Mechanization
Before the time of 1750, goods were largely produced by hand. Around 1750 machines began to become more efficient than manual labor in Britain, and many crafts were mechanized as machines replaced humans as workers. At this time, many British industries adopted the “factory system”, which was a system of production in which machines and employees work together under one roof.
United States:
The mechanization of many crafts in the United States began around the 19th century. In 1790 Samuel Slater, known as ‘the Traitor’, moved from England to the United States, and built his advanced British textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793. Three years later, brothers John and Arthur Schofield also came to the U.S. from England and built the first factory to make woolens in Massachusetts. By the time of the American Civil War, there were over one thousand cotton factories and 1,500 woolen factories in the United States. From there, many other industries were mechanized, like transportation and farming. Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper helped to advance the harvesting of grain. This was later replaced by early tractors when the steam engine was introduced to the United States. Efficient steam engines also caused an increase in railroad creation and usage, and soon an large system of railroads was forming in America. As more railroads were being constructed, the building material for railroads needed to be produced on a larger scale. In the 1850s, American William Kelly and Englishman Henry Bessemer invented a process to mass-produce steel, and in 1868, Andrew Carnegie recognized the profitability of the growing steel industry and made improvements to the Henry-Bessemer process. Steel built railroads, raised the skylines of cities and much later helped build a new mode of transportation: cars. The first car developed in the United States was made by George Baldwin Selden in 1876. Demand for cars grew and Henry Ford met this demand with the assembly line, created to mass-produce Model T Ford cars. All of this mechanization throughout U.S. history made the United States the leading industrial nation by the 20th century. |
Germany:
The Industrial Revolution in Germany began in the 1800s when all the German states became unified. Large amounts of coal in Germany caused more steel to be produced, and an advanced system of railroads formed. German industry closely followed and improved upon the ideas, inventions and developments of Britain. Railways became a very important part of German society during the Industrial Revolution. At first, Germany did not have the resources or ability to create a railway system, but in the 1840s the nation started importing the required materials and workers to build railroads, and soon became able to build them themselves. Steel was an important figure in the construction of railroads, and Germany produced its own steel because the cost of buying it from overseas (from the United States) was expensive. In 1869, Alfred Krupp introduced the open-hearth steelmaking process in his in his factory in Essen, Germany, increasing production of steel. The mechanization of industry with the factory system quickly increased in Germany, and many great inventors and innovators helped to modernize technology. Robert Koch discovered a way to easily study bacteria in 1870. In 1874, the German Steel Federation was established. In 1879, Werner von Siemens built the first electric railroad.1885 marked the date when Karl Benz built the first automobile to run on an internal combustion engine, and in 1887, Emil Berliner invented the record player, the precursor to all modern music players. All this advancement helped to bring Germany into the modern world by the 20th century. |
Comparison:
Industrial mechanization in the United States and Germany had many differences, but there were also some similarities. German mechanization occurred fairly independently, whereas mechanization arrived in the United States directly through British thinker such as Samuel Slater and the Schofield brothers. Also, the United States began its Industrial Revolution significantly earlier than Germany, since the United States had a more direct influence from Britain. A similarity between the two nations’ industrial mechanization is the huge impact steel and railroads had on the events. Many of the technological feats we have today, in both countries, would not be possible without advancements in the areas of trains and steel. Finally, both of these nations were dramatically changed by the effects of mechanization on industry. It helped to make both nations even greater powers than they could ever have been before. Key Points:
The 19th century was a time when machines and mechanical labor began to replace human labor. Mechanization essentially caused the Industrial Revolution. The revolution began sometime in the 1800’s when the states of Germany became unified. |