Second Industrial Revolution

• 1. The Year 1870 Begins

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  In the year 1870, a quiet shift occurred in the global economy that would reshape human civilization. This period marked the start of what historians now call the Second Industrial Revolution. It followed the First Industrial Revolution which had ended around the middle of the nineteenth century. The era was punctuated by a slowdown in important inventions before this new phase began. Scholars like Patrick Geddes introduced the concept later in his book Cities in Evolution published in 1910. Economists such as Erich Zimmermann used the term in 1951 to describe the rapid scientific discovery and standardization that defined these decades. David Landes standardized scholarly definitions further with an essay in 1966 and his book The Unbound Prometheus released in 1972. Alfred Chandler promoted the idea most intensely between 1918 and 2007. Some scholars still express reservations about using the phrase today. The period generally spans from 1870 until World War I commenced in 1914.

• 2. Steel And Rail Networks

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  James Beaumont Neilson patented the hot blast technique in 1828 at Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland. This method used hot flue gas from a blast furnace to preheat combustion air blown into the furnace. Edward Alfred Cowper developed the Cowper stove in 1857 to solve expansion problems caused by iron heating mediums. Firebrick became the storage medium for high heat production. Robert Forester Mushet made durable rails of steel rather than wrought iron at Darkhill Ironworks in Gloucestershire in 1857. The first commercially available steel rails in the United States were manufactured in 1867 at Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. These rails lasted over ten times longer than iron rails. By the 1880s, 75,000 miles of track had been laid in the U.S., the largest amount anywhere in world history. Steel replaced iron as the standard for railway rail due to its greater strength and durability. Longer lengths of rails could now be rolled without flaws. Heavy locomotives could pull longer trains on these new tracks. The cost of shipping decreased steadily throughout the rest of the century.

• 3. Lighting And Power Systems

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  Sir Joseph Swan supplied about 1,200 incandescent lamps to the Savoy Theatre in Westminster, London in 1881. This was the first theater and public building in the world lit entirely by electricity. Swan's lightbulb had already been used in 1879 to light Mosley Street in Newcastle upon Tyne. The first large scale central distribution supply plant opened at Holborn Viaduct in London in 1882. Sebastian de Ferranti built the first modern power station in Deptford on an unprecedented scale. It generated 800 kilowatts using high voltage alternating current of 10,000 volts. Pearl Street Station later opened in New York City. Frank J. Sprague developed the first successful DC motor in 1886. By 1889, 110 electric street railways were either using his equipment or planning to do so. Household electrification did not become common until the 1920s and then only in cities. Fluorescent lighting was commercially introduced at the 1939 World's Fair. Electrification allowed inexpensive production of electro-chemicals such as aluminium, chlorine, sodium hydroxide, and magnesium.

• 4. Transportation And Engines

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  Francis Pettit Smith discovered a new way of building propellers by accident in 1835. A screw snapped off during testing leaving a fragment shaped like a modern boat propeller. The SS Archimedes became the first steam driven screw. Trials led to a famous tug-of-war competition in 1845 between the screw-driven SS Archimedes and the paddle steamer Rattler. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the Great Britain launched in 1843 as the first modern ship built of metal rather than wood. Karl Benz patented the world's first automobile in 1886. It featured wire wheels with a four-stroke engine designed by himself. Henry Ford built his first car in 1896 and founded Ford Motor Company in 1903. The Model T price declined from $780 in 1910 to $360 in 1916 due to mass production methods. In 1924, 2 million T-Fords were produced and retailed at $290 each. Sir Charles Parsons developed the steam turbine in 1884. His first model generated 7.5 kilowatts of electricity. Rudolf Diesel independently designed the diesel engine in the 1890s using thermodynamic principles.

• 5. Chemistry And Dyes

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  English chemist William Henry Perkin discovered synthetic dye in 1856. He transformed aniline into a crude mixture that produced an intense purple color when extracted with alcohol. Perkin commercialized this new substance as mauveine, the world's first synthetic dye. Factories producing these dyes were constructed across Europe. By 1914, the German chemical industry had become world dominant. BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst were three major firms producing several hundred different dyes. In 1913, eight firms produced almost 90 percent of the world supply of dyestuffs. They sold about 80 percent of their production abroad. Justus von Liebig is considered the father of the fertilizer industry for his discovery of nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient. John Bennet Lawes began experimenting on manure effects on plants growing in pots in 1837. Coprolites found in East Anglia led Fisons and Edward Packard to develop large-scale commercial fertilizer plants at Bramford and Snape in the 1850s. The Birkeland, Eyde process was developed by Kristian Birkeland and Sam Eyde in 1903.

• 6. Management And Accounting

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  A collision in Massachusetts in 1841 led to a call for safety reform within railroad companies. This event triggered reorganization into departments with clear lines of management authority. Telegraph lines were built along railroads to keep track of trains. Railroad accounting became necessary to calculate rates based on cost per ton-mile of freight. Companies needed to track cars that could go missing for months at a time. Frederick Winslow Taylor developed scientific management or Taylorism later in the Second Industrial Revolution. His core principles included replacing rule-of-thumb work methods with those based on scientific study of tasks. Managers applied scientific-management principles to planning while workers performed actual tasks. A collision in Massachusetts in 1841 had forced these changes upon the industry. Centralized expertise in home offices proved insufficient for managing vast trackage. Railroads required expertise available across their entire network to handle daily crises. These innovations helped completely restructure operations of factories and eventually entire segments of the economy.