were sent to the stockyards in Chicago. There they were butchered and cut up into meat. They were cut up in a very special way so that the best possible taste could be given to every piece of meat. Steaks can only be prepared from meat that has been cut up correctly. If the meat is not cut properly, than it is impossible to broil a good steak. The meat was put into refrigerated freight cars and sent to be sold in stores in all of the cities of the North. Until World War II, most of the meat that people ate in the northern cities came from the cows and pigs that were butchered in Chicago. Now they are butchered in Omaha and other cities further west.

The very large stockyards made it possible to use every part of the animal. For example, the glands of the animals were cut out and sold at a very high price to a nearby factory that made expensive medicines out of them. The skins of the animals were sold to tanneries that made leather out of them. Meat was cheap enough so that most Americans did not eat fatback. The fatback was turned into lard and some of it was used to make soap.

Thousands of animals were killed and cut up every day. They needed many workers. Thousands of immigrants came from Poland and Lithuania to work in the stockyards. Other Polish people came to work in steel mills in Chicago. So many Polish people came to Chicago that it ranked second in the world in the number of Polish inhabitants. Only Warsaw had more Polish people. Chicago had more Polish inhabitants than Krakow or other Polish cities.

During the 1870's and 1880's, people in France and Germany began to try to build good gasoline engines. In 1885, Karl Friedrich Benz built a gas-powered automobile. About the same time, Gottlieb Daimler Mercedes began working on building his automobile. The first automobiles were built in Germany. In 1893, the Duryea brothers built the first automobile in the United States. In 1896, Henry Ford built his first automobile. Ford immediately got the idea of building a factory to make automobiles. His factory was built and running by 1900. In that year, 4000 automobiles were built in America. In that year, Ransom Olds also began building a factory to make automobiles. The Olds factory made 1500 automobiles in 1901. Soon many other companies were making automobiles. In 1895, there were only four automobiles in all of America. By 1917, there were five million. At first, only rich people had automobiles. In 1909, Ford began making a car he called the "Model T". It cost $950. At that time, that was a lot of money. In his factory, it took twelve and a half-hours to assemble it. Later, Ford developed an assembly line. The workers stood in one spot and the work came to them on a conveyor. It only took an hour and thirty-three minutes to assemble the car. By 1917, he was selling the Model T for $345, and making 730,000 of them. Later, he lowered the selling price of the Model T to $290. Ford made good cheap automobiles. By 1925, automobiles were so common that many working people had them.

In 1900, people did not know if an airplane could be built. Some educated people said it was impossible to make an airplane fly because it was heavier than air. However, in 1903, the Wright brothers built an airplane near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their first airplane was in the air for only twelve seconds. Nevertheless, that was enough to prove that airplanes could be built. The Wright brothers worked on improving their airplane and by 1909, the American military bought one of them. By 1914, the airplane was improved so much, that in Florida they began daily passenger service between two cities.