Machines & Makers
A machine for separating cotton from its seeds which expanded cotton production and caused an increase in the use of enslaved peoples for agricultural labor on plantations.
What is the Cotton Gin?
A boat used on rivers in the 19th Century, improved by Robert Fulton, that is propelled by a steam engine.
What is a Steam Boat?
Improved machinery like the Cotton Gin, the Steel Plow, and the Mechanical Reaper led to this U.S. Revolution during the 1800s.
What is the Agricultural Revolution?
The change from things made by hand at home known as Cottage industry to a factory system where finished goods are created in high volume in a factory led to this U.S. Revolution between 1800 and 1920.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
The growth of the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean that sparked the term "Manifest Destiny."
What is Westward Expansion?
A multiple-spindle machine for making wool or cotton. It reduced the amount of work needed to produce yarn and thread.
What is the Spinning Jenny?
This network was the first of its kind accredited with connecting the West Coast of the U.S. to the East Coast; meeting at Promontory Summit (Point), Utah on May 10, 1869.
What is the Transcontinental Railroad?
Areas outside of cities and towns, often called the countryside, featuring open spaces, farms, lower population density, and a focus on agriculture or natural landscapes.
What is a Rural area?
A building that processes raw materials into finished goods using machinery.
What is a Factory?
Movement of people from other countries to the United States?
What is Immigration?
The ability to switch out a broken part with an exact replica that is produced by a machine.
What are Interchangeable Parts?
A 360-mile long waterway that made the movement of goods faster and cheaper by allowing farmers to ship goods from the Great Lakes to New York City entirely by water.
What is the Erie Canal?
A machine developed by Cyrus McCormick which cuts and gathers crops when they are ready to be harvest. This machine led to fewer people needed for harvesting.
What is the Mechanical Reaper?
The first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of Steel from Iron. Resulted in steel becoming the dominant material for large construction, including Skyscraper buildings.
What is the Bessemer Process?
Immigrants who fled the potato famine in their country for a better life working in factories and also working on the Transcontinental Railroad.
Who are Irish Immigrants?
An invention by Samuel Morse used for transmitting messages rapidly over a long distance along a wire.
What is a Telegraph?
In 1846, this boundary dispute between the U.S. and Britain was settled with a Treaty given Britain sole possession of the land North of the 49th parallel and the U.S. receiving this territory South of the 49th parallel.
What is Oregon Territory?
A metal development by John Deere that made farming more efficient (doing more with less); it cut the soil at an angle and was pulled by horses.
What is a Steel Plow?
The need for labor in factories leads to this social process whereby people leave rural areas and move to cities which increase in population.
What is Urbanization?
Immigrants who fled their war-torn country to work in cities and on farms mainly in the Midwestern United States.
Who are German Immigrants?
Inventor of the Cotton Gin and Interchangeable Parts.
Who is Eli Whitney?
In 1853, this purchase by the U.S. from Mexico in southern New Mexico and Arizona ensured territorial rights for a southern Transcontinental railroad route to the Pacific Coast.
What is the Gadsden Purchase?
The cutting down of trees for farming or damming a river for irrigation led to modification of the environment to meet the needs of society but a depletion of the countries natural forest led to this process.
What is Deforestation?
Woven fabrics, fibers, cloth or materials used to make clothing or other fabrics.
What are Textiles?
Immigrants who fled an oppressive government and war in their country for the California Gold Rush and to work on the Transcontinental Railroad.
Who are Chinese Immigrants?