New Technologies & World Economy

1850-1900 AP World History

Chapter 26a

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Railroad Steamboat

Transatlantic cable Newspaper

The Communication Revolution

Railroads By 1850 the first railroads had proved so

successful that every industrializing country began to build railroad lines. Railroad building in Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Russia, Japan, and especially in the United States fueled a tremendous expansion in the world’s rail networks from 1850 to 1900.

Railroads consumed huge amounts of land and timber for ties and bridges. Throughout the world, railroads opened new land to agriculture, mining, and other human exploitation of natural resources.

Deforestation but opened new land to agriculture, mining and exploitation of natural resources

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Railway Development in

Europe

⇐1840

⇐1850

5

Railway Development in Europe

1880

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Railway Construction in India 1853-1931

India, 1877

Much more food went on the world market…

India, 1877

and it was often shipped to where it got the highest price,

not to where it was needed most

Japan European or American engineers built the

railroads of Africa, Asia and Latin America with equipment imported from the West

In 1855, a year after Commodore Perry’s visit to Japan, Tanaka Hisashige built a model steam train

In 1870s, the Japanese government hired British engineers to build the first line from Tokyo to Yokohama and had them train local engineers

Steamships and Telegraph Cables

Shipbuilding developments included the use of iron (and then steel) for hulls, propellers, and more efficient engines.

Shipping lines also used the growing system of submarine telegraph cables in order to coordinate the movements of their ships around the globe.

Freighters also increased in size and number

Calcutta, India 1850-1900

Submarine telegraph cables France and Britain wished to improve

communications with distant colonies

Initial efforts in 1850s failed to lay a cable across the Atlantic but laid in 1866

By the turn of the century, cables connected every country and almost every inhabited island

The Steel Industries

Steel is an especially hard and elastic form of iron that could be made only in small quantities by skilled blacksmiths before the 18th century

Swords, knives, axes

1880 Crosses the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn

Communications When transoceanic cables were laid, the time it took to

get a message from one side of the planet to the other was literally reduced from months to minutes.

The invention of the telephone in 1876 made such communication more personal and accessible to the individual.

1896, Marconi's invention of the wireless radio allowed a message to be broadcast to millions of people simultaneously without having to be directly linked by wire to each receiver.

The world was effectively becoming a much smaller place.

Medical Frenchman Louis Pasteur and the Prussian Robert

Koch of germ theory, the idea that microbes or germs cause disease.

1st it gave doctors a direction in which to focus their searches for the causes of various diseases. One by one, vaccines and treatments were found for such deadly sicknesses as malaria, tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, bubonic plague, and typhoid.

2nd it spawned a public health movement that provided covered sewers, clean water, and an overall more sanitary urban environment.

3rd it led to aseptic procedure, where surgeons practiced their art in a sterile environment, dramatically reducing the chances of a patient contracting further infection on the operating table.

Add to this the use of ether as an anesthetic since the 1840's and transfusions and blood typing to compensate for blood loss during surgery, and patients had an excellent chance of survival.

Life expectancy rose by an unprecedented 15 years or more during the19th century.

Electricity In the 1870s inventors devised efficient

generators that turned mechanical energy into electricity that could be used to power arc lamps, incandescent lamps, streetcars, subways, and electric motors for industry.

Electricity helped to alleviate the urban pollution caused by horse-drawn vehicles.

Inventions For agriculture, mechanical reapers and combines, steam

tractors, hybrid crop strains, and chemical fertilizers

Chemistry led to a thriving chemical industry, which produced soaps, alkalis, bleaches, dyes, vegetable oils, and a vast number of other products.

New building materials were used. Formula for concrete was rediscovered. Skyscrapers

Elevator in 1852 by Elisha Otis

Life made easier or more interesting: refrigeration, cameras, movies, and record players

Chemical Industries Until late 18th Century – chemicals produced in small

amounts in workshops

The 19th century brought large-scale manufacture of chemicals and the invention of synthetic dyes and other new organic chemicals.

19th century advances in explosives (including Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite) had significant effects on both civil engineering and on the development of more powerful and more accurate firearms.

The complexity of industrial chemistry made it one of the first fields in which science and technology interacted on a daily basis

Thomas Edison He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb

World Trade and Finance The growth of trade and close connections

between the industrial economies of Western Europe and North America brought greater prosperity to these areas, but it also made them more vulnerable to swings in the business cycle.

The non-industrial areas were even more vulnerable to swings in the business cycle because they depended on the export of raw materials that could often be replaced by synthetics or for which the industrial nations could develop new sources of supply.

World trade expanded tenfold

World Trade 1850-1900 Cost of freight dropped between 50 and 95 percent Now, even cheap and heavy products were shipped

around the world Growth of trade and close connections between the

industrial economies of Western Europe and the industrial economies of Western Europe and North America brought greater prosperity to North America brought greater prosperity to these areas. Made them more vulnerable to swings in the

business. Main causes of this = financial power of Great Britain.

Cotton exports from agrarian economies to industrial economies

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U.S.A.

Egypt India

Russia

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Textile exports from industrial to agrarian economies

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The New Power Balance, 1850-1900 Inventions of the time: • Railroads: by 1915 the U.S. had the largest in the world by far—they opened up new lands to people

• railroads were also used in unindustrialized nations to transport raw materials

• Ocean Shipping: more efficient, powerful engines; increased size of ships to carry more freight, steel replaced wood, propellers replaced paddle wheels

• Submarine telegraph cables: by 1900 connected all countries and “annihilated time and space”

• Steel: made cheaper by Henry Bessemer (1/10 cost)

• better than iron because it is both hard and elastic

The New Power Balance, 1850-1900 Inventions of the time (cont’d): • Chemical dyes: hurt tropical nations who used to produce the most indigo (India)

• Explosives: the invention of nitrogylcerin was important for making explosives used in mining, railroad building, and weapons

• Electricity: electric current was at first costly and used sparingly, then was improved and mostly used for lighting after that

• Germany had the most advanced scientific institutions and had become the leading producer of dyes, drugs, fertilizers…

• Economies became closely intertwined as world trade grew, causing booms and depressions in the business cycle.

The New Power Balance, 1850-1900

Industrial Europe: • A big increase in Europeans moving overseas was due partially to a lower death rate

• Great Britain controlled most of the world’s trade and finances by 1900

• Cities changed: railroads with regular schedules brought food and commuters, police and fire departments were created, city planning became more common, and improved sanitation/lower death rates

• Middle class: exhibited wealth in fine house, servants, and elegant entertainment

Innovation and Technology in the 19th Century

Steam and Electricity

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