Simulation: Students act as representative of firms looking for an investor, as such they pitch the profitability,
long term investment potential and marketability of either the reaper, plow, cotton gin, telegraph, or rail road.
As you listen to the presentation rank the inventions from the one you would most likely invest in to the least
and explain why.
1.________________________________________________________________
Why: (address profitability, long term potential, marketability)
2. ________________________________________________________________
Why: (address profitability, long term potential, marketability)
3.________________________________________________________________
Why: (address profitability, long term potential, marketability)
4. ________________________________________________________________
Why: (address profitability, long term potential, marketability)
5. _________________________________________________________________
Why: (address profitability, long term potential, marketability)
Mechanical Reaper
The Mechanical Reaper changed the way the world worked at the time;
It made the demand for slaves go up as the work necessitated some (albeit less grueling) manual work. On an
economic point of view, this enabled the economy to rise: slave traders were making more money and the extra
produce manufactured by the farmers was able to be exported world wide, making eastern markets grow. It
saved farmers a lot of work as well; it lowered labour costs, was able to be used in all weather conditions and
enabled more export due to more grain production. Before, a farmer could harvest about 3 acres of grain a day,
and the reaper made it possible to do about 10 acres a day.
The reaper also impacted society in several ways:
Without the mechanical reaper, we would likely not have all the access to food we do today.
It created a leap in the Industrial Revolution as farming suddenly provided enough food to be exported
worldwide as food was suddenly efficiently harvested. The Mechanical Reaper enabled more production of
food in a smaller amount of time. This means that manual labor was decreased, enabling former farmers and
their families to pursue other careers and an education.
However, this change also had a negative effect:
The increase in famers buying this machine meant that less labour was required, meaning some people were at
loss for jobs. The widespread selling of machine meant some farmers and grain workers (who still worked
traditionally) were put out of business. Also, the sudden surplus in food encouraged others to increase the
population; the excess made inflation more of a problem.
The invention of two successful reaping machines - independently by Obed Hussey in Ohio, who obtained the
first patent in 1834, and by Cyrus Hall McCormick in Virginia - brought about an end to tedious handiwork and
encouraged the invention and manufacture of other labor-saving farm implements and machinery. The first
reapers cut the standing grain and, with a revolving reel, swept it onto a platform from which it was raked off
into piles by a man walking alongside. It could harvest more grain than five men using the earlier cradles. The
next innovation, patented in 1858, was a self-raking reaper with an endless canvas belt that delivered the cut
grain to two men who riding on the end of the platform, bundled it. Meanwhile, Cyrus McCormick had moved
to Chicago, built a reaper factory, and founded what eventually became the International Harvester Company.
In 1872 he produced a reaper which automatically bound the bundles with wire. In 1880, he came out with a
binder which, using a magical knotting device (invented by John F. Appleby a Wisconsin pastor) bound the
handles with twine.
Steel-Tipped Plow
As Earth's population increased, technology was required to increase food production. Having observed that
crops were more productive where the soil was loosened, people reasoned that the soil needed to be tilled before
seeding. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a strong man using a modern steel spade still took an
estimated ninety-six hours to till an acre of land. Obviously, some form of plow was needed.
The first plows, dating to 4,000 B.C., were basically pointed sticks pulled through the soil. In all likelihood
women were yoked to the plow while a man or men guided it. Humanity's inherent reluctance to change meant
that improvements to the plow came slowly. The pace was particularly slow because everything agricultural
was considered divine, and "any improvements in ancient processes" was "discouraged as impious" (Power and
the Plow). But eventually a new plow evolved�the forked tree branch with one end of the fork around the horns
of the oxen and the short end in the ground with another fork as a handle for guiding. Everyone marveled at
how easily that slid through the ground in contrast to the pointed stick.
About 3,000 B.C. the Egyptians added a broader triangular share that turned a wider furrow. About the eleventh
century B.C. the Israelites were using iron for their shares and coulters. Next, an iron plate and a moldboard that
lifted the soil was added. Then came a pin to regulate the depth of plowing. Then a wedge to move the earth and
redeposit it in broken pieces.
As the population grew, more people moved from the cradle of western civilization into Europe. By the 1600s
farmers in the Low Countries and near Cologne possessed a few plows. It required a great deal of power to
plow the heavy, wet, sticky soils of that northwestern European area. To reduce the power needed, the Dutch
developed an iron-covered moldboard that twisted and turned aside the sod as it was lifted from the furrow.
When Europeans arrived in North America, they quickly realized that to survive they had to pursue systematic
agriculture. Local units of government frequently offered a bounty to plow owners to keep their plows in good
condition to do work for the town. In 1631 Massachusetts Bay Colony had only 37 plows. By 1648 Virginia
Colony, the other leading area of population, had 150 plows. Plows were few in number for they were costly
and the animal power needed to pull them was limited. Technology had to be improved so that plows might
become more cost effective.
In 1731 Englishman Jethro Tull improved the plow by adding a knife to slice the sod away from the earth
below. In the mid-1780s Robert Ransome, of Ipswich, England, patented a cast-iron plowshare. In 1803 he
patented case-hardening or "chilling the shares." This resulted in the share blade being sharpened as it slid
through the soil, which greatly improved the plow's efficiency. By 1819 the improved cast-iron plow was
widely used in England.
Thomas Jefferson, minister to France from 1784 to 1789, had observed plowing and noted the difficulty that the
French farmers had getting the plow to scour. He reasoned that there were two problems: the soil stuck to the
wooden moldboard and that the moldboard needed to be designed to turn the soil as it was being lifted. In 1793
Jefferson derived the mathematical formula for the moldboard and proposed that the moldboard should be of
cast iron. He also suggested that several moldboards could be mounted on a single plow frame. This was a
major discovery. However, cast iron was avoided because many believed that it was poisonous to the soil. But
in 1797 Charles Newbold, of New Jersey, patented a cast-iron plow. Finally in 1818 Jefferson's ideas about the
mathematical design were implemented when Gideon Davis built a plow using his formula.
In England, Jethro Wood developed a three-piece cast-iron plow with interchangeable parts. The moldboard
was one piece, the share that cut the furrow was the second, and the third was the landside that guided the plow.
Wood's greatest contribution to the plow was the interchangeability of all parts.
But the soil still stuck to the moldboard. As farmers moved west and encountered heavier and stickier soils, the
problem intensified. Someone discovered that high-grade steel would scour in heavy soil. In 1833 John Lane, an
Illinois blacksmith, cut three lengths of steel from an old saw and fastened two to the moldboard and another to
the share. This worked quite effectively, but Lane did not apply for a patent. This set the stage for John Deere.
John Deere was born February 7,1804, at Rutland, Vermont, to William R. and Sarah (Yates) Deere, the fifth of
six children. At age seventeen Deere apprenticed himself to a blacksmith for a stipend of thirty dollars a year
plus room and board, clothes, and instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. His apprenticeship ended in
1825 and he immediately went into the blacksmithing trade. On January 28, 1827, he married Demarius Lamb.
By 1836 the Deeres had four children, Demarius was pregnant with the fifth, and John was faced with
bankruptcy. Deere sold his blacksmith shop to his father-in-law, left the proceeds of the sale to Demarius, and
headed for Illinois.
In September, Deere arrived in Chicago with his blacksmith tools and $73.73. He continued on to the newly
settled village of Grand Detour, Illinois, on the edge of the frontier. There were no blacksmiths for forty miles,
so Deere had work at once. In 1837 he built a twenty-six-by-thirty-one-foot shop on rented land and began
construction on a wood-frame house.
Deere learned that farmers were experiencing the same challenge with tilling the soil as in Vermont, but in
Illinois the soil was much heavier and stickier and covered with tall prairie grass. Breaking the prairie sod
required a heavy plow powered by as many as eight yoke of oxen. This was costly, so most settlers chose to
plow the land themselves with a smaller plow and their own horses or oxen. This was slow, hard work requiring
the constant use of paddles to scrape the sticky soil off the moldboard. Farmers came to Deere hoping that he
could help them.
While visiting Leonard Andrus's sawmill, Deere noticed a broken steel saw. Deere asked if he could have it.
Back in his shop Deere chiseled the teeth off and then heated and shaped it with a hammer. The saw blade was
polished from its use at the sawmill.
There are conflicting reports, but it appears that Deere's first plows used the saw blade steel for the share and
smoothly ground wrought iron for the moldboard. Wrought iron could be welded and would reasonably scour in
heavy soil. Deere's first plow, finished in 1837, worked better than any previous plow. In 1838 he built two
more plows, one of which was sold to Joseph Brieton, who farmed just south of Grand Detour. That implement
was later discovered and purchased by Charles Deere and is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
By May 24,1839, Deere had built three more plows, and before the year was over he had produced a total of
ten. The plows sold for ten to twelve dollars each, which was a considerable purchase for a farmer of that day.
In 1840 Deere produced forty plows; in 1841, seventy-five; in 1842, one hundred; and in 1843, four hundred.
That does not seem like a great number by today's standards, but in addition to the shortage of funds, farmers
were still skeptical about the durability and usability of the plow. Deere had to establish a reputation as a
manufacturer of superior plows. However, according to historian Wayne G. Broehl, Jr.: "It was largely his
[Deere's] ability to dramatize these products and get them into the hands of his customer... that made him a
success."
The demand for broken saw blades for plow shares exceeded the existing supply, and plow makers looked
elsewhere for satisfactory steel. Deere purchased steel from Sheffield, England, at a cost of $300 per ton, but it
still required polishing for proper scouring. In 1844 he secured improved steel produced by Lyon Sharb &
Company of St. Louis, which he used for the plow share, but he continued using wrought iron for the
moldboard. In 1846 his search for steel similar to what was made in Sheffield ended when Jones and Quigg
Steel Works of Pittsburgh produced the first slab of cast plow steel made in the United States. This was far
superior to any other steel on the market.
In 1843 the railroad bypassed Grand Detour, and Deere decided it was a doomed town. He established a
partnership with John Gould and Robert Tate and moved to Moline. This was a much better farming
community, near unlimited supplies of coal and on the Mississippi, which provided water power and lower cost
of distribution. Under the new partnership Deere was free to do sales work and marketing. A new building was
completed August 31,1848, and they produced 700 plows by the end of the year.
The plant was expanded just in time, for in the first five months of 1849 more than 1,200 plows were ordered.
Manufacturing innovations were being rapidly introduced, and Deere, always a leader in adapting the latest
technology, purchased several new machines. With the new equipment, a work force of sixteen produced 2,136
plows that year. In 1850 the firm began handling the Seymour grain drill. This was significant because it was
Deere's first step into expanding beyond being strictly a plow company.
Improved Cotton Gin
The story of the cotton gin is also significant in that it led to the first major test of the newly created United
States patent system. The test was not only of the ability of the system to protect the rights of inventors, but also
of how the courts would interpret what a patent protected and what it did not protect. In the case of the cotton
gin, the patent system was immediately confronted with the reality that new innovations are not born in a state
of eternal, or even temporary, perfection.
Almost immediately, Whitney and other gin users encountered problems with the use of his wire teeth, which
were difficult to install properly and easily damaged in use. In a development of murky origins, cotton gin
technology had quickly switched by 1800 to the use of a series of circular saws attached to the rotating cylinder.
These "saw" gins (still the basis of short-staple ginning today) used the teeth of the rotating saws to pull the
cotton fiber through the grate, instead of Whitney's original wire teeth. As these events unfolded, Whitney
claimed that he had originally thought of this alternative as well and that it was an obvious variation of his
design and thus covered under his patent. The courts eventually ruled in Whitney's favor, but it was the initial
warning that patent law was going to be complicated.
Cotton was grown in the New World and in Asia for centuries before Europeans settled in America. English
colonists first cultivated cotton to make homespun clothing. Production significantly increased when the
American Revolution cut off supplies of European cloth, but the real expansion of production came with the
rising demand for raw cotton from the British textile industry. This led to the development of an efficient cotton
gin as a tool for removing seeds from cotton fibers in 1793. The breeding of superior strains from Mexican
cotton and the opening of western lands further expanded production. (During the early 1800s, the center of
production moved south and west, from cotton's early national cradle in South Carolina and Georgia to the
black belt of Alabama and Mississippi.) Production rose from 2 million pounds in 1791 to a billion pounds in
1860; by 1840, the United States was producing over 60 percent of the world's cotton. The economic boom in
the cotton South attracted migrants, built up wealth among the free inhabitants, encouraged capitalization of
investments like railroads, and facilitated territorial expansion.
Cotton also contributed to the national economy. The crop comprised more than half the total value of domestic
exports in the period 1815-1860, and in 1860, earnings from cotton paid for 60 percent of all imports. Cotton
also built up domestic capital, attracted foreign investment, and contributed to the industrial growth of the
North. In the early 1800s, northeastern merchants began channeling commercial profits into industrial
production of cloth (using southern cotton). These early textile factories and the concomitant growth of the
working class created political and social problems in the new Republic; reactions ranged from fears about the
fragmentation of the polity into distinct economic classes to celebrations of free labor as the strongest
foundation for the nation.
Just as cotton mills revealed the problem of inequality among white Americans, cotton fields expressed the
racial inequality inherent in black slavery. The relation of cotton to slavery is complex. Except in the Upper
South slavery was not declining in the 1790s. The crop was, therefore, not responsible for perpetuating slavery
where it already existed, though it certainly was responsible for the continuing expansion of the institution
westward. Whites' acceptance of black slavery, combined with their gradual removal of southern Indians from
cotton lands, demonstrated the extent to which they assumed that the political and economic liberties of whites
were inversely related to those of people of color.
By the 1830s, the South's political economy—resting on cotton and slaves—was a key factor in sectional
tension between North and South. The possibility that cotton cultivation would continue to move west and the
prospect that new slave states would thereafter enter the Union were the most significant causes of this tension.
Although slavery was not necessary for growing cotton (three-quarters of southern whites held no slaves, and
much of the South's cotton was produced by free workers), southern whites assumed that slavery was an
efficient method of increasing production, and they wanted to take slaves wherever cotton might be grown.
They believed that their continuing to use slaves to grow cotton in new, western territories was their right.
Northern whites assumed otherwise and sought to curtail the expansion of slavery in the nation. Although
slavery alone was not the cause of the Civil War, controversy over whether the South's peculiar institution
would continue expanding (and over the role of the federal government in regulating its expansion) was central
to the impending crisis.
Railroad
The development of railroads was one of the most important phenomena of the Industrial Revolution. With their
formation, construction and operation, they brought profound social, economic and political change to a country
only 50 years old. Over the next 50 years, America would come to see magnificent bridges and other structures
on which trains would run, awesome depots, ruthless rail magnates and the majesty of rail locomotives crossing
the country.
The railroad was first developed in Great Britain. A man named George Stephenson successfully applied the
steam technology of the day and created the world's first successful locomotive. The first engines used in the
United States were purchased from the Stephenson Works in England. Even rails were largely imported from
England until the Civil War. Americans who had visited England to see new steam locomotives were impressed
that railroads dropped the cost of shipping by carriage by 60-70%.
Baltimore, the third largest city in the nation in 1827, had not invested in a canal. Yet, Baltimore was 200 miles
closer to the frontier than New York and soon recognized that the development of a railway could make the city
more competitive with New York and the Erie Canal in transporting people and goods to the West. The result
was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first railroad chartered in the United States. There were great parades
on the day the construction started. On July 4, 1828, the first spadeful of earth was turned over by the last
surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, 91-year-old Charles Carroll.
New railroads came swiftly. In 1830, the South Carolina Canal and Rail-Road Company was formed to draw
trade from the interior of the state. It had a steam locomotive built at the West Point Foundry in New York City,
called The Best Friend of Charleston, the first steam locomotive to be built for sale in the United States. A year
later, the Mohawk & Hudson railroad reduced a 40-mile wandering canal trip that took all day to accomplish to
a 17-mile trip that took less than an hour. Its first steam engine was named the DeWitt Clinton after the builder
of the Erie Canal.
Although the first railroads were successful, attempts to finance new ones originally failed as opposition was
mounted by turnpike operators, canal companies, stagecoach companies and those who drove wagons.
Opposition was mounted, in many cases, by tavern owners and innkeepers whose businesses were threatened.
Sometimes opposition turned to violence. Religious leaders decried trains as sacriligious. But the economic
benefits of the railroad soon won over the skeptics.
Telegraph
In 1832 Samuel F. B. Morse, assisted by Alfred Vail, conceived of the idea for an electromechanical telegraph,
which he called the "Recording Telegraph." This commercial application of electricity was made tangible by
their construction of a crude working model in 1835-36. This instrument probably was never used outside of
Professor Morse's rooms where it was, however, operated in a number of demonstrations.
The telegraph was further refined by Morse, Vail, and a colleague, Leonard Gale, into working mechanical form
in 1837. In this year Morse filed a caveat for it at the U.S. Patent Office. Electricity, provided by Joseph Henry's
1836 "intensity batteries," was sent over a wire. The flow of electricity through the wire was interrupted for
shorter or longer periods by holding down the key of the device. The resulting dots or dashes were recorded on
a printer or could be interpreted orally. In 1838, Morse perfected his sending and receiving code and organized
a corporation, making Vail and Gale his partners.
In 1843, Morse received funds from Congress to set up a demonstration line between Washington and
Baltimore. Unfortunately, Morse was not an astute businessman and had no practical plan for constructing a
line. After an unsuccessful attempt at laying underground cables with Ezra Cornell, the inventor of a
trenchdigger, Morse switched to the erection of telegraph poles and was more successful. On May 24, 1844,
Morse in the U.S. Supreme Court Chambers in Washington sent by telegraph the oft-quoted message to his
colleague Vail in Baltimore, "What hath God wrought!"
In 1845, Morse hired Andrew Jackson's former postmaster general, Amos Kendall, as his agent in locating
potential buyers of the telegraph. Kendall realized the value of the device, and had little trouble convincing
others of its potential for profit. By the spring he had attracted a small group of investors. They subscribed
$15,000 and formed the Magnetic Telegraph Company. Many new telegraph companies were formed as Morse
sold licenses wherever he could.
The first commercial telegraph line was completed between Washington, DC, and New York City in the spring
of 1846 by the Magnetic Telegraph Company. Shortly thereafter, F.O.J. Smith, one of the patent owners, built a
line between New York City and Boston. Most of these early companies were licensed by owners of Samuel
Morse patents. The Morse messages were sent and received in a code of dots and dashes.
At this time other telegraph systems based on rival technologies were being built. Some companies used the
printing telegraph, a device invented by a Vermonter, Royal E. House, whose messages were printed on paper
or tape in Roman letters. In 1848, a Scottish scientist, Alexander Bain, received his patents on a telegraph.
These were but two of many competing and incompatible technologies that had developed. The result was
confusion, inefficiency, and a rash of suits and countersuits.
By 1851, there were over 50 separate telegraph companies operating in the United States. This corporate
cornucopia developed because the owners of the telegraph patents had been unsuccessful in convincing the
United States and other governments of the invention's potential usefulness. In the private sector, the owners
had difficulty convincing capitalists of the commercial value of the invention. This led to the owners'
willingness to sell licenses to many purchasers who organized separate companies and then built independent
telegraph lines in various sections of the country.
Hiram Sibley moved to Rochester, New York, in 1838 to pursue banking and real estate. Later he was elected
sheriff of Monroe County. In Rochester, he was introduced to Judge Samuel L. Selden who held the House
Telegraph patent rights. In 1849, Selden and Sibley organized the New York State Printing Telegraph
Company, but they found it hard to compete with the existing New York, Albany, and Buffalo Telegraph
Company.
After this experience, Selden suggested that instead of creating a new line, the two should try to acquire all the
companies west of Buffalo and unite them into a single unified system. Selden secured an agency for the
extension throughout the United States of the House system. In an effort to expand this line west, Judge Selden
called on friends and the people in Rochester. This eventually led in April 1851 to the organization of a
company and the filing in Albany of the Articles of Association for the "New York and Mississippi Valley
Printing Telegraph Company" (NYMVPTC), a company which later evolved into the Western Union Telegraph
Company.