page_title: Timeline of United States inventions (before 1890)
section_title: Gilded Age (1878–1899)
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of United States inventions (before 1890) / Gilded Age (1878–1899)
caption_attribution_description: Selection of "Little Wonder" gramophone records and a record album.
context_page_description: The United States provided many inventions in the time from the Colonial Period to the Gilded Age, which were achieved by inventors who were either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States. Copyright protection secures a person's right to his or her first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress:
  To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
  In 1641, the first patent in North America was issued to Samuel Winslow by the General Court of Massachusetts for a new method of making salt. On April 10, 1790, President George Washington signed the Patent Act of 1790 into law proclaiming that patents were to be authorized for "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement therein not before known or used".
context_section_description: 1878 Carbon microphone
  The carbon microphone is a sound-to-electrical signal transducer consisting of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon. When sound waves strike this plate, the pressure on the granules changes, which in turn changes the electrical resistance between the plates. A direct current is passed from one plate to the other, and the changing resistance results in a changing current, which can be passed through a telephone system, or used in other ways in electronics systems to change the sound into an electrical signal. After a lengthy court battle over patent rights filed in 1877, a United States federal court as well as a British court in 1878 ruled in favor of Thomas Alva Edison over a claim held by Emile Berliner since Edison indisputably preceded Berliner in inventing the transmission of speech as well as the use of carbon in a transmitter.
  1878 Free jet water turbine
  A free jet water turbine or impulse water turbine, also commonly known as a Pelton's wheel, is a wheel that uses cups, or buckets, that are split down the middle by a metal divider, so that in effect two cups are mounted side by side at each "spoke" in the wheel. A high-pressure water jet aimed at the center of each bucket is split by the divider to hit each of cup, one on the left, the other on the right. The design of this water turbine takes advantage of a mechanics principle known as impulse, a force defined as the product of the force and the time during which it acts. In 1878, Lester Pelton invented his prototype known as the Pelton's wheel, first demonstrating it to miners in the Sierra Nevada. In 1880, Lester Pelton received a patent for his invention.
  1878 Bolometer
  A bolometer measures the energy of incident electromagnetic radiation. It was invented in 1878 by American astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley.
  1879 mechanical production of Photographic plate
  Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a means of photography. A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was applied to a glass plate. This form of photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile films were introduced. The wet collodion process was replaced by dry plates at the start of the 1870s. The mechanical production of dry photographic plates were invented by George Eastman who filed U.S. patent #226,503 on September 9, 1879, for (in his own words "An Improved Process for Preparing Gelatine Dry-Film Plates") which was issued to him on April 13, 1880.
  1879 Carton
  A carton is the name of certain types of containers typically made from paperboard or cardboard. Many types of cartons are used in food packaging. Sometimes a carton is also called a box. The history of the carton goes as far back as 1879 when it was invented in a Brooklyn, New York factory. The inventor of the folded carton was Robert Gair. He cast a die-ruled, cut, and scored paperboard into a single impression of a folded carton. By 1896, the National Biscuit Company was the first to use cartons to package crackers.
  1879 Cash register
  The cash register is a device for calculating and recording sales transactions. When a transaction was completed, the first cash registers used a bell that rang and the amount was noted on a large dial on the front of the machine. During each sale, a paper tape was punched with holes so that the merchant could keep track of sales. Known as the "Incorruptible Cashier", the mechanical cash register was invented and patented in 1879 by James Ritty of Dayton, Ohio. John H. Patterson bought Ritty's patent and his cash register company in 1884.
  1880 Oil burner
  An oil burner is a heating device which burns fuel oil. The oil is directed under pressure through a nozzle to produce a fine spray, which is usually ignited by an electric spark with the air being forced through by an electric fan. In 1880, Amanda Jones invented the oil burner in the oil fields of northern Pennsylvania where Jones completed her trial and error efforts of heating furnaces.
  1880 Candlepin bowling
  Candlepin b
caption: A selection of gramophone records and an album
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