How Did The Invention Of The First

American Transcontinental Effect The Nation. Essay, Research Paper

When America was trying to win its independence over the British in the American Revolution something of even greater significance was happening in England, the Industrial Revolution. Hand tools were being replaced by moving parts. Industry was moving at it.s greatest speed people had ever seen. Things could be made faster, cheaper, and in greater numbers.

By the 1800.s in America, nothing like this was even close to happening. In fact, Thomas Jefferson warned of rapid industrial growth during his farewell address. Weather or not Jeffersonians wanted it to happen, it did. Immigrants armed with the knowledge of machinery and technology came to the United States. They were willing, hopeful, and capable to repeat what had already been accomplished in Great Britain.

An Industrial Revolution calls for a transportation system that is quick and efficient for the moving of raw goods to factories, and finished goods to market. This was virtually non existent in the first 40 years of the United States. In the 1820.s we saw river steamboats running up canals, and the development of the toll road. Also during this time, railroad pioneers began working for a new and innovative way to link the nation together as never before.

The later half of the nineteenth-century would belong to the railroads. They were important in stimulating economic expansion and growth, but their influence reaches very far beyond the economy and was important to American society as a whole.

Railroads can be broken down into three major parts: the track, the cars moving over the track, and the power to pull the cars. In the beginning, the rails were made of wood, and later they were topped with a thin strip of metal. Today they are made of iron or steel.

By 1804, English and Americans had experimented with steam engines, but in many cases horses were still being used to haul cars over tracks. There were several such tracks like this around 1800. On October 7, 1826, the Granite Railway Company, with horses supplying the power, began to haul large blocks of granite from a quarry in Quincy to Milton, Massachusetts, for use in the Bunker Hill Monument at Charleston, Massachusetts. This was the first track to have iron plates over the wooden track to provide a smooth running surface for the wheels of the cars.

The first steam engine to run on track in America was in 1825. John Stevens built and operated an enclosed track on his own estate in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was more for show than for anything else. One of the first famous locomotives was called the .Tom Thumb,. built by Peter Cooper of New York. In August 1830 the Tom Thumb ran from Baltimore to Ellicott.s Mill, Maryland. In an open car sat the first ever passengers of a locomotive. People lined the tracks to see this strange site. On it.s trip back Cooper of the .Tom Thumb. was challenged to a race. One of the fastest stagecoach horses in the country raced the .Tom Thumb.! The .Tom Thumb. put up a great fight, but eventually lost. However, the loss proved that steam power was practical and useful.

Early companies had no concern about their railroad getting too large. Usually they just had a couple of guys handling all the railroads needs. As time went on the few men that were previously running the station could no longer handle all aspects of the railroad. They eventually broke it down into three parts. Finance was concerned with the collection and distribution of revenues as well as with issuing stocks and bonds. Operations controlled the movement of the trains and their maintenance. The final department was traffic. They found customers and watched the cost of passenger and freight movement. One thing that was noticed was the different times between cities. Each town set its own clocks according to the sun. It may be 7 o.clock in Philadelphia, but it is 7:07 in New York. For trains this could mean mass confusion and possibly a disaster. Railway executives divided the continent into 4 time zones so people could know what time it was everywhere. At noon on November 18, 1883, this plan was adopted, and people everywhere changed their clocks.

With westward expansion, a growing demand for a transcontinental became stronger and stronger. The gold rush of 1849 turned California into a state, but there was no quick way to get there. A railroad was desperately needed. The biggest problem was where to build one. As of 1850, there was no passage through the Rocky Mountains. A merchant from New York named Asa Whitney was a major supporter of the transcontinental. He went before congress to give specific geographical locations and even offered to build it on his own. The north and the south had two different ideas on where the railroad should be built. The south already had decided on the route between the 32nd and 35th parallel, because that would keep it in the south, thus making it in slave areas. In 1853 the Secretary of War Jefferson Davis sent out James Gadsden, a southern railroad builder, to make a small purchase of land that was owned by Mexico that was necessary to make the southern transcontinental possible. He purchased this land for 10 million dollars. The north made their route as the 48th parallel. Both sides greatly exaggerated the advantages of their route and the disadvantages of the other route. Eventually the route