The Technology Of Industrialization (U.S. Economic History)

The Technology of Industrialization (U.S. Economic History)

We already knew the men who guide the process of industrialization in U.S. economic history, but we need to explore and examine the truth of technology of industrialization in American history such as the entire iron and steel industry. The industrialization applied to the social and economic changes that mark the transition from a stable agricultural and commercial society to a modern industrial society because of using complex machinery rather than tools. Industrialization effected changes in some parts such as economic, political, and social organization. These effects increased international trade; political changes because of the shift in economic power; sweeping social changes that included the rise of working-class movements, the development of managerial hierarchies to manage the division of labor; and the emergence of new patterns of authority and corporation.

The Second Industrial Revolution developed within the chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel industries from 1871 to 1914. ÐŽ§The second phase of the industrial revolution was about the internal combustion engine and electrical motors and generators.ЎЁ (http://www.answers.com) The second industrial revolution is also named the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, from this period, you can see the growth of railways and steam ships from the investor such as Bessemer and Siemens. Bessemer invented the process of steel making in the decades preceding 1871.

Technological changes included the use of iron and steel, new energy sources began in England in the 18th century. For the age of industrialization that machinery requires steel. ÐŽ§The invention of machinery brought some benefits such as increased production (including the steam engine and the spinning jenny), the development of the factory system, and important developments in transportation and communication (including the railroad and the telegraph)ЎЁ(http://www.answers.com). In other words, the technology of industrialization brought more benefits but also increased economic growth.

In medieval Europe, the steel swords were treasures to be handed down from father to son. Moreover, the cost of converting iron into steel was expensive, so it could not be made in large quantities. There is one guy whose name was Henry Bessemer. He invented cheap steel and that was the beginning of new steel technology. The machines performed the operations before and after the conversion into steel. Mechanization became the most important thing at that time. Bessemer kept revolutionize the making of steel. When the cost of steel fell, steel became the basic building material of other industries. Because of Bessemer reduced the cost of making steel, so the railroad executives can replace their iron rails with steel. The steel rails are ten or fifteen times stronger than iron rails in the new low-cost steel. After that, the steel also applied to the other area such as the Brooklyn Bridge of New York and the Masonic Temple of Chicago. These two objects all to be made of steel. ÐŽ§After steel beams came steel nails, steel wire, steel tubes. Total steel output, which amounted to barely 157,000 tons the year before the Thomson works opened, grew to twenty-six million tons by 1910ЎЁ (Heilbroner & Singer, 1999, p.175). The technology opened the great new market demands for a commodity, so the business grows up. The demand for steel supplied another vast new market. ÐŽ§Industrialization required power such as the electric dynamo, the internal combustion engine, gasoline. It also required communication-the telegraph and the telephone, the type-writer and the high-speed pressЎЁ (Heilbroner & Singer, 1999, P. 176). Industrialization was the total of these technological advances, most of them first invented by Bessemer and then started into economic area by a business man like Carnegie.

Technology, productivity and Economic Growth brought the research advances on long term economic growth. However, the key factor behind long term growth was productivity, and another primary factor was technological change. ÐŽ§The technology appears to interact strongly with investment in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical, political and institutional settings. The key to the industrial revolution was technology, and technology is knowledgeЎЁ (Bart et al., 2000, p. 254). The new technology of industrialization and strategies brought the economic growth, but it also made the instable economic. At that time, the glass furnace also increased its size not only in iron and steel in the 1860s. Also, the business multiplied their sites, spread their size of plant, and varied their products in so many areas. Some companies grew very fast because they conduct and unite the successive stages of production from the buying or growing of the raw materials to the manufacture and marketing of the finished products. This was a successful oil industry example.

In 1871 to 1892, the people immigrate to American were almost from North and west Europe. Twenty- three percents of them were professional workers, and they brought the technology of steel and spinning skills (http://news.sina.com). They were the important technological power in America industry revolution.

Before the industry revolution, the primary economy was agriculture in America. The basic industry was labor and spread to any place in America. After invention the steam engine, the machine replaced labor power, reduced large of the capital, and expanded the scales of economy. In the end of nineteen century, America finished to build its national railroad system (http://www.bookzone.com.tw). The scales of economy started to appear and had the effect. Therefore, we can know the industry revolution really created new technology but also brought the economic growth and wealth.

As the Industrial Revolution progressed, more jobs were offered for people. The economist Joseph Schumpeter called it as creative destruction. ÐŽ§The fact is that, over the last 200 years, Gross Domestic Product in the developed world grew at an average of 1.6% per year, resulting in a doubling of per capita income every 44 years. Before the Industrial Revolution, economists estimate that GDP growth averaged less than two-tenths of one percent per year, and it took 500 years for per capita income to double.ЎЁ(Brown, 2002, p. 26)

The technology of industrialization created the new technology and increased the economic growth. The economics is the highest philosophy of human economic activity and has one law. The law is any production and economic activity must have three factors: land, labor, and capital (http://www.ieatpe.org.tw). After the first and second industry revolution, the law is still constant. The first industry