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William Kelly and Henry Bessemer disocver a new way to process iron ore into steel
The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten. -
Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania
No one belived that "Drake's Folly" would ever be successful, until slowly, at 3 feet a day, the folly finally reached 69 feet and started producing a steady amount of oil. -
Joseph McCoy established a cattle trading station in Kansas
McCoy was a livestock owner who thought that railroads could send meat to populated cities by transporting longhorns and other meats and he also built stockyards which were essentially cow pens. -
National Labor Union is organized
NLU was made to organize skilled and unskilled laborers, farmers, and reformers into a coalition that would pressure Congress to pass a law limiting the workday to eight hours. -
Christopher Sholes invetns the typerwriter
The typewriter was able to produce documents very quickly, was very significant and had great impacts on the society because businesses began to hire women as typists which opened job oppurtunities for women. -
Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads meet at Promontory Point, Utah
This led to the creation of the Union Pacific, which would lay rails west from Omaha, and the Central Pacific, which would start in Sacramento and build east. -
George Westinghouse invents the air brakes
Instead of trains haivng to apply hand brakes on every single train car, the air brake system was invented so that an air compressor would fill the brake pipes up with air which squeezed the brakes and made the train stop -
John D. Rockefeller creates Standard Oil in Ohio
Sooner or later, the Standard Oil business crontrolled about 90% of the US so you could say Rockefeller was quite successful. -
The Great Railroad Strike
Railroad workers from Ohio and Baltimore did a strike against wage cuts because of how many people had to get paid because of the amount of people now working on the country's new best thing, the railroad. -
Edison invents the phonograph
Edison realized, while working on ways to improve the telegraph, that there was a way to record sound, thereby making the phongraph with 2 needles; one for recording and one for playback. -
Terrence Powderly becomes the leader of the Knights of Labor
After joining the Knights of Labor in 1874, Powderly became the grand master workman (the unions highest post) -
Samuel Gompers becomes leader of American Federation of Labor
He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles as well as thorough organization and collective bargaining to secure shorter hours and higher wages. -
Haymarket Square Riot
Basically a riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the slayings of two workers during a strike after a bomb explosion killed 7 police and the bomb thrower was never found but the incident was blamed on labor "radicalism" and resulted in public condemnation to the death of the Knights of Labor. -
The Statue of Liberty is unveiled
The Statue of Liberty Monument was a given to the United States from France to celebrate the friendship the two endured during the American Revolution and has resembled freedom over the years that it has been standing. -
Andrew Carnegie published The Gospel of Wealth
The Gospel of Wealth described the responsibility of promoting good deeds by others by the new upper class of self-made rich. -
Forest Reserve Act passed
The law preserves water resources until forested lands can be opened for settlement and exploitation, but is part of a growing conservation movement to preserve natural resources for future generations. -
Rivers and Harbors Act passed
these laws were passed so that the waters of commerce and trade could be watched constantly and carefully by the army. -
Andrew Carnegie sells U.S. Steel to J.P Morgan for $480 million.
Carnegie wanted to become more involved in philanthropy and ended up giving away most of the money he earned by selling his business. -
Standard Oil is dissolved
Supreme Court shut down standard oil because they came to the conclustion that it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act which said that it banned any formations that would restrict trade, not distinguishing between bad and good trusts.
