Technology Breakthroughs Since Industrial Revolution

And How They Changed Our Lives

Course Outline and Topics fo Class I - VIII

Class I – Industrial Revolution – Steam for Textiles, Mines, and Metals

Intro Video: Steam from Hero of Alexandria to Newcomen and Watt

• Greco Roman engineering to Chinese, Arab, Portuguese navigation

• Steam applied to textile and iron production in UK industrial revolution.

  - Hargreaves spinning jenny, Kay flying shuttle

  - Crompton mule, Arkwright water frame

  - Darby coke blast furnace and Telford bridge

  - Sheffield, Wilkinson, Huntsman steel

• Evans, Slater, Whitney, Terry extend industrial revolution in U.S.

  - Slater with plans in head combines with Brown finance for Providence mills

  - Whitney develops cotton gin to save slavery in South, interchangeable parts for North

  - Evans automates grain mills, builds steam motor vehicles, dredges

  - Machine tools built for cylinder boring, shaping, planing, slotting, milling

   

Class II – Steam Transport – For Water and Rail

Intro Video: Erie Canal, Railroads from B&O to Transcontinental

• Water transport dominates early years of U.S.

  - Rumsey and Livingston lead to Fulton Clermont and Hudson steamboat monopoly

  - DeWitt Clinton’s Erie Canal becomes Gateway to West, makes New York as Empire State

  - Steamboats dominate Ohio and Mississippi river traffic and trade

  - Innovative ships like Turtle, Monitor, and Ironclads

• Success of Erie Canal and advent of railways shift transport investment to land

  - Early railroads steam west, antiquate canals and link Midwest to North

  - Rail superiority and interchangeable parts guarantee north prevailing in Civil War

  - Transcontinental railroads bridge U.S. and Canada

  - Electricity applied to rail for urban trolleys and cable cars

  - Railroads first great US industry, dominate transport for over a century

Class III –Communications– Electricity for Telegraph, Telephone, Light

Intro Video: Ric Burns Way West, Bell Telephone, Edison Miracle of Light

• Telegraph and telephone speed communication and shrink distance

  - Samuel Morse 1844 ‘What hath God Wrought’

  - Pony Express antiquated by transcontinental telegraph

  - Cyrus Field succeeds in laying Transatlantic in 1866 after failed attempt

  - Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates telephone at Philadelphia 1876 Centennial fair

  - Theodore Vail leads AT&T to century of telecommunications innovation and dominance

   

• Electricity evolves to replace steam, create new light source and appliances

  - From Ben Franklin’s lightning experiment to Edison’s lab and incandescent filament

  - Electric light shakes foundation of Rockefeller kerosene based petroleum empire

  - AC and DC war of currents with Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, Steinmetz

  - AC triumph at Niagara and 1893 Chicago Columbia fair determines electric distribution

  - Edison Electric merges with Thomson forming GE, Morgan pushes Edison out

  - Hydro added to coal and steam as electricity source, petroleum and gas added later

  - Electricity largely replaces steam in transport, powers new lighting and appliances

Class IV – Home and Work – Factory, Building, Food, Appliances

Intro Video: Carnegie: World’s Richest Man; Chicago: City of Century Skyscrapers

• Innovation in agriculture and food processing to explode productivity and lower costs

  - McCormick reaper and Deere plow to open Midwest agricultural heartland

  - Swift and Armour capitalize on Chicago Union Stockyards for meat processing

  - Soil science from Carver and Burbank to fertilizers, hybrid seeds, herbicides and pesticides

  - Refrigeration for meat, Mason canning, Birdseye freezing for preservation

• Construction advances accompany transition from farm to factory and city

  - Roebling wire rope for great bridges, Eades bridges Mississippi for railways

  - Chicago school steel skeletons, Otis elevators, Carnegie steel send skyscrapers soaring

  - Water projects for arid West culminate in Hoover and Columbia River dams

• Era of labor saving home appliances spurred by electricity

  - Singer sewing machine evolves from commercial to home to first multinational firm

  - Electricity for home vacuum cleaners, washers, security air conditioners, radio, TV

  - Kitchen revolutionized with electric, oven, refrigerator, toaster, washer, disposal, etc.

• Heavy industry evolution driven by technology and economies of scale

  - Steel coalesces around Carnegie, Frick, Bessemer process and Pittsburgh

  - Great mines for coal, iron and metal ores for enormous industrial factories

  - Wealth gaps and conflicts between capitalists and workers

   

Class V – Road and Air – Petroleum Fuels Autos to Jets

Intro Video: The Prize: Auto Evolution; Chasing the Sun: Jet Transport

• Motor vehicles usher in age of individual rather than mass transportation

  - Bicycles and internal combustion engine lead to early motor vehicles

  - Otto, Benz, Daimler, Renault, Diesel as automotive pioneers in Europe

  - Selden, Ford, Durant, Kettering, Sloan, Chrysler build US auto industry

  - Holt adapts motor vehicle for farm, road and construction use

  - Ike on Army caravan west in 1919 to show need for highways, signs Interstate law in 1950’s

  - Trucks, Interstates accelerate decline of railroad land transport

   

• Commercial aviation becomes last frontier for transportation evolution

  - Wright Brothers from Dayton bicycles to Kitty Hawk air flight

  - War and mail subsidize flight as commercial air transport evolves

  - Douglas DC-3 makes commercial aviation profitable and growing

  - Whittle jet engine fuels air transport boom after World War II

  - Boeing 707 soars to dominate jet transport

  - PanAm’s Trippe as catalyst for Boeing 707 and 747 for vision of mass transport

   

• Rail and water transport struggle to survive and revive in 20 th century

  - Containerization spurs world trade, drops costs, makes factory jobs mobile

  - Super tankers reduce some volatile political risks of world energy

  - From gyroscopes to global positing systems to reduce risks

  - Railroads resort to consolidation, container and raw material freight for survival

  - Interurban rail systems lost to highways, difficult to revive as energy costs rise

Class VI – Entertainment –Print to Audio and Video Broadcast/Recording

Intro Video: Empires of Air segments on Sarnoff, Armstrong, De Forest

• Printing and recording shift to technology application

  - Hoe press, Rogers type justification, Merganthaler linotype revolutionize print speed

  - Daguerre, Talbott, Eastman, Edison, Lumieres move photography from still to motion

  - Shoales invents typewriter, Carlson is basis of Xerox copier

  - Berliner and Edison introduce sound recording, Begun, Ampex, Goldmark, Paul perfect it

   

• Broadcasting as dominant 20 th century entertainment, information source

  - Marconi wireless transmission leads to KDKA and RCA radio broadcasting

  - Armstong and DeForest competition mix with Sarnoff business to fuel radio era

  - Farnsworth invents television in San Francisco, Sarnoff develops and introduces TV at NY Fair

  - Radio and television threaten film with how families spend leisure time

  - Cable, VCR, CD, DVD signal CBS, ABC, RCA network declines

   

Class VII – Chemicals, Synthetics – Oil, Celluloid to Fiber, Plastic, Energy

Intro Video: The Prize: Titusville, Rockefeller, Aramco, Petrochemical Segments

• Chemical processing technology greater value than hopes of ancient alchemists

  - Goodyear’s rubber vulcanization for raincoats applied to tires, shortage leads to synthetic rubber

  - Harvey and Perkins unleash genie of dyestuff colors from UK and German labs

  - Celluloid yields to Baekeland’s hard resin Bakelite breakthrough

  - Carothers and DuPont mark advent of industrial labs with neoprene and nylon triumphs

  - Polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride and petrochemicals post war base for fibers and plastics

  - Synthetic fibers and plastics dominate clothing, home, office, auto furnishing and coverings

  - Environment risks and costs push synthetic dominance offshore and to foreign firms

   

• Petroleum and nuclear migrate from initial applications to energy

  - Drake oil well and Silliman refining spawn Rockefeller Standard Oil

  - Oil saved from Edison electric lamp by auto need for cheap fuel

  - Houdry, Burton, Rosinski 1913 catalytic cracking before 1915 Standard Oil split

  - OPEC in 1970’s severs cost plus economics, catalytic converters slow air pollution

  - Manhattan project for atomic bomb transformed to Atoms for Peace after 1945

  - Nuclear reactor difficulties limit expansion of nuclear energy

   

Class VIII – High Tech – Computers, Internet, Life Science, Globalization

Intro Video: Machine that Changed the World

• Computer and telecommunications overshadow all other technology applications since 1945

  - 150 year road from Babbage Difference Engine and Jacquard punched cards to UNIVAC

  - Shockley transistors and Noyce/Kilby integrated circuits are path from mainframes to PC’s

  - Townes Maser and Gould, Schawlow, Maiman Laser lead to CD, DVD, OCR

  - Baran packet switching as basis for Arpanet, Internet, WorldWideWeb

  - Keck, Shultz, Schmiegel optical fiber and satellites transport voice and computer data

  - Berens-Lee, Cerf, Kahn, Andressen protocols and browsers for Internet navigation

  - Search empire of Google and ecommerce of eBay, Amazon as pioneer Internet tools

   

• Hope and promise of life science biotech complicated by values

  - From Wallace hybrid to Crick and Watson double helix code breaking

  - Genetic engineering commercialized with Raub and Swanson forming Genentech

  - NIH and Venter human genome project and prospects for better life and health

  - Genetic engineering and biotech potential for food, fuel and pharmaceuticals

   

• Challenge of ecology, environment, global warming as framework for future breakthroughs