Gilded Age Inventions

The 3 most important inventions from the Gilded Age are the telephone, the lightbulb, and the skyscraper. The telephone, created by Alexander Graham Bell in 1875, had the ability to connect two people from a given distance together. Evolving from the human messenger and telegraph, the telephone improved upon those by ameliorating its speed and comprehensibility. As a result of this creation, people, today, can connect to each other from anywhere in the world, thus uniting those could never have otherwise met. The practical light bulb brought electrical lighting to the average American home. Although there were lightbulbs before his time, they were not effective. For example, before Thomas Edison revolutionized the common bulb, light bulbs were,
in essence, large lamps consisting of carbon rides between electrodes in nitrogen-filled glass containers. These lamps failed to be commercialized and, as a result, failed. However, Edison was able to create a light bulb that could efficiently last over 1200 hours. The common light bulb allowed lighting to be both safe and power-efficient—compared to the candle—allowing operations to occur even when there was no natural light. The skyscraper proved itself to be a necessary invention when cities began to face overpopulation. Instead of expanding horizontally, which would have consequently destroyed more fertile land, engineers decided to expand upwards, allowing more people to live in the same planar area. As a result, farming land could persist even as people flocked to the cities during industrialization. All of these inventions allowed for the expansion of work, exchange, and technology. The telephone allowed businessmen to virtually conduct business from faraway places, augmenting the profit a businessman could make. The light bulb permitted tedious work—such as writing, milling, or other dangerous jobs requiring eyesight—to continue effectively past dusk, thus increasing working hours. The construction of the skyscraper forced technology to advance in such a way that building a tower that would not collapse under stress. The skyscraper itself changed the way employees could work by providing new housing, new types of engineering jobs, and new places to live. The most important inventions of the modern era include the first-generation iPod, the first-generation iPhone, and YouTube.
The first generation iPod was one of the first mobile devices that a consumer could carry around comfortably. Before this, the bulky, disc-shaped Sony Walkmen dominated the market, requiring the user to have to go out of his way to purchase a CD and needing to change the CD in the event that he wanted to listen to a different album. Like changing a lens on a DSLR camera, it was impractical and time consuming. Therefore, Steve Jobs created the iPod, a mini personal computer that could hold music on a small device that allowed the user to switch from song to song easily, reducing the weight of the music kit and the time needed to change the song. The iPod also paved the path for the future of all mobile downloading through the creation of iTunes, a service still widely used today. The first generation iPhone was, perhaps, the most revolutionary piece of technology of the 2000s, bringing to the table a microprocessor, a touch screen, an iPod, a camera, a television, a telephone, a web browser, and a calculator all in a singular package. Before this phone, other phones used a trackpad or a stylus as means of interacting with the device. Consequently, losing or breaking the tool resulted in a useless piece of technology, in addition it the bulk of having to carry around another pen only for a phone. Steve Jobs aimed to ameliorate the situation by using a
touch screen, where the finger acted as a stylus, which reduced the bulk and increased the ease of use of most modern devices. Jobs claimed that the iPhone was a “magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” The iPhone created the path to the modern smartphone, some of which are more powerful than some desktop computers. YouTube, the website created by Google Inc., brought homemade media to the masses. With the website, people could finally broadcast their experiences through new media such as videos, music, and cartoons to the whole world. As a result, people become interconnected through relatable videos and the common person had the ability to gain fame and fortune through the creation of well-crafted videos. The website is still in use today, evolving with its users to allow educational videos, uniting the world together as people can learn about other cultures through these videos. The iPod revolutionized the way the economic market expanded: instead of purchasing tangible toys for younger kids, parents or other consumers purchase intangible applications, directing the future of sales into programming. The iPhone remodeled the way people could interact. Texting, for example, became easier and more user-friendly as the consumer had access to a full QWERTY keyboard instead of a T9 keyboard previously on older phones. In addition, the iPhone became the way that businesses and other executives could interact. YouTube entirely remodeled the way that people from around the world exchanged information by providing a platform for people to share what they’ve learned in order to teach a large group of viewers. Moreover, large corporations could use this medium as a method of communicating with their consumers through videos. For example, Samsung recently released the cause of their exploding Note 7 batteries on YouTube. The inventions in the Gilded Age and in the modern era both revolutionized the way that people exchanged information and the direction that the economy was headed.
In both of the time periods, the methods through which people could exchange information were simplified into less time-consuming bits of information. Furthermore, the Gilded Age sparked a wave of industrialization; similarly, the modern era provided a shift towards software-based consumer
market.