The American Civil War introduced many new technological innovations, but above all, the need to produce large amounts of material for the war encouraged the development of more sophisticated production techniques. Yet in many ways, the technology evident during the war was largely transitional. Not until the postbellum period, when engineering and hard science became professionalized and studied in a systematic way at the university level, did the great explosion in technological advancement take place.
Perhaps no innovation was more telling than the development of high quality and inexpensive steel. Before the late nineteenth century, steel was a craft. It was produced in small quantities and was expensive - reserved for only the most important applications. Iron production was equally primitive. This furnace would not have been uncommon in the production of Civil War Era pig iron. Yet twenty years down the road, thanks to the proliferation of the Bessemer Process, steel made giant leaps forward to the point that a steel mill looked like Andrew Carnegie's Edgar Thompson works or the Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, Alabama. Its widespread use revolutionized American life.
Perhaps nowhere was the impact of steel greater than on transportation.
The following images and links will help us think about the impact of steel on naval technology. This cistern at the Hermann Grima house in New Orleans is actually a pretty good example of how antebellum boilers were constructed.
When Admiral Farragut took New Orleans with his Gulf Blockading Squadron, his flagship, the Hartford, was considered state-of-the-art, including auxiliary steam propulsion. But it was made out of wood.
A Monitor class river cruiser from the Civil War.
The real revolution came about when ships began to be made out of steel - that is the hull itself as well as propulsion systems. This led to ships that were much larger, faster, and reliable. The consequences for an industrial power capable of producing them were awesome. Steel led to powerful navies, which in turn led to imperial might. Steel ships drastically increased the ability to ship products reliably over great distances. It made markets much more vast.
Steel had an equally great impact upon rail transportation. Size, speed, regularity, cost effectiveness were all fundamentally altered by its introduction. The very shift from iron to steel rails was significant. We will discuss this more next week in our lecture on the West.
Steel was part of a revolution in science. Modern steel represented a sophisticated understanding of metallurgy. It also had enormous repercussions on weaponry.
Chemistry also revolutionized everything from warfare to agriculture. The develoment of smokeless powder at the end of the nineteenth century, for instance, still stands as the most significant recent development in small arms technology. It was what made the machine gun and all other modern arms possible. Likewise, chemical fertilizer altered American agriculture in unpredictable and sometimes harmful ways. Science had the power to create and destroy, a fact that Americans were not yet fully aware of.
Communications also underwent a technological revolution. The telegraph had been around since the 1840s, but not until 1866 did we have a reliable Transatlantic cable. The laying of the cable was a tremendous feat of engineering, and says much about Gilded Age ambition. Like steel ships, it made the world smaller.
A cable ship plying the waters.
Steel's introduction will transform the way everybody lives. Before steel, most people didn't need a clock, for instance. Few people will be able to avoid it afterward.
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