American Science and Invention: A Pictorial History

Summary by David E. GoldbergDepartment of General Engineering

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Urbana, IL 61801

Text

• Wilson, M. (195x). American science and invention. New York, NY: Bonanza Books.

• Author novelist and assistant to Enrico Fermi.

Organization

• Giants in the wilderness:

• The shock of freedom:

• Bright dream—dark fulfillment

• The tools of war

• The new era

• Last individualists

• The new dimension

Boundaries of America

• Awareness of the wilderness.

• Common thread throughout the colonies.

• English laws against manufacture.

Trades

• American trades no where as skilled as European.

• Jack of all trades because of extent of the market.

• Yankee ingenuity unknown in colonies.• Fishing/Whaling• Ship and sailmaking: 2000

privateers/90,000men

American Men of Science

• Franklin: Electrical work known worldwide.

• Ben Thompson: Lord Rumford, modern fireplace.

• Joseph Priestley: Oxygen.

Surveyors of Land and Sea

• Lewis and Clark– 1803: Ratification of

Louisiana Purchase.

– Collected specimens but lost

• Nathaniel Bowditch– New practical

navigator (1802)

– Lunar navigation

Engineers & Inventors

• Military meaning: men who erected engines of war, catapults, storming towers, fortifications.

• Mechanical philosophy & mechanics

• Craftsmen respected.

• Inventors considered lunatics

Fitch before Fulton

• Oar driven steamboat in 1790s: John Fitch of CT– Tried sidewheels,

screw.

– Died in despair.

• Fulton: Katherine of Clermont

Oliver Evans

• Developed reduced size steam engine in which steam pushed (rather than condensed as in Newcomen engine).

Stevens Dynasty

• John Stevens and Robert Livingston (brother-in-law)

• Worked on railroad and improved steam engines.

• Fulton’s folly: Clermont, 150ft long, 18 ft beam, 100 tons

Erie Canal

• Doomed by railroad.

• Wealth of New York as harbor to inland.

• First engineering school of US.

• Profession of Civil Engineering born in states

• Canvass White found hydraulic cement: concrete for use in canal.

Eli Whitney

• Cotton gin: spurred growth of cotton and reinvigorated slavery.

• Slave price doubled after gin.

• Whitney not compensated.

Mass Production

• Whitney– Rifle assembly from standardized parts.– First milling machine.– 8 years to fill order for 10,000 rifles.– Order for 15,000 more (1811) in two years

• Samuel Slater– Imported English textile factory– Reproduced machinery from memory.

Long & Morton: Anasthesia

• Crawford Long discovered anasthetic use of ether in 1840s.

• Did not publish

• William Thomas Green Morton, 1846.

Joseph Henry:

• Induction of electricity in wire caused by moving magnetic field.

• First electric motor, telegraph (ahead of Morse) 1831

• Understood electromagnetics as wave phenomenon.

• Director of Smithsonian.

Yankee Ingenuity

• New heroes: men of inventiveness.

• Patent law of 1838, notion of patent search.

• Legend grew after 1830s or so.

Telegraph Takes Off

• Samuel Morse: Early demo 1837, 1700 feet of wire.

• Backer Stephen Vail, $2000, if son Alfred could be assistant.

• Vail worked out many of Morse’s details.

• DC to Baltimore test case.

Early 1800s Hall of Fame

• Charles Goodyear: Vulcanization of rubber.

• Walter Hunt sewing machine and safety pin.

• Elias Howe’s & Isaac Singer reinvented the sewing machine.

Agriculture Equipment

• John Deere, 1833, first steel plow.

• Robert & Cyrus McCormick: demo of reaper machine in 1831

• Sold first two machine 1841, 1000 in 1851.

• Legal problems. Widespread copying.

Transportation

• The railroads. Stevens family.

• Clipper ships: American ships held most speed records. John Griffiths.

• Lightning record to Liverpool in 19.5 hours (18.5 knots) 1854.

Forge, Pan, and Derrick

• Iron: Henry Bessemer and William Kelly (Kentucky). Air bubbled through, results in high grade steel.

• Kelly perfected process in 1851, 6 years before Bessemer.

• Kelly assigned patent to father-in-law, wife withheld it for his own good.

Gold

• James Marshall building sawmill noticed yellow mineral in 1848.

• Gold rush was on.

• Clipper ships and wagon trains brought new people to west.

Oil

• Needed a substitute for expensive whale oil.

• E. L. Drake partner of Bissell and Eveleth.

• Invented modern method of drilling.

• Struck oil in 1859.

War Tools

• Telegraph• Balloons• Gatling gun• Iron ships• Torpedoes• Submarines

Big Business Cometh

• George Pullman dining and sleeping cars 1858, after raising Chicago..

• Refrigerator Cars: George Henry Hammond had a car built in 1867.

• Farm equipment revisited:

• Machine tools.

More, more, more

• Typewriter, C. L. Sholes 1867, to Remington in 1873.

• Air brakes: widespread collisions, George Westinghouse, at age 23.

• Photography: George Eastman

Invention of the R&D Lab

• Thomas A. Edison, • Newark (1870)• Menlo Park 1876)• Phone improvements• Lightbulb• Phonograph

Invention of the Assembly Line

Triodes before Transistors

• Lee De Forest 1873-• Triode or audion• Oscillators and

amplifiers depended on it.

Bell and the Telephone

• 1875 accident on harmonic telegraph.

• Bell lived 1847-1922