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111-497: This article about a history-focused magazine is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See tips for writing articles about magazines . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . This article relating to the history of the United States is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Iowa -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . History of

222-634: A Northwest Passage to Asia in 1609. New Netherland was established in 1621 by the company to capitalize on the North American fur trade . Growth was slow at first due to mismanagement by the Dutch and Native American conflicts. After the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans, the land was named New Amsterdam and became the capital of New Netherland. The town rapidly expanded and in

333-469: A conductor carrying a direct current , Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices were the foundation of the practical use of electricity in technology. In 1881, Sir Joseph Swan , inventor of the first feasible incandescent light bulb , supplied about 1,200 Swan incandescent lamps to the Savoy Theatre in

444-527: A 1966 essay and in The Unbound Prometheus (1972) standardized scholarly definitions of the term, which was most intensely promoted by Alfred Chandler (1918–2007). However, some continue to express reservations about its use. In 2003, Landes stressed the importance of new technologies, especially the internal combustion engine , petroleum, new materials and substances, including alloys and chemicals , electricity and communication technologies, such as

555-514: A Catholic haven in 1632. The economy of these two colonies was built entirely on yeoman farmers and planters. The planters established themselves in the Tidewater region of Virginia, establishing massive plantations with slave labor. In 1670, the Province of Carolina was established, and Charleston became the region's great trading port. While Virginia's economy was also based on tobacco, Carolina

666-448: A broad group of tribes. Their most important city was Cahokia , near modern-day St. Louis, Missouri . At its peak in the 12th century, the city had an estimated population of 20,000, larger than the population of London at the time. The entire city was centered around a mound that stood 100 feet (30 m) tall. Cahokia, like many other cities and villages of the time, depended on hunting, foraging, trading, and agriculture, and developed

777-786: A class system with slaves and human sacrifice that was influenced by societies to the south, like the Mayans . In the Southwest , the Anasazi began constructing stone and adobe pueblos around 900 BCE. These apartment-like structures were often built into cliff faces, as seen in the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde . Some grew to be the size of cities, with Pueblo Bonito along the Chaco River in New Mexico once consisting of 800 rooms. The indigenous peoples of

888-588: A dominant commercial center in a few short years. While Quakers populated the city, German immigrants began to flood into the Pennsylvanian hills and forests, while the Scots-Irish pushed into the far western frontier. The overwhelmingly rural Southern Colonies contrasted sharply with the New England and Middle Colonies. After Virginia, the second British colony south of New England was Maryland , established as

999-452: A food source, and later foraging for berries and seeds became an important alternative to hunting. Paleo-Indians in central Mexico were the first in the Americas to farm, around 8,000 BCE. Eventually, the knowledge began to spread northward. By 3,000 BCE, corn was being grown in the valleys of Arizona and New Mexico , followed by primitive irrigation systems and, by 300 BCE, early villages of

1110-410: A four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignition and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. Power was transmitted by means of two roller chains to the rear axle. It was the first automobile entirely designed as such to generate its own power, not simply a motorized-stage coach or horse carriage. Benz began to sell the vehicle, advertising it as

1221-517: A large degree of ethnic and religious diversity. At the same time, the Iroquois of New York, strengthened by years of fur trading with Europeans, formed the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. The last colony in this region was Pennsylvania , established in 1681 by William Penn as a home for religious dissenters, including Quakers , Methodists , and the Amish . The capital of the colony, Philadelphia , became

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1332-403: A practical reality, but the prevailing economic and industrial conditions meant that it would be several decades before transoceanic steamship travel emerged as a viable industry. Highly efficient multiple expansion steam engines began being used on ships, allowing them to carry less coal than freight. The oscillating engine was first built by Aaron Manby and Joseph Maudslay in the 1820s as

1443-434: A steady flow of immigrants, especially teenagers who arrived as indentured servants. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants . Typically, people would sign a contract agreeing to a set term of labor, usually four to seven years, and in return would receive transport to America and a piece of land at the end of their servitude. In some cases, ships' captains received rewards for

1554-500: A substance resembling paraffin wax. In 1850 Young built the first truly commercial oil-works and oil refinery in the world at Bathgate , using oil extracted from locally mined torbanite , shale, and bituminous coal to manufacture naphtha and lubricating oils; paraffin for fuel use and solid paraffin were not sold till 1856. Cable tool drilling was developed in ancient China and was used for drilling brine wells. The salt domes also held natural gas, which some wells produced and which

1665-414: A type of direct-acting engine that was designed to achieve further reductions in engine size and weight. Oscillating engines had the piston rods connected directly to the crankshaft, dispensing with the need for connecting rods. To achieve this aim, the engine cylinders were not immobile as in most engines, but secured in the middle by trunnions which allowed the cylinders themselves to pivot back and forth as

1776-669: Is shown by the fact that production of the Ford Model T used 32,000 machine tools, most of which were powered by electricity. Henry Ford is quoted as saying that mass production would not have been possible without electricity because it allowed placement of machine tools and other equipment in the order of the work flow. The first paper making machine was the Fourdrinier machine , built by Sealy and Henry Fourdrinier , stationers in London. In 1800, Matthias Koops , working in London, investigated

1887-607: The Civil War . The Confederates' defeat in 1865 led to the abolition of slavery . In the subsequent Reconstruction era , the national government emerged much stronger, and gained explicit duty to protect individual rights . White southern Democrats regained their political power in the South in 1877, often using paramilitary suppression of voting and Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy , as well as new state constitutions that legalized racial discrimination. The United States became

1998-514: The Delaware River . Over the following seventeen years, 12 more expeditions brought settlers from the Swedish Empire to New Sweden. The colony established 19 permanent settlements along with many farms, extending into modern-day Maryland , Pennsylvania , and New Jersey . It was incorporated into New Netherland in 1655 after a Dutch invasion from the neighboring New Netherland colony during

2109-540: The First Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance. The Congress called for a boycott of British trade , published a list of rights and grievances , and petitioned the king to rectify those grievances. This appeal had no effect. The Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, 1776. The Declaration of Independence presented arguments in favor of the rights of citizens, stating that all men are created equal , supporting

2220-845: The First Industrial Revolution that began in Britain in the late 18th century that then spread throughout Western Europe. It came to an end with the start of the World War I . While the First Revolution was driven by limited use of steam engines , interchangeable parts and mass production , and was largely water-powered, especially in the United States, the Second was characterized by the build-out of railroads, large-scale iron and steel production, widespread use of machinery in manufacturing, greatly increased use of steam power, widespread use of

2331-848: The Grand Canyon , and the Great Plains . In 1539, Hernando de Soto extensively explored the Southeast, and a year later Francisco Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas in search of gold. Escaped horses from Coronado's party spread over the Great Plains, and the Plains Indians mastered horsemanship within a few generations. Small Spanish settlements eventually grew to become important cities, such as San Antonio , Albuquerque , Tucson , Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The Dutch East India Company sent explorer Henry Hudson to search for

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2442-661: The Hohokam . One of the earlier cultures in the present-day United States was the Clovis culture (9,100 to 8,850 BCE), who are primarily identified by the use of fluted spear points called the Clovis point . The Folsom culture was similar, but is marked by the use of the Folsom point . A later migration around 8,000 BCE included Na-Dene -speaking peoples, who reached the Pacific Northwest by 5,000 BCE. From there, they migrated along

2553-708: The Hopewell tradition , a powerful people who traded tools and goods across a wide territory. They continued the Adena tradition of mound-building and pioneered a trading system called the Hopewell Exchange System, which at its greatest extent ran from the present-day Southeast up to the Canadian side of Lake Ontario . By 500 CE, the Hopewellians had been absorbed into the larger Mississippian culture . The Mississippians were

2664-618: The Industrial Revolution , or those simply seeking adventure and opportunity. Between the late 1610s and the Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts to their American colonies. In some areas, Native Americans taught colonists how to plant and harvest the native crops. In others, they attacked the settlers. Virgin forests provided an ample supply of building material and firewood. Natural inlets and harbors lined

2775-680: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , the United States entered World War II , helping defeat Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the European theater . In the Pacific War , America defeated Imperial Japan after using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers during the Cold War ; the two countries confronted each other indirectly in

2886-638: The Ortoiroid culture , successive generations of native migrations arrived replacing or absorbing local populations. By the year 1000 Arawak people had arrived from South America via the Lesser Antilles ; these settlers would become the Taíno encountered by the Spanish in 1493. Upon European contact a native population between 30,000 and 60,000 was likely, led by a single chief called a Cacique . Colonization resulted in

2997-508: The Osage , Kaw , Ponca , and Omaha peoples. The exact date for the settling of Hawaii is disputed but the first settlement most likely took place between 940 and 1130 CE. Around 1200 CE, Tahitian explorers found and began settling the area as well establishing a new caste system. This marked the rise of the Hawaiian civilization, which would be largely separated from the rest of the world until

3108-578: The Pacific Coast and into the interior and constructed large multi-family dwellings in their villages, which were used only seasonally in the summer to hunt and fish, and in the winter to gather food supplies. Another group, the Oshara tradition people, who lived from 5,500 BCE to 600 CE, were part of the Archaic Southwest . The Adena began constructing large earthwork mounds around 600 BCE. They are

3219-652: The Powhatan attack of 1622 , King James I revoked the Virginia Company's charter and made Virginia a royal colony. New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans fleeing religious persecution. The Pilgrims sailed for Virginia on the Mayflower in 1620, but were knocked off course by a storm and landed at Plymouth , where they agreed to a social contract of rules in the Mayflower Compact . About half died in

3330-530: The Second Northern War . Giovanni da Verrazzano landed in North Carolina in 1524, and was the first European to sail into New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay . In the 1540s, French Huguenots settled at Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville , Florida. In 1565, Spanish forces led by Pedro Menéndez destroyed the settlement and established the first Spanish settlement in what would become

3441-646: The Stamp Act of 1765 , imposing a tax on the colonies without going through the colonial legislatures. Crying " No taxation without representation ", the colonists refused to pay. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a direct action to protest the new tax on tea. Parliament responded the next year with the Intolerable Acts , stripping Massachusetts of its historic right of self-government and putting it under military rule, which sparked outrage and resistance in all thirteen colonies. Patriot leaders from every colony convened

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3552-608: The Technological Revolution , was a phase of rapid scientific discovery , standardisation , mass production and industrialisation from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The First Industrial Revolution , which ended in the middle of the 19th century, was punctuated by a slowdown in important inventions before the Second Industrial Revolution in 1870. Though a number of its events can be traced to earlier innovations in manufacturing, such as

3663-454: The arms race , the Space Race , propaganda campaigns, and proxy wars . In the 1960s, in large part due to the civil rights movement , social reforms enforced the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African Americans. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan 's presidency realigned American politics towards reductions in taxes and regulations. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union

3774-521: The bike boom of the 1890s. Road networks improved greatly in the period, using the Macadam method pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam , and hard surfaced roads were built around the time of the bicycle craze of the 1890s. Modern tarmac was patented by British civil engineer Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1901. German inventor Karl Benz patented the world's first automobile in 1886. It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones) with

3885-567: The clerk , or writer, ceased to be a high-status job. By the 1880s chemical processes for paper manufacture were in use, becoming dominant by 1900. The petroleum industry , both production and refining , began in 1848 with the first oil works in Scotland. The chemist James Young set up a tiny business refining the crude oil in 1848. Young found that by slow distillation he could obtain a number of useful liquids from it, one of which he named "paraffine oil" because at low temperatures it congealed into

3996-624: The federal income tax , direct election of Senators, citizenship for many Indigenous people, alcohol prohibition , and women's suffrage . Initially neutral during World War I , the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, joining the successful Allies . After the prosperous Roaring Twenties , the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression . President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's New Deal programs, including unemployment relief and social security , defined modern American liberalism . Following

4107-616: The potlatch . In present-day upstate New York , the Iroquois formed a confederacy of tribal peoples in the mid-15th century, consisting of the Oneida , Mohawk , Onondaga , Cayuga , and Seneca . Each tribe had seats in a group of 50 sachem chiefs . It has been suggested that their culture contributed to political thinking during the development of the United States government. The Iroquois were powerful, waging war with many neighboring tribes, and later, Europeans. As their territory expanded, smaller tribes were forced further west, including

4218-582: The telegraph , telephone, and radio. One author has called the period from 1867 to 1914, during which most of the great innovations were developed, "The Age of Synergy " since the inventions and innovations were engineering and science-based . A synergy between iron and steel, railroads and coal developed at the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution. Railroads allowed cheap transportation of materials and products, which in turn led to cheap rails to build more roads. Railroads also benefited from cheap coal for their steam locomotives. This synergy led to

4329-451: The telegraph , use of petroleum and the beginning of electrification . It also was the period during which modern organizational methods for operating large-scale businesses over vast areas came into use. The concept was introduced by Patrick Geddes , Cities in Evolution (1910), and was being used by economists such as Erich Zimmermann (1951), but David Landes ' use of the term in

4440-525: The 1760s, the thirteen British colonies were established. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on slave labor , enslaving millions from Africa . After defeating France , the British Parliament imposed a series of taxes; resistance to these taxes, especially the Boston Tea Party in 1773, led to Parliament issuing the Intolerable Acts designed to end self-government. In 1776,

4551-490: The 1860s meant that railways could finally be made from steel at a competitive cost. Being a much more durable material, steel steadily replaced iron as the standard for railway rail, and due to its greater strength, longer lengths of rails could now be rolled. Wrought iron was soft and contained flaws caused by included dross . Iron rails could also not support heavy locomotives and were damaged by hammer blow . The first to make durable rails of steel rather than wrought iron

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4662-464: The 1890s and for households during the 1920s. Gasoline was an unwanted byproduct of oil refining until automobiles were mass-produced after 1914, and gasoline shortages appeared during World War I. The invention of the Burton process for thermal cracking doubled the yield of gasoline, which helped alleviate the shortages. Synthetic dye was discovered by English chemist William Henry Perkin in 1856. At

4773-734: The 20th century with early factory electrification and the production line ; it ended at the beginning of World War I. Starting in 1947, the Information Age is sometimes also called the Third Industrial Revolution. The Second Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid industrial development, primarily in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, but also in France, the Low Countries , Italy and Japan. It followed on from

4884-520: The American colonies had a slightly different governmental structure. Typically, a colony was ruled by a governor appointed from London who controlled the executive administration and relied upon a locally elected legislature to vote on taxes and make laws. By the 18th century, the American colonies were growing very rapidly as a result of low death rates along with ample supplies of land and food. The colonies were richer than most parts of Britain, and attracted

4995-768: The Americas . The prevailing theory proposes that people from Eurasia followed game across Beringia , a land bridge that connected Siberia to present-day Alaska during the Ice Age , and then spread southward. This migration may have begun as early as 30,000 years ago and continued to about 10,000 years ago, when the land bridge became submerged by the rising sea level. These early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians , soon diversified into hundreds of culturally distinct groups. By 10,000 BCE, humans were relatively well-established throughout North America. Originally, Paleo-Indians hunted Ice Age megafauna like mammoths , but as they began to go extinct, people turned instead to bison as

5106-418: The Americas. However, the effects of new Eurasian diseases carried by the colonists, especially smallpox and measles, were much worse for the Native Americans, as they had no immunity to them. They suffered epidemics and died in very large numbers, usually before large-scale European settlement began. Their societies were disrupted by the scale of deaths. Spanish explorers were the first Europeans, after

5217-652: The Awakening added a new emphasis on divine outpourings of the Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted new believers with an intense love for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and carried the newly created evangelicalism into the early republic, setting the stage for the Second Great Awakening in the late 1790s. In the early stages, evangelicals in the South, such as Methodists and Baptists , preached for religious freedom and abolition of slavery. Each of

5328-528: The City of Westminster, London, which was the first theatre, and the first public building in the world, to be lit entirely by electricity. Swan's lightbulb had already been used in 1879 to light Mosley Street, in Newcastle upon Tyne , the first electrical street lighting installation in the world. This set the stage for the electrification of industry and the home. The first large scale central distribution supply plant

5439-604: The New World, settled the strip of land along the east coast in the 1600s. The first British colony in North America was established at Roanoke by Walter Raleigh in 1585, but failed. It would be twenty years before another attempt. The early British colonies were established by private groups seeking profit, and were marked by starvation, disease, and Native American attacks. Many immigrants were people seeking religious freedom or escaping political oppression, peasants displaced by

5550-551: The New World. Captain John Smith held the fledgling Jamestown together in the first year, and the colony descended into anarchy and nearly failed when he returned to England two years later. John Rolfe began experimenting with tobacco from the West Indies in 1612, and by 1614 the first shipment arrived in London. It became Virginia's chief source of revenue within a decade. In 1624, after years of disease and Indian attacks, including

5661-472: The Norse Vinland sagas . The strongest archaeological evidence of the existence of Norse settlements in America is located in Canada; there is significant scholarly debate as to whether Norse explorers also made landfall in New England . Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and took back maize, turkeys, tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and squash to Europe. Many explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in

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5772-401: The Norse, to reach the present-day United States, after the voyages of Christopher Columbus (beginning in 1492) established possessions in the Caribbean , including the modern-day U.S. territories of Puerto Rico , and parts of the U.S. Virgin Islands . Juan Ponce de León landed in Florida in 1513. Spanish expeditions quickly reached the Appalachian Mountains , the Mississippi River ,

5883-410: The Pacific Northwest were likely the most affluent Native Americans. Many distinct cultural groups and political entities developed there, but they all shared certain beliefs, traditions, and practices, such as the centrality of salmon as a resource and spiritual symbol. Permanent villages began to develop in this region as early as 1,000 BCE, and these communities celebrated by the gift-giving feast of

5994-438: The U. S. The first primary product was kerosene for lamps and heaters. Similar developments around Baku fed the European market. Kerosene lighting was much more efficient and less expensive than vegetable oils, tallow and whale oil. Although town gas lighting was available in some cities, kerosene produced a brighter light until the invention of the gas mantle . Both were replaced by electricity for street lighting following

6105-409: The United States This is an accepted version of this page The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. After European colonization of North America began in the late 15th century, wars and epidemics decimated Indigenous societies. Starting in 1585 , the British colonized the Atlantic Coast , and by

6216-400: The United States declared its independence . Led by General George Washington , it won the Revolutionary War in 1783. The Constitution was adopted in 1789, and a Bill of Rights was added in 1791 to guarantee inalienable rights . Washington, the first president , and his adviser Alexander Hamilton created a strong central government. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of

6327-579: The United States — St. Augustine . Most French lived in Quebec and Acadia (modern Canada), but far-reaching trade relationships with Native Americans throughout the Great Lakes and Midwest spread their influence. French colonists in small villages along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers lived in farming communities that served as a grain source for Gulf Coast settlements. The French established plantations in Louisiana along with settling New Orleans , Mobile and Biloxi . The English, drawn in by Francis Drake 's raids on Spanish treasure ships leaving

6438-436: The arrival of the British 600 years later. Europeans under the British explorer James Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and within five years of contact, European military technology would help Kamehameha I conquer most of the island group, and eventually unify the islands for the first time, establishing the Hawaiian Kingdom . The island of Puerto Rico has been settled for at least 4,000 years. Starting with

6549-512: The basis for the accelerated construction of railways throughout the world in the late nineteenth century. The first commercially available steel rails in the US were manufactured in 1867 at the Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, Pennsylvania . Steel rails lasted over ten times longer than did iron, and with the falling cost of steel, heavier weight rails were used. This allowed the use of more powerful locomotives, which could pull longer trains, and longer rail cars, all of which greatly increased

6660-491: The benefit of the mother country in a policy known as mercantilism . Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that used forms of unfree labor , such as slavery and indentured servitude. The British colonies were also marked by a policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws, known as salutary neglect . This permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its European founders. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of

6771-450: The birth of the modern ship as disparate technological advances came together. The screw propeller was introduced in 1835 by Francis Pettit Smith who discovered a new way of building propellers by accident. Up to that time, propellers were literally screws, of considerable length. But during the testing of a boat propelled by one, the screw snapped off, leaving a fragment shaped much like a modern boat propeller. The boat moved faster with

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6882-427: The blast furnace as it greatly reduced the fuel consumption for making pig iron, and was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution . Falling costs for producing wrought iron coincided with the emergence of the railway in the 1830s. The early technique of hot blast used iron for the regenerative heating medium. Iron caused problems with expansion and contraction, which stressed

6993-400: The broken propeller. The superiority of screw against paddles was taken up by navies. Trials with Smith's SS Archimedes , the first steam driven screw, led to the famous tug-of-war competition in 1845 between the screw-driven HMS  Rattler and the paddle steamer HMS  Alecto ; the former pulling the latter backward at 2.5 knots (4.6 km/h). The first seagoing iron steamboat

7104-410: The children of slave women were born slaves ( partus sequitur ventrem ). By the 1770s African slaves comprised a fifth of the American population. The question of independence from Britain did not arise as long as the colonies needed British military support against the French and Spanish powers. Those threats were gone by 1765. However, London continued to regard the American colonies as existing for

7215-430: The coast, providing easy ports for essential trade with Europe. Settlements remained close to the coast due to this as well as Native American resistance and the Appalachian Mountains in the interior. The first successful English colony, Jamestown , was established by the Virginia Company in 1607 on the James River in Virginia . The colonists were preoccupied with the search for gold and were ill-equipped for life in

7326-434: The colonies, as reflected in the Albany Congress and symbolized by Benjamin Franklin 's call for the colonies to " Join, or Die ." King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 , to organize the new North American empire and protect the Native Americans from colonial expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains. Strains developed in the relations between the colonists and the Crown. The British Parliament passed

7437-427: The colony of Providence Plantations , later Rhode Island , on the basis of freedom of religion. Other colonists established settlements in the Connecticut River Valley, and on the coasts of present-day New Hampshire and Maine . Native American attacks continued, with the most significant occurring in the 1637 Pequot War and the 1675 King Philip's War . New England became a center of commerce and industry due to

7548-431: The country. Encouraged by available, inexpensive land and the notion of manifest destiny , the country expanded to the Pacific Coast . The resulting expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial, and fueled political and constitutional battles. After the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 , the southern states seceded from the Union to form the pro-slavery Confederate States of America , and started

7659-418: The crankshaft rotated, hence the term oscillating . It was John Penn , engineer for the Royal Navy who perfected the oscillating engine. One of his earliest engines was the grasshopper beam engine . In 1844 he replaced the engines of the Admiralty yacht, HMS  Black Eagle with oscillating engines of double the power, without increasing either the weight or space occupied, an achievement which broke

7770-402: The decimation of the local inhabitants due to the harsh Encomienda system and epidemics caused by Old World diseases. Puerto Rico would remain a part of Spain until American annexation in 1898. The earliest recorded European mention of America is in a treatise by the medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen , circa 1075, where it is referred to as Vinland . It is also extensively referred to in

7881-424: The delivery of poor migrants, and so extravagant promises and kidnapping were common. The first African slaves arrived in 1619. Initially regarded as indentured servants who could buy their freedom, the institution of slavery began to harden and the involuntary servitude became lifelong as the demand for labor on tobacco and rice plantations grew in the 1660s. Slavery became identified with brown skin color, and

7992-512: The earliest known people to have been Mound Builders , however, there are mounds in the United States that predate this culture. Watson Brake is an 11-mound complex in Louisiana that dates to 3,500 BCE, and nearby Poverty Point , built by the Poverty Point culture , is an earthwork complex that dates to 1,700 BCE. These mounds likely served a religious purpose. The Adenans were absorbed into

8103-472: The establishment of a machine tool industry, the development of methods for manufacturing interchangeable parts , as well as the invention of the Bessemer process and open hearth furnace to produce steel, later developments heralded the Second Industrial Revolution, which is generally dated between 1870 and 1914 (the beginning of World War I ). Advancements in manufacturing and production technology enabled

8214-469: The first mass-produced, high-pressure and high-revolution marine engines. The revolution in naval design led to the first modern battleships in the 1870s, evolved from the ironclad design of the 1860s. The Devastation -class turret ships were built for the British Royal Navy as the first class of ocean-going capital ship that did not carry sails , and the first whose entire main armament

8325-509: The first winter. Like Jamestown, Plymouth suffered from disease and starvation, but local Wampanoag Indians taught the colonists how to farm maize. Plymouth was followed by the Puritans and Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. They maintained a charter for self-government separate from England, and elected founder John Winthrop as governor. Roger Williams opposed Winthrop's treatment of Native Americans and religious intolerance, and established

8436-454: The heat and pollution caused by gas lighting, and reducing the fire hazard to the extent that the cost of electricity for lighting was often offset by the reduction in fire insurance premiums. Frank J. Sprague developed the first successful DC motor in 1886. By 1889 110 electric street railways were either using his equipment or in planning. The electric street railway became a major infrastructure before 1920. The AC motor ( Induction motor )

8547-548: The idea of using wood to make paper, and began his printing business a year later. However, his enterprise was unsuccessful due to the prohibitive cost at the time. It was in the 1840s, that Charles Fenerty in Nova Scotia and Friedrich Gottlob Keller in Saxony both invented a successful machine which extracted the fibres from wood (as with rags) and from it, made paper. This started a new era for paper making , and, together with

8658-505: The invention of the fountain pen and the mass-produced pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary printing press , wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19th century economy and society in industrialized countries. With the introduction of cheaper paper, schoolbooks, fiction, non-fiction, and newspapers became gradually available by 1900. Cheap wood based paper also allowed keeping personal diaries or writing letters and so, by 1850,

8769-523: The iron and caused failure. Edward Alfred Cowper developed the Cowper stove in 1857. This stove used firebrick as a storage medium, solving the expansion and cracking problem. The Cowper stove was also capable of producing high heat, which resulted in very high throughput of blast furnaces. The Cowper stove is still used in today's blast furnaces. With the greatly reduced cost of producing pig iron with coke using hot blast, demand grew dramatically and so did

8880-519: The keel's strength. In addition to its steam-powered paddle wheels , the ship carried four masts for sails. Brunel followed this up with the Great Britain , launched in 1843 and considered the first modern ship built of metal rather than wood, powered by an engine rather than wind or oars, and driven by propeller rather than paddle wheel. Brunel's vision and engineering innovations made the building of large-scale, propeller-driven, all-metal steamships

8991-618: The larger Seven Years' War , was a watershed event in the political development of the colonies. The influence of the French and Native Americans, the main rivals of the British Crown in the colonies and Canada, was significantly reduced and the territory of the Thirteen Colonies expanded into New France in Canada and Louisiana . The war effort also resulted in greater political integration of

9102-423: The laying of 75,000 miles of track in the U.S. in the 1880s, the largest amount anywhere in world history. The hot blast technique, in which the hot flue gas from a blast furnace is used to preheat combustion air blown into a blast furnace , was invented and patented by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828 at Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland. Hot blast was the single most important advance in fuel efficiency of

9213-644: The leading steel making process by the early 20th century. The availability of cheap steel allowed building larger bridges, railroads, skyscrapers, and ships. Other important steel products—also made using the open hearth process—were steel cable , steel rod and sheet steel which enabled large, high-pressure boilers and high-tensile strength steel for machinery which enabled much more powerful engines, gears and axles than were previously possible. With large amounts of steel it became possible to build much more powerful guns and carriages, tanks, armored fighting vehicles and naval ships. The increase in steel production from

9324-532: The mid-1600s it became an important trading center. Despite being Calvinists and building the Reformed Church in America , the Dutch were tolerant of other religions and cultures and traded with the Iroquois to the north. The colony served as a barrier to British expansion from New England , and as a result a series of wars were fought. The colony was taken over by Britain as New York in 1664 and its capital

9435-520: The modern screw-cutting lathe made interchangeable V-thread machine screws a practical commodity. In 1841, Joseph Whitworth created a design that, through its adoption by many British railway companies, became the world's first national machine tool standard called British Standard Whitworth . During the 1840s through 1860s, this standard was often used in the United States and Canada as well, in addition to myriad intra- and inter-company standards. The importance of machine tools to mass production

9546-406: The naval supply dominance of Boulton & Watt and Maudslay, Son & Field . Penn also introduced the trunk engine for driving screw propellers in vessels of war. HMS  Encounter (1846) and HMS  Arrogant (1848) were the first ships to be fitted with such engines and such was their efficacy that by the time of Penn's death in 1878, the engines had been fitted in 230 ships and were

9657-409: The need to stop to clean them on long sea journeys. The Great Western , built by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel , was the longest ship in the world at 236 ft (72 m) with a 250-foot (76 m) keel and was the first to prove that transatlantic steamship services were viable. The ship was constructed mainly from wood, but Brunel added bolts and iron diagonal reinforcements to maintain

9768-513: The new " mauveine ", and commercialized it as the world's first synthetic dye. After the discovery of mauveine, many new aniline dyes appeared (some discovered by Perkin himself), and factories producing them were constructed across Europe. Towards the end of the century, Perkin and other British companies found their research and development efforts increasingly eclipsed by the German chemical industry which became world dominant by 1914. This era saw

9879-619: The onset of the First Industrial Revolution . The increase in mechanization required more metal parts, which were usually made of cast iron or wrought iron —and hand working lacked precision and was a slow and expensive process. One of the first machine tools was John Wilkinson 's boring machine, that bored a precise hole in James Watt 's first steam engine in 1774. Advances in the accuracy of machine tools can be traced to Henry Maudslay and refined by Joseph Whitworth . Standardization of screw threads began with Henry Maudslay around 1800, when

9990-497: The poor, mountainous soil making agriculture difficult. Rivers were harnessed to power grain mills and sawmills, and the numerous harbors facilitated trade. Tight-knit villages developed around these industrial centers, and Boston became one of America's most important ports. In the 1660s, the Middle Colonies of New York , New Jersey , and Delaware were established in the former Dutch New Netherland, and were characterized by

10101-406: The productivity of railroads. Rail became the dominant form of transport infrastructure throughout the industrialized world, producing a steady decrease in the cost of shipping seen for the rest of the century. The theoretical and practical basis for the harnessing of electric power was laid by the scientist and experimentalist Michael Faraday . Through his research on the magnetic field around

10212-514: The rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness , and demanding the consent of the governed . The Founding Fathers were guided by the ideology of republicanism , rejecting the monarchism of Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Congress on July 4. This date has since been commemorated as Independence Day . Second Industrial Revolution The Second Industrial Revolution , also known as

10323-406: The size of blast furnaces. The Bessemer process , invented by Sir Henry Bessemer , allowed the mass-production of steel, increasing the scale and speed of production of this vital material, and decreasing the labor requirements. The key principle was the removal of excess carbon and other impurities from pig iron by oxidation with air blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises

10434-582: The temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten. The "acid" Bessemer process had a serious limitation in that it required relatively scarce hematite ore which is low in phosphorus. Sidney Gilchrist Thomas developed a more sophisticated process to eliminate the phosphorus from iron. Collaborating with his cousin, Percy Gilchrist a chemist at the Blaenavon Ironworks , Wales , he patented his process in 1878; Bolckow Vaughan & Co. in Yorkshire

10545-411: The time, chemistry was still in a quite primitive state; it was still a difficult proposition to determine the arrangement of the elements in compounds and chemical industry was still in its infancy. Perkin's accidental discovery was that aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture which when extracted with alcohol produced a substance with an intense purple colour. He scaled up production of

10656-550: The tyre's first ever races in Ireland and then England. Dunlop's development of the pneumatic tyre arrived at a crucial time in the development of road transport and commercial production began in late 1890. The modern bicycle was designed by the English engineer Harry John Lawson in 1876, although it was John Kemp Starley who produced the first commercially successful safety bicycle a few years later. Its popularity soon grew, causing

10767-529: The widespread adoption of technological systems such as telegraph and railroad networks, gas and water supply , and sewage systems , which had earlier been limited to a few select cities. The enormous expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented movement of people and ideas, which culminated in a new wave of globalization . In the same time period, new technological systems were introduced, most significantly electrical power and telephones. The Second Industrial Revolution continued into

10878-465: The world's leading industrial power in the 20th century, largely due to entrepreneurship, industrialization , and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers . A national railroad network was completed, and large-scale mines and factories were established. Dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency, and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement , leading to reforms including

10989-499: Was Robert Forester Mushet at the Darkhill Ironworks , Gloucestershire in 1857. The first of Mushet's steel rails was sent to Derby Midland railway station . The rails were laid at part of the station approach where the iron rails had to be renewed at least every six months, and occasionally every three. Six years later, in 1863, the rail seemed as perfect as ever, although some 700 trains had passed over it daily. This provided

11100-570: Was built by Horseley Ironworks and named the Aaron Manby . It also used an innovative oscillating engine for power. The boat was built at Tipton using temporary bolts, disassembled for transportation to London, and reassembled on the Thames in 1822, this time using permanent rivets. Other technological developments followed, including the invention of the surface condenser , which allowed boilers to run on purified water rather than salt water, eliminating

11211-445: Was developed in the 1890s and soon began to be used in the electrification of industry. 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 also allowed the inexpensive production of electro-chemicals , such as aluminium, chlorine, sodium hydroxide, and magnesium. The use of machine tools began with

11322-669: Was dissolved in 1991 , leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower. Foreign policy after the Cold War has often focused on many conflicts in the Middle East , especially after the September 11 attacks . In the 21st century, the country was negatively affected by the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic . It is not definitively known how or when Native Americans first settled

11433-557: Was more diversified, exporting rice, indigo, and lumber as well. In 1712, it was divided in two, creating North and South Carolina . The Georgia Colony was established by James Oglethorpe in 1732 as a border to Spanish Florida and a reform colony for former prisoners and the poor. Religiosity expanded greatly after the First Great Awakening , a religious revival in the 1740s led by preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield . American Evangelicals affected by

11544-504: Was mounted on top of the hull rather than inside it. The vulcanization of rubber, by American Charles Goodyear and Englishman Thomas Hancock in the 1840s paved the way for a growing rubber industry, especially the manufacture of rubber tyres John Boyd Dunlop developed the first practical pneumatic tyre in 1887 in South Belfast. Willie Hume demonstrated the supremacy of Dunlop's newly invented pneumatic tyres in 1889, winning

11655-520: Was opened at Holborn Viaduct in London in 1882 and later at Pearl Street Station in New York City. The first modern power station in the world was built by the English electrical engineer Sebastian de Ferranti at Deptford . Built on an unprecedented scale and pioneering the use of high voltage (10,000V) alternating current , it generated 800 kilowatts and supplied central London. On its completion in 1891 it supplied high-voltage AC power that

11766-733: Was renamed New York City. In the early years of the Swedish Empire , Swedish, Dutch, and German stockholders formed the New Sweden Company to trade furs and tobacco in North America. The company's first expedition was led by Peter Minuit , who had been governor of New Netherland from 1626 to 1631, and landed in Delaware Bay in March 1638. The settlers founded Fort Christina at the site of modern-day Wilmington, Delaware , and made treaties with Indigenous peoples for land ownership on both sides of

11877-554: Was the Siemens–Martin process . Sir Charles William Siemens developed his regenerative furnace in the 1850s, for which he claimed in 1857 to able to recover enough heat to save 70–80% of the fuel. The furnace operated at a high temperature by using regenerative preheating of fuel and air for combustion . Through this method, an open-hearth furnace can reach temperatures high enough to melt steel, but Siemens did not initially use it in that manner. French engineer Pierre-Émile Martin

11988-602: Was the first company to use his patented process. His process was especially valuable on the continent of Europe, where the proportion of phosphoric iron was much greater than in England, and both in Belgium and in Germany the name of the inventor became more widely known than in his own country. In America, although non-phosphoric iron largely predominated, an immense interest was taken in the invention. The next great advance in steel making

12099-576: Was the first to take out a license for the Siemens furnace and apply it to the production of steel in 1865. The Siemens–Martin process complemented rather than replaced the Bessemer process . Its main advantages were that it did not expose the steel to excessive nitrogen (which would cause the steel to become brittle), it was easier to control, and that it permitted the melting and refining of large amounts of scrap steel, lowering steel production costs and recycling an otherwise troublesome waste material. It became

12210-519: Was then "stepped down" with transformers for consumer use on each street. Electrification allowed the final major developments in manufacturing methods of the Second Industrial Revolution, namely the assembly line and mass production . Electrification was called "the most important engineering achievement of the 20th century" by the National Academy of Engineering . Electric lighting in factories greatly improved working conditions, eliminating

12321-475: Was used for evaporation of the brine. Chinese well drilling technology was introduced to Europe in 1828. Although there were many efforts in the mid-19th century to drill for oil, Edwin Drake 's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is considered the first "modern oil well". Drake's well touched off a major boom in oil production in the United States. Drake learned of cable tool drilling from Chinese laborers in

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