Welcome to the Inventors of the Industrial Revolution web slideshow!

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• Welcome to the Inventors of the Industrial
  Revolution web slideshow!  Use this slideshow to
  view pictures and read about several inventors of
  the time period.  You will find the answer to
  each question on the pages provided on this
  site.  Record your responses to each question on
  the handout provided.

Before you begin, think about and answer the
following question 1. Why do people invent new
ways of doing things?
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2. What was the Industrial Revolution?

• Good question! During the 18th and 19th centuries
  - the period from 1700 to 1899 - lots of things
  were invented that made it easier to make things
  and get work done. So why is that a revolution?
  Mostly, it's because one invention led to
  another, so that there were lots of important
  changes in a short period of time. These
  inventions changed the way people lived.
• This unit will teach you about
• The reasons people wanted to invent new ways of
  doing things.
• The inventions that people created, and
• The people who came up with the inventions.
• Let's see how it all began...

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3. What invention did Eli Whitney introduce?How
did it impact the textile industry?

• Well, during the Industrial Revolution, everybody
  was working like crazy. Now, American factories
  had been built, and they needed more cotton.
  Removing the seeds was the most time consuming
  jobs on the plantation.

In 1793, educator Eli Whitney made a machine to
remove the seeds from the cotton. This allowed
the workers to pick and clean ten times as much
cotton as they had before.
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3. What invention did Eli Whitney introduce?  How did it impact the textile industry?
3. What invention did Eli Whitney introduce?How
did it impact the textile industry?

• Well, during the Industrial Revolution, everybody
  was working like crazy. Now, American factories
  had been built, and they needed more cotton.
  Removing the seeds was the most time consuming
  jobs on the plantation.

The increased productivity from the cotton gin
fueled further advances in automating the
production of cotton and other cloths.
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4. What other innovation was Eli
Whitney responsible for? Why is it important?

• Eli Whitney made one more important innovation.
  He invented interchangeable parts. This was a way
  of standardizing parts of a machine so that they
  could easily be replaced.
• Whitney's innovation allowed him to win a
  contract for the production of muskets. It was
  the first step in the era of mass production.

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5. Which invention of Thomas Edison's do
you think is most important?  And why?

• Thomas Edison invented hundreds of things we use
  today. The photograph, incandescent light bulb
  and electric generating are just a few of the
  inventions of Thomas Edison.
• Edison was one of the first to actually make a
  business out of inventing things. His laboratory
  in New Jersey was one of the first created just
  to develop new inventions.

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6. Why do some people think Edison is
the greatest inventor in history?

• Thomas Edison's long list of inventions includes
  the electric voting machine, stock ticker,
  phonograph, practical electric light bulb,
  alkaline storage battery, microphone,
  motion-picture cameras, and movie projectors.
  Many of his actual original devices still work to
  this day.

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7. What did Samuel Morse's invent? Why was it
important?

• Samuel Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in
  Charleston, Massachusetts. Samuel Morse invented
  and perfected the telegraph. He also invented
  Morse code which was used along with the
  telegraph. Samuel Morse was a famous painter as
  well.
• Using the telegraph, people could now communicate
  long distances.

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8. What did Alexander Graham Bell invent? Why is
it important?

• In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the
  telephone.
• Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born American
  scientist, inventor, and teacher of the deaf,
  developed the telephone and contributed to other
  inventions in aeronautics.  These had profound
  effects on the shaping of modern society.Bell
  was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh. He
  immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the U.S. in
  1871. In the U.S. he began teaching deaf-mutes,
  publicizing the system called visible speech. The
  system, which was developed by his father, the
  Scottish educator Alexander Melville Bell
  (18191905), shows how the lips, tongue, and
  throat are used in the articulation of sound.

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• Since the age of 18, Bell had been working on the
  idea of transmitting speech electrically. In
  1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, he
  developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His
  experiments finally proved successful on March
  10, 1876, when the first complete sentence was
  transmitted Watson, come here I want you.
  Demonstrations of Bells telephone, notably at
  the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition,
  introduced the telephone to the world and led to
  the organization of the Bell Telephone Co. in
  1877. 

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9. How did Henry Bessember impact the steel
industry?

• Working with Steel Inventors realized that they
  needed strong metals to build complicated
  machinery. Steel was the best choice, but it took
  some time to get it right.
• At the beginning of the 18th Century - about
  1700, Abraham Darby discovered that coal could be
  partially burned to create coke, which would
  create the steady, hot flame required to work
  with iron and steel.
• In the 1740s, Henry Cort discovered "puddling" as
  a way of making stronger pig iron. He also was
  able to produce sheets of iron.
• It wasn't until a hundred years later that Henry
  Bessemer figured out a way to mix cold air to
  remove the impurities that weakened steel. His
  Bessemer converter was able to produce a stronger
  and cheaper steel that could be used in a wider
  variety of ways.
• Now, things really started humming.

The Bessemer Converter (above)Henry Bessemer
(below)
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10. What did Henry Ford begin to do in 1913?

• FORD, Henry (18631947), American industrialist,
  best known for his pioneering achievements in the
  automobile industry.In 1893, after
  experimenting for several years in his leisure
  hours, he completed the construction of his first
  automobile, and in 1903 he founded the Ford Motor
  Co.

In 1913 Ford began using standardized
interchangeable parts and assembly-line
techniques in his plant. Although Ford neither
originated nor was the first to employ such
practices, he was chiefly responsible for their
general adoption and for the consequent great
expansion of American industry and the raising of
the American standard of living.
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11. How did the assembly line speed up production?

• An assembly line is arrangement of workers,
  machines, tools, and parts through which work
  proceeds in a specific sequence for the quick and
  efficient assembly of a product. Modern assembly
  lines generally use automated conveyors to move
  components of a product from one stage of
  production to the next until assembly is
  completed. Each stage takes place at a station,
  where a part of the assembly process is performed
  by workers, machines, or both before the product
  is moved along to the next station.

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12. What industry did George Eastman inventions
improve? What advances did he make?

• George Eastman (18541932), American inventor and
  philanthropist, was born in Waterville, New
  York.  Eastman, who was self-educated, played a
  leading role in transforming photography from an
  expensive hobby of only a few devotees into a
  relatively inexpensive and immensely widespread
  popular pastime. In 1884 Eastman patented the
  first film in roll form to prove practicable in
  1888 he perfected the Kodak camera, the first
  camera designed specifically for roll film. In
  1892 he established the Eastman Kodak Co., at
  Rochester, N.Y., one of the first companies to
  mass-produce standardized photography equipment.
  This company also manufactured the flexible
  transparent film, devised by Eastman in 1889,
  which proved to be vital to the subsequent
  development of the motion picture industry.
  Eastman was associated with the company in an
  administrative and an executive capacity until
  his death and contributed much to the development
  of its notable research facilities. He was also
  one of the outstanding philanthropists of his
  time, donating more than 75 million to various
  projects. Notable among Eastmans contributions
  were a gift to the Massachusetts Institute of
  Technology and the establishment of the
  University of Rochester.

The Kodak Camera, 1888
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13. What did the Wright Brothers invent? Why was
this important?

• Well, it had to happen. People also tried to put
  an engine in a flying machine. Finally, in 1904,
  Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully flew their
  Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
  Another new era had begun.

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ON YOUR OWN
14. What was the importance of these inventions
to the industrial process?
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EXTRA CREDIT
Pick one inventor that you learned about today
and, using your librarys online databases, find
three interesting facts / details about that
person.

• To online databases