Transportation and Communication

                      Steam Engine

       The Industrial Revolution brought about many changes and inventions. Perhaps the most notable of these was the steam engine. The steam engine was responsible for most breakthroughs in transportation during the Industrial Revolution. The basic blueprints for the earliest steam engines are shown to the left. These engines were usually powered by some kind of flowing water source or other natural kinds of energy. In the beginning, their main purpose was to grind corn, or spin cotton in factories. 

                                                                                                                                     The Steam Boat

 James Watt, however, saw the future in steam engines.In 1769 he came out with a new version of the steam engine that relied only on coal. This led many inventors at this time to see the steam engine as not only a way to run factories, but also as a way to get around. Steam power was used for transportation in two main ways: the steamboat, and the steam locomotive.   

       The idea of a steamboat really took off when John Fitch created a succesful steamboat on the Delaware River in 1787. Fitch was given a patent, but, although his ideas worked somewhat, his designs were primitive and unrefined. He designed boats with paddles and other contraptions that cost too much money for the final result. People wrote off Fitch's designs as a botch, but the idea stuck. Shortly after Fitch's death, Robert Fulton came out with a much more refined version of the steamboat and is mostly remembered as the father of the steamboat.

    Steam locomotive

     The idea of a railroad had been around for a long time before the Industrial Revolution. In 1550, Germany had already begun to use wooden railroads called wagonways. Although it is a long stretch from the train tracks we have today, it still got the idea across. Later, during the industrial revolution, a man named Samuel Homfray funded the construction of vehicles run by a steam engine that would move without the help of horses. Richard Trevithick took up the challenge and put together the first steam powered vehicle. It took a long time to get anywhere, but at the time it set records. It hauled over 10 tons of iron 9 miles in two hours.

     This invention got a man by the name of George Stephenson thinking. He decided to put together a steam locomotive that would run on tracks. This turned out to be a huge success, and he got a patent. It wasn't long until railroad companies shot up all over America.

                                                                                                                                    Telegraph

      But not every invention of the Industrial Revlolution required a steam engine. Perhaps the most influential products created during Industrial Revolution were the smaller things. Communication pushed many boundries that people didn't dare to dream of previously.

        A man by the name of Samuel Morse got the radical idea in his head to be able to communicate with people over long distances in a matter of minutes. It is said that this idea occured to Morse on a boat ride back from Europe. At the time, there was a lot of talk about Michael Faraday's newly invented electromagnet. This intriuged Morse. He began to come up with ideas on how to turn this into a means of communication. Although he was a Yale graduate, Morse quickly realized that he had much to learn about electricity. He was forced to look for help, and found it in a man named Leonard Gale.

        Gale knew very much about electronics compared to most people. He had already succeeded in ringing a bell from a distance by using electricity. When Morse approached Gale with his idea, he pointed out all the flaws in his deign and helped find ways around them. With Gale and Morse working together, it was only a matter of time until the first telegraph was constructed. Eventually, there was even a telegraph line put across the ocean.

      The telegraph works by sending electricity through a wire that causes a pin on the other side to touch the paper. The user sends these bits of electricity through the wire by pressing the button on the telegraph. Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a code of short and long line segments. Although it takes a little while to decipher the message, it is much faster than crossing the ocean by boat.

Bibliography

 Evans, Herald. They Made America. New York: little, brown and company, 2004.

"Dawn of the Industrial Age." World History: The Modern Era. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005: 198.