vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Technological and industrial history of the United States
From its emergence as an independent nation , the United States has encouraged science and innovation . As a result , the United States has been the birthplace of 161 of Britannica 's 321 Greatest Inventions , including items such as the airplane , internet , microchip , laser , cellphone , refrigerator , email , microwave , personal computer , Liquid - crystal display and light - emitting diode technology , air conditioning , assembly line , supermarket , bar code , automated teller machine , and many more .
Technological and industrial history of the United States
The ability to quickly transmit information over long distances would prove to have an enormous impact on many diverse fields like journalism , banking , and diplomacy . Between 1837 and 1844 , Samuel F.B. Morse and Alfred Vail developed a transmitter that could send `` short '' or `` long '' electric currents which would move an electromagnetic receiver to record the signal as dots and dashes . Morse established the first telegraph line ( between Baltimore and Washington D.C. ) in 1844 and by 1849 almost every state east of the Mississippi had telegraph service . Between 1850 and 1865 , the telegraph business became progressively more consolidated and the 1866 incorporation of Western Union emerged with a near - monopoly over 22,000 telegraph offices and 827,000 miles ( 1,330,900 km ) of cable throughout the country . The telegraph was used to dispatch news from the fronts of the Mexican -- American War , coordinate Union troop movements during the Civil War , relay stock and commodity prices and orders between markets on ticker tape , and conduct diplomatic negotiations after the Transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1866 .
Bessemer process
William Walker Scranton , manager and owner of the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company in Scranton , Pennsylvania , had also investigated the process in Europe . He built a mill in 1876 using the Bessemer process for steel rails and quadrupled his production .
Bradford
In the field of industry , Sir Jacob Behrens ( 1806 -- 1889 ) was an Anglo -- German textile merchant who was instrumental in Bradford becoming a major exporter of woollen goods .
Midwestern United States
This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . ( September 2011 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message ) Mount
Savannah, Georgia
This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . ( February 2011 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message ) A
Technological and industrial history of the United States
The technology for creating an automobile emerged in Germany in the 1870 and 1880s : Nicolaus Otto created a four - stroke internal combustion engine , Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach modified the Otto engine to run at higher speeds , and Karl Benz pioneered the electric ignition . The Duryea brothers and Hiram Percy Maxim were among the first to construct a `` horseless carriage '' in the US in the mid-1890s , but these early cars proved to be heavy and expensive .
Mass production
By 1808 , annual production from the 45 machines had reached 130,000 blocks and some of the equipment was still in operation as late as the mid-twentieth century . Mass production techniques were also used to rather limited extent to make clocks and watches , and to make small arms , though parts were usually non-interchangeable . Though produced on a very small scale , Crimean War gunboat engines designed and assembled by John Penn of Greenwich are recorded as the first instance of the application of mass production techniques ( though not necessarily the assembly - line method ) to marine engineering . In filling an Admiralty order for 90 sets to his high - pressure and high - revolution horizontal trunk engine design , Penn produced them all in 90 days . He also used Whitworth Standard threads throughout . Prerequisites for the wide use of mass production were interchangeable parts , machine tools and power , especially in the form of electricity .
Sewing
In addition to sewing shears , rotary cutters may be used for cutting fabric , usually used with a cutting mat to protect other surfaces from being damaged . Seam rippers are used to remove mistaken stitches . Special marking pens and chalk are used to mark the fabric as a guide to construction .
Bottom bracket
One of the earliest standards of crank interface , cottered cranks are now considered obsolete in Western countries , but are still in common use in China , India and other developing nations . The spindle is a cylinder , and has a flat region across it ( a land ) . The crank has a hole through it to fit onto the spindle , with a transverse hole for the cotter pin . The cotter pin is cylindrical with one side flattened at an angle to form a wedge to match the spindle land . When tightened , this produces a simple and effective interface . The problem is that normally the interface can not be tightened enough without a cotter press , a highly specialized tool , though still produced and for sale . Cotters can also be installed with an improvised tool designed for another purpose , such as a ball joint splitter or hammer , with mixed results .
Steam power during the Industrial Revolution
Due to the ever - increasing power demands of the 1800s , especially in manufacturing , innovations were made to existing steam engines and a number of entirely new steam engines were developed . Of these , few brought the high levels of horsepower and efficiency produced by the Corliss engine . Named after its inventor , George Henry Corliss , this stationary steam engine was introduced to the world in 1849 . The engine boasted a number of desired features , including fuel efficiency ( lowering cost of fuel by a third or more ) , low maintenance costs , 30 % higher rate of power production , high thermal efficiency , and the ability to operate under light , heavy , or varying loads while maintaining high velocity and constant speed . While the engine was loosely based on existing steam engines keeping the simple piston - flywheel design , the majority of these features were brought about by the engine 's unique valves and valve gears . Unlike most engines employed during the era that were using mainly slide - valve gears , Corliss created his own system that used a wrist plate to control a number of different valves . Each cylinder was equipped with four valves , with exhaust and inlet valves at both ends of the cylinder . Through a precisely tuned series of events opening and closing these valves , steam is admitted and released at a precise rate allowing for linear piston motion . This provided the engine 's most notable feature , the automatic variable cut - off mechanism . This mechanism is what allowed the engine to function under varying loads without losing efficiency , stalling , or being damaged . Using a series of cam gears , which could adjust valve timing ( essentially acting as a throttle ) , the engine 's speed and horsepower was adjusted . This proved extremely useful for most of the engine 's applications . In the textile industry , it allowed for production at much higher speeds while lowering the likelihood that threads would break . In metallurgy , the extreme and abrupt variations of load experienced in rolling mills were also countered by the technology . These examples demonstrate that the Corliss engine was able to lead to much higher rates of production , while preventing costly damages to machinery and materials . It was referred to as `` the most perfect regulation of speed . ''
Franchising
Isaac Singer , who made improvements to an existing model of a sewing machine in the 1850s , began one of the first franchising efforts in the United States , followed later by Coca - Cola , Western Union , etc. and by agreements between automobile manufacturers and dealers .
Thar Desert
Prosopis cineraria provides wood of construction class . It is used for house - building , chiefly as rafters , posts scantlings , doors and windows , and for well construction water pipes , upright posts of Persian wheels , agricultural implements and shafts , spokes , fellows and yoke of carts . It can also be used for small turning work and tool - handles . Container manufacturing is another important wood - based industry , which depends heavily on desert - grown trees .
Pub
A further engine was invented in the late eighteenth century by the locksmith and hydraulic engineer Joseph Bramah ( 1748 -- 1814 ) .
Midwestern United States
The growth of the auto industry was reflected by changes in businesses throughout the Midwest and nation , with the development of garages to service vehicles and gas stations , as well as factories for parts and tires . Today , greater Detroit remains home to General Motors , Chrysler , and the Ford Motor Company .
Midwestern United States
Farms spread from the colonies westward along with the settlers . In cooler regions , wheat was often the crop of choice when lands were newly settled , leading to a `` wheat frontier '' that moved westward over the course of years . Also very common in the antebellum Midwest was farming corn while raising hogs , complementing each other especially since it was difficult to get grain to market before the canals and railroads . After the `` wheat frontier '' had passed through an area , more diversified farms including dairy and beef cattle generally took its place .
Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson is known as the `` Silk City '' for its dominant role in silk production during the latter half of the 19th century . The city has since evolved into a major destination for Hispanic immigrants as well as for immigrants from India , South Asia , the Arab and Muslim world . Paterson has the second - largest Muslim population in the United States by percentage .
Industrial Revolution
Belgium was the second country , after Britain , in which the Industrial Revolution took place and the first in continental Europe : Wallonia ( French speaking southern Belgium ) was the first region to follow the British model successfully . Starting in the middle of the 1820s , and especially after Belgium became an independent nation in 1830 , numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as puddling and rolling mills were built in the coal mining areas around Liège and Charleroi . The leader was a transplanted Englishman John Cockerill . His factories at Seraing integrated all stages of production , from engineering to the supply of raw materials , as early as 1825 .
Recycling
New chemical industries created in the late 19th century both invented new materials ( e.g. Bakelite ( 1907 ) ) and promised to transform valueless into valuable materials . Proverbially , you could not make a silk purse of a sow 's ear -- until the US firm Arhur D. Little published in 1921 `` On the Making of Silk Purses from Sows ' Ears '' , its research proving that when `` chemistry puts on overalls and gets down to business ... new values appear . New and better paths are opened to reach the goals desired . ''
Differential (mechanical device)
There are many claims to the invention of the differential gear , but it is possible that it was known , at least in some places , in ancient times . Some historical milestones of the differential include :
Colony of Virginia
Vast plantations were built along the rivers of Virginia , and social / economic systems developed to grow and distribute this cash crop . Some elements of this system included the importation and employment of slaves to grow crops . Planters would then fill large hogsheads with tobacco and convey them to inspection warehouses . In 1730 , the Virginia House of Burgesses standardized and improved quality of tobacco exported by establishing the Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 , which required inspectors to grade tobacco at 40 specified locations .
New Jersey
Some mining activity of zinc , iron , and manganese still takes place in the area in and around the Franklin Furnace .
Industrial Revolution
Until about 1800 the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam engine , built as an integral part of a stone or brick engine - house , but soon various patterns of self - contained rotative engines ( readily removable , but not on wheels ) were developed , such as the table engine . Around the start of the 19th century , at which time the Boulton and Watt patent expired , the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick and the American Oliver Evans began to construct higher - pressure non-condensing steam engines , exhausting against the atmosphere . High pressure yielded an engine and boiler compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats .
Midwestern United States
The region 's fertile soil produced corn and vegetables ; most farmers were self - sufficient . They cut trees and claimed the land , then sold it to newcomers and then moved further west to repeat the process . Lewis
Maya textiles
Until the nineteenth century , most dyed threads were naturally dyed but now in current times , Guatemalan weavers prefer and heavily rely on `` commercial and handspun yarns dyed with mollusk dye . '' As stated by Brumfiel , the use of these easier to acquire materials , `` reduces the time needed for cloth production by two - thirds to three - quarters ... , making it possible for weavers to devote more time to the actual weaving process '' when using a backstrap loom . Instead focusing most of their time on creating the dyes and dyeing the cotton or maguey now , mollusk dye or acrylic thread threads speed - up the overall process . Another reason for using chemically dyed threads is because the , `` colors are brighter and do not fade with wear , washing and exposure to the sun as readily as do naturally dyed threads . ''
Columbian Exchange
However , it was not until the colonized lands emerged as profitable plantation lands that the use of West African people as slaves transformed the globe .
History of Texas
Throughout East Texas , black family growth and dissolution came more rapidly than in peacetime ; blacks were more mobile as an adjustment to employment opportunities . There was a more rapid shift to factory labor , higher economic returns , and a willingness of whites to tolerate the change in black economic status so long as the traditional `` Jim Crow '' social relations were maintained .
Convict lease
This lucrative practice created incentives for states and counties to convict African Americans , with the result that prison populations in the South became predominately African - American following the Civil War . Data for Tennessee prisons demonstrates this change . African Americans represented 33 percent of the population at the main prison in Nashville as of October 1 , 1865 , but by November 29 , 1867 , their percentage had increased to 58.3 . By 1869 it had increased to 64 percent , and it reached an all - time high of 67 percent between 1877 and 1879 .
Thirteen Colonies
The numbers grew rapidly through a very high birth rate and low mortality rate , reaching nearly four million by the 1860 census . From 1770 until 1860 , the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe , and was nearly twice as rapid as that in England .
Sewing
While much clothing was still produced at home by female members of the family , more and more ready - made clothes for the middle classes were being produced with sewing machines . Textile sweatshops full of poorly paid sewing machine operators grew into entire business districts in large cities like London and New York City . To further support the industry , piece work was done for little money by women living in slums . Needlework was one of the few occupations considered acceptable for women , but it did not pay a living wage . Women doing piece work from home often worked 14 - hour days to earn enough to support themselves , sometimes by renting sewing machines that they could not afford to buy .
Decline of Detroit
The shifting nature of the work force stimulated by the rapid growth of the auto industry had an important impact on the city 's future development . The new workers came from diverse and soon far - flung sources . Near - by Canada was important early on , many of the workers came from Eastern and southern Europe , a large portion of them being ethnic Italians , Hungarians and Poles . An important attraction for these workers was that the new assembly line techniques required little prior training or education to get a job in the industry .
Coffee
Market volatility , and thus increased returns , during 1830 encouraged Brazilian entrepreneurs to shift their attention from gold to coffee , a crop hitherto reserved for local consumption . Concurrent with this shift was the commissioning of vital infrastructures , including approximately 7,000 km of railroads between 1860 and 1885 . The creation of these railways enabled the importation of workers , in order to meet the enormous need for labor . This development primarily affected the State of Rio de Janeiro , as well as the Southern States of Brazil , most notably São Paulo , due to its favourable climate , soils , and terrain .
Louisiana Purchase
During this period , south Louisiana received an influx of French - speaking refugee planters , who were permitted to bring their slaves with them , and other refugees fleeing the large slave revolt in Saint - Domingue , today 's Haiti . Many Southern slaveholders feared that acquisition of the new territory might inspire American - held slaves to follow the example of those in Saint - Domingue and revolt . They wanted the US government to establish laws allowing slavery in the newly acquired territory so they could be supported in taking their slaves there to undertake new agricultural enterprises , as well as to reduce the threat of future slave rebellions .
Industrial Revolution
Economic historian Robert Allen has argued that high wages , cheap capital and very cheap energy in Britain made it the ideal place for the industrial revolution to occur . These factors made it vastly more profitable to invest in research and development , and to put technology to use in Britain than other societies .
Georgia during Reconstruction
Many emancipated slaves flocked to towns , where they encountered overcrowding and shortages of food , large numbers dying of epidemic diseases . The Freedmens Bureau returned much black labor to the field , mediating a contract - labor system between white landowners and their black workers , usually their former slaves . Taking advantage of educational opportunities available for the first time , within a year , at least 8,000 former slaves were attending schools in Georgia , established with northern philanthropy .
History of United States prison systems
The lease system was useful for capitalists who wanted to make money quickly : Labor costs were fixed and low , and labor uncertainty was reduced to the vanishing point . Convicts could be and were driven to a point free laborers would not tolerate ( and could not drink or misbehave ) . Although labor unrest and economic depression continued to rile the North and its factories , the lease system insulated its beneficiaries in South from these external costs .
Atlantic slave trade
Thomas Jefferson attributed the use of slave labour in part to the climate , and the consequent idle leisure afforded by slave labour : `` For in a warm climate , no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him . This is so true , that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour . ''
New Deal
There are different assumptions as well . According to Richard L. Jensen , cyclical unemployment was a grave matter primarily until 1935 . Between 1935 and 1941 , structural unemployment became the bigger problem . Especially the unions successes in demanding higher wages pushed management into introducing new efficiency - oriented hiring standards . It ended inefficient labor such as child labor , casual unskilled work for subminimum wages and sweatshop conditions . In the long term , the shift to efficiency wages led to high productivity , high wages and a high standard of living , but it necessitated a well - educated , well - trained , hard - working labor force . It was not before war time brought full employment that the supply of unskilled labor ( that caused structural unemployment ) downsized . Mainstream
Gilded Age
Few single men attempted to operate a farm ; farmers clearly understood the need for a hard - working wife , and numerous children , to handle the many chores , including child - rearing , feeding and clothing the family , managing the housework , and feeding the hired hands . During the early years of settlement , farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors . After a generation or so , women increasingly left the fields , thus redefining their roles within the family . New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles . The scientific housekeeping movement was promoted across the land by the media and government extension agents , as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning , advice columns for women in the farm papers , and home economics courses in schools .
Economy of England in the Middle Ages
The 12th century also saw a concerted attempt to curtail the remaining rights of unfree peasant workers and to set out their labour rents more explicitly in the form of the English Common Law . This process resulted in the Magna Carta explicitly authorising feudal landowners to settle law cases concerning feudal labour and fines through their own manorial courts rather than through the royal courts . These class relationships between lords and unfree peasants had complex economic implications . Peasant workers resented being unfree , but having continuing access to agricultural land was also important . Under those rare circumstances where peasants were offered a choice between freedom but no land , and continued servitude , not all chose freedom and a minority chose to remain in servitude on the land . Lords benefited economically from their control of the manorial courts and dominating the courts made it easier to manipulate land ownership and rights in their own favour when land became in particularly short supply at the end of this period . Many of the labour duties lords could compel from the local peasant communities became less useful over the period . Duties were fixed by custom , inflexible and understandably resented by the workers involved . As a result , by the end of the 13th century the productivity of such forced labour was significantly lower than that of free labour employed to do the same task . A number of lords responded by seeking to commute the duties of unfree peasants to cash alternatives , with the aim of hiring labour instead .
Convict lease
It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men , and the relatively few women drawn in , this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next . But it was nonetheless slavery -- a system in which armies of free men , guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom , were compelled to labor without compensation , were repeatedly bought and sold , and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion .
Mass production
So that ten men , by the aid of this machinery , can accomplish with uniformity , celerity and ease , what formerly required the uncertain labour of one hundred and ten .