What you’ll learn to do: explain inventions of the industrial age and the rise of the giants of industry who created hugely profitable businesses during the era of industrialization

Figure 1. Factory workers making hot air balloons.

Inventors in the late nineteenth century flooded the market with new technologies. Encouraged by Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution, and eager for economic development in the wake of the Civil War, business investors sought the latest ideas upon which they could capitalize, both to transform the nation and to make a personal profit. These innovations were a vital piece of the massive shift towards industrialization that followed. These inventions eventually represented a fundamental change in their way of life for both families and businesses. Although the new technologies spread slowly, they did affect all parts of the country. Whether it was a company whose new factories could now produce ten times as many products, or a household that could communicate with distant relations, the old way of doing things was disappearing.

Communication technologies, electric power production, and steel production were perhaps the three most significant developments of the time. While the first two affected both personal lives and business development, the latter primarily influenced business growth, as the ability to produce large steel elements efficiently and cost-effectively led to permanent changes in the direction of industrial growth, urbanization, and even American imperialism overseas. Steel production, oil refining techniques, and countless other inventions, changed how industries in the country could operate, allowing them to grow in scale and scope as never before. These changes also offered tremendous financial rewards to those who had the right combination of skill, ambition, and luck. Whether self-made millionaires like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, or those born to wealth like J.P. Morgan, these men were the lynchpins that turned inventors’ ideas into an industrial economy.