Throughout the late 1800’s an amazing thing began to happen. America was growing, and growing exponentially. “From 1860 to 1900, the U.S. population grew from 31.5 million …show more content…
Cities such as Denver saw a rise of over one hundred thousand people between the years 1880-1890 (pbslearningmedia.org, 2010). The extreme rise in population can be accredited to other countries immigrating into the United States. While some countries around the world were struggling, America was growing fast. Many countries realized that America was booming, and other societies wanted to be a part of that. Around fourteen million people immigrated to the United States during this period (schoolworld.com, 2017). America was quickly becoming a melting pot full of many different cultures. With the raise in population from immigration, this brought on various types of specialized skills that assisted in inventions and technical advances.
The extreme hike in population generated many types of traits that assisted tremendously with expanding America and bringing forth new technical advances. Prior to the 1860’s steel was very hard to come by due to the price to make it. It required huge amounts of coal to produce. Henry Bessemer and William Kelly created a new way to produce steel that used less than one-seventh of coal known as the Bessemer steel process (schoolworld.com, 2017). Because these men created a new way to produce steel, Americans could build and grow at a cheaper rate than …show more content…
While America’s infrastructure was building quickly, it required a need to ease the process of producing goods. This lead to the power-generation era. During the 1870’s inventors were hard at work designing and implementing ways to produce power. With the invention of Generators, it motivated others to expand upon power. In 1867, Thomas Edison played a vital role in working with power. “Edison’s laboratory invented so many things that Edison received more than 1,000 U.S. patents, more than any other individual inventor” (schoolworld.com, 2017). Among these many inventions, he created the first safe and fully functioning light bulb. This lead to a system that allowed buildings to have functioning power, which assisted in better workflow. Additionally, his inventions accelerated the path for other vital