Chapter 11 Key Terms and Important People
Industrial Revolution - A period of rapid growth in using machines for manufacturing and production that began in the mid-1700s.
Textiles - cloth items. How textiles were made were the first important breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution.
Richard Arkwright - Made a large spinning machine called a water frame which sped up the process of making textiles and lowered the prices of them in 1769. Used flowing water as the source of power.
Samuel Slater - Was really a skilled British mechanic, but disguised himself as a farmer to come to the United States to improve the way textiles were manufactured. Teamed up with Smith Brown and William Almy and built the Pawtucket mill.
Technology - The tools used to produce items or to do work. Factories needed better technology because of how much time it took for workers to make and put together pieces.
Eli Whitney - Was an inventor who tried to point that using water-powered machinery would reduce the labor and make it go by faster.
Interchangeable Parts - Parts of machines that are identical. Eli Whitney came up with this idea. Made Machines easier to assemble and broken parts easier to replace.
Mass Production - The efficient production of large numbers of identical goods. Interchangeable parts sped this up.
Rhode Island System - Slater’s strategy of hiring families and dividing the factory work into simple tasks. Slater built houses, provided them with a company store where they could buy necessities, paid workers with credit at the company store.
Francis Cabot Lowell - Businessman from New England. Developed a very different system for mills compared to others.
Lowell System - Based on water-powered textile mills that employed young, unmarried women from local farms. Included a loom that could both spin thread and weave cloth in the same mill. Boarding houses, meals, and rooms for the women.
Trade Unions - Groups that tried to improve pay and working conditions.
Strikes - Staged protests. Workers on strikes refuse to work until employers meet their demands.
Sarah G. Bagley - Founded the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association in 1844 and publicized the struggles of factory laborers.
Transportation Revolution - Period of rapid growth in the speed and convenience of travel because of new methods of transportation.
Robert Fulton - Tested his first steamboat design in France in 1803, then many years later tested the Clermont.
Clermont - First full-sized commercial steamboat. Traveled against the current up the Hudson River without trouble.
Gibbons v. Ogden - Reached the Supreme Court by 1824. The court reinforced the federal government’s authority to regulate trade between the states by ending monopolistic control over waterways in several states.
Peter Cooper - maker of a small but powerful locomotive called the Tom Thumb
Samuel F.B. Morse - perfected the telegraph in 1832
Telegraph - a device that could send information over wires across great distances
Morse code - different combinations of dots and dashes that represent each letter of the alphabet
John Deere - a blacksmith who invented the steel plow in 1837
Cyrus McCormick - developed the mechanical reaper in 1831, which cut down wheat quickly and efficiently
Isaac Singer - made changes to Elias Howe’s sewing machine design and, by 1860, his company was the world’s largest maker of sewing machines
Industrial Revolution - A period of rapid growth in using machines for manufacturing and production that began in the mid-1700s.
Textiles - cloth items. How textiles were made were the first important breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution.
Richard Arkwright - Made a large spinning machine called a water frame which sped up the process of making textiles and lowered the prices of them in 1769. Used flowing water as the source of power.
Samuel Slater - Was really a skilled British mechanic, but disguised himself as a farmer to come to the United States to improve the way textiles were manufactured. Teamed up with Smith Brown and William Almy and built the Pawtucket mill.
Technology - The tools used to produce items or to do work. Factories needed better technology because of how much time it took for workers to make and put together pieces.
Eli Whitney - Was an inventor who tried to point that using water-powered machinery would reduce the labor and make it go by faster.
Interchangeable Parts - Parts of machines that are identical. Eli Whitney came up with this idea. Made Machines easier to assemble and broken parts easier to replace.
Mass Production - The efficient production of large numbers of identical goods. Interchangeable parts sped this up.
Rhode Island System - Slater’s strategy of hiring families and dividing the factory work into simple tasks. Slater built houses, provided them with a company store where they could buy necessities, paid workers with credit at the company store.
Francis Cabot Lowell - Businessman from New England. Developed a very different system for mills compared to others.
Lowell System - Based on water-powered textile mills that employed young, unmarried women from local farms. Included a loom that could both spin thread and weave cloth in the same mill. Boarding houses, meals, and rooms for the women.
Trade Unions - Groups that tried to improve pay and working conditions.
Strikes - Staged protests. Workers on strikes refuse to work until employers meet their demands.
Sarah G. Bagley - Founded the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association in 1844 and publicized the struggles of factory laborers.
Transportation Revolution - Period of rapid growth in the speed and convenience of travel because of new methods of transportation.
Robert Fulton - Tested his first steamboat design in France in 1803, then many years later tested the Clermont.
Clermont - First full-sized commercial steamboat. Traveled against the current up the Hudson River without trouble.
Gibbons v. Ogden - Reached the Supreme Court by 1824. The court reinforced the federal government’s authority to regulate trade between the states by ending monopolistic control over waterways in several states.
Peter Cooper - maker of a small but powerful locomotive called the Tom Thumb
Samuel F.B. Morse - perfected the telegraph in 1832
Telegraph - a device that could send information over wires across great distances
Morse code - different combinations of dots and dashes that represent each letter of the alphabet
John Deere - a blacksmith who invented the steel plow in 1837
Cyrus McCormick - developed the mechanical reaper in 1831, which cut down wheat quickly and efficiently
Isaac Singer - made changes to Elias Howe’s sewing machine design and, by 1860, his company was the world’s largest maker of sewing machines