What were the impacts of technological innovations on the United States in the late 19th century?

How did innovation and technology change life in the 19th century?

Answer

There were two technological innovations that profoundly changed daily life in the 19th century. They were both “motive powers”: steam and electricity. According to some, the development and application of steam engines and electricity to various tasks such as transportation and the telegraph, affected human life by increasing and multiplying the mechanical power of human or animal strength or the power of simple tools.

Those who lived through these technological changes, felt them to be much more than technological innovations. To them, these technologies seemed to erase the primeval boundaries of human experience, and to usher in a kind of Millennial era, a New Age, in which humankind had definitively broken its chains and was able, as it became proverbial to say, to “annihilate time and space.” Even the most important inventions of the 19th century that were not simply applications of steam or electrical power, such as the recording technologies of the photograph and the phonograph, contributed to this because they made the past available to the present and the present to the future.
The 1850 song, “Uncle Sam’s Farm,” written by Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., of the Hutchinson Family Singers, captured this sense that a unique historical rupture had occurred as a result of scientific and social progress:

Our fathers gave us liberty, but little did they dream The grand results that pour along this mighty age of steam; For our mountains, lakes and rivers are all a blaze of fire,

And we send our news by lightning on the telegraphic wires.

Apart from the technological inventions themselves, daily life in the 19th century was profoundly changed by the innovation of reorganizing work as a mechanical process, with humans as part of that process. This meant, in part, dividing up the work involved in manufacturing so that each single workman performed only one stage in the manufacturing process, which was previously broken into sequential parts. Before, individual workers typically guided the entire process of manufacturing from start to finish.

This change in work was the division or specialization of labor, and this “rationalization” (as it was conceived to be) of the manufacturing process occurred in many industries before and even quite apart from the introduction of new and more powerful machines into the process. This was an essential element of the industrialization that advanced throughout the 19th century. It made possible the mass production of goods, but it also required the tight reorganization of workers into a “workforce” that could be orchestrated in various ways in order to increase manufacturing efficiency. Individuals experienced this reorganization as conflict: From the viewpoint of individual workers, it was felt as bringing good and bad changes to their daily lives.

On the one hand, it threatened the integrity of the family because people were drawn away from home to work in factories and in dense urban areas. It threatened their individual autonomy because they were no longer masters of the work of their hands, but rather more like cogs in a large machine performing a limited set of functions, and not responsible for the whole.

On the other hand, it made it possible for more and more people to enjoy goods that only the wealthy would have been able to afford in earlier times or goods that had never been available to anyone no matter how wealthy. The rationalization of the manufacturing process broadened their experiences through varied work, travel, and education that would have been impossible before.

Civil War was a historic event of such magnitude that it forever changed the way Americans thought about their history and divided the cultural understanding of the nation into two distinct periods: everything that came before the war, and everything that happened afterward. The Second Industrial Revolution (1865 to 1900) was another such watershed era that redefined not only the American way of life but life around the world. Inventions that relied on newly harnessed means of putting electricity, steel, and petroleum to use spurred the growth of railways and steamships, and transformed everything from farming to manufacturing. The 19th century was the age of machine tools—tools that made tools and machines that made parts for other machines, including interchangeable parts. The 19th century brought us the assembly line, speeding up the factory production of goods. It also gave birth to the notion of a professional scientist. In fact, the word "scientist" was first used in 1833 by William Whewell. Inventions including the telegraph, typewriter, and the telephone led to faster and wider means of communication. The following list (by no means exhaustive) chronicles some of the most important innovations that took shape in the 19th Century.

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The first 10 years the 19th century may not have been the most fertile for new technology but the impending Second Industrial Revolution would follow soon enough. Here are some of that decade's most important innovations:

• 1800—French silk weaver J.M. Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom.
• ​1800—Count Alessandro Volta invents the battery.
• 1804—Friedrich Winzer (Frederick Albert Winsor) patented coal-gas.
• 1804—English mining engineer Richard Trevithick develops a steam-powered locomotive but is unable to produce a viable prototype.
• 1809—Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp, the first electric light.
• 1810—German Frederick Koenig invents an improved printing press.

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• 1810—Peter Durand invents the tin can.
• 1814—The first successful steam locomotive, designed by George Stephenson, makes its debut.
• 1814—Joseph von Fraunhofer invents the spectroscope for use in the chemical analysis of glowing objects.
• 1814—Using a camera obscura, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph. The process takes eight hours.
• 1815—Humphry Davy invents the miner's lamp.
• 1816—René Laënnec invents the stethoscope.
• 1819—Samuel Fahnestock patents the soda fountain.

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• 1823—Charles Mackintosh invents his eponymous raincoat (a.k.a. "the Mac") in Scotland.
• 1824—Professor Michael Faraday invents the toy balloons.
• 1824—Joseph Aspdin takes out an English patent for Portland cement.
• 1825—William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet.
• 1827—John Walker invents modern-day matches.
• 1827—Charles Wheatstone invents the microphone.
• 1829—W.A. Burt invents the typographer, the precursor to the typewriter.
• 1829—Louis Braille develops his eponymous method of raised printing to be read by the blind.​​​​

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• 1830—Frenchman Barthelemy Thimonnier invents a rudimentary sewing machine.
• 1831—Cyrus H. McCormick invents the first commercially viable reaper.
• 1831—Michael Faraday invents the electric dynamo. 
• 1834—Henry Blair, the second African American to receive a U.S. patent, invents the corn planter.
• 1834—Jacob Perkins invents and ether ice machine, a precursor to the modern refrigerator.
• 1835—Solymon Merrick patents the wrench.
• 1835—Charles Babbage invents a mechanical calculator. 
• 1836—Francis Pettit Smith and John Ericcson team up to invent the propellor.
• 1836—Samuel Colt invents the first revolver.
• 1837—Samuel Morse invents the telegraph. (Morse code arrives the following year.)
• 1837—English schoolmaster, Rowland Hill invents the postage stamp.
• 1839—Thaddeus Fairbanks invents platform scales.
• 1839—Charles Goodyear invents vulcanized rubber.
• 1839—Louis Daguerre invents the daguerreotype.

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• 1840—Englishmen John Herschel invents the blueprint.
• 1841—Samuel Slocum patents the stapler.
• 1844—Englishman John Mercer invents a process to increase the tensile strength and affinity for dyes in cotton thread.
• 1845—Elias Howe invents the modern sewing machine.
• 1845—Robert William Thomson patents pneumatic tires made of vulcanized rubber.
• 1845—Massachusetts dentist Dr. William Morton is the first to use anesthesia for a tooth extraction.
• 1847—Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis invents antiseptics.
• 1848—Waldo Hanchett patents the dentist's chair.
• 1849—Walter Hunt invents the safety pin.

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• 1851—Isaac Singer invents his eponymous sewing machine, and four years later, patents a sewing machine motor.
• 1852—Jean Bernard Léon Foucault invents the gyroscope, crucial to the development of navigation systems, automatic pilots, and stabilizers.
• 1854—John Tyndall demonstrates the principles of fiber optics.
• 1856—Health science pioneer Louis Pasteur develops the process of pasteurization.
• 1857—George Pullman invents his eponymous sleeping car for trains.
• 1858—Hamilton Smith patents a rotary washing machine.
• 1858—Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir invents a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion automobile engine fueled by coal gas, which he patents two years later. 

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• 1861—Elisha Graves Otis patents elevator safety brakes, creating a safer elevator.
• 1861—Linus Yale invents his eponymous cylinder lock.
• 1862—Richard Gatling patents his machine gun.
• 1862—Alexander Parkes creates the first man-made plastic.
  
• 1866—J. Osterhoudt patents a tin can with a key opener.
• 1866—Englishmen Robert Whitehead invents the torpedo. 
• 1867—Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
• 1867—Christopher Scholes invents the prototype for the modern typewriter.
• 1868—George Westinghouse invents air brakes.
• 1868—Robert Mushet invents tungsten steel.
• 1868—J.P. Knight invents the traffic light.

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• 1872—A.M. Ward creates the first mail-order catalog.
• 1873—Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire.
• 1876—Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
• 1876—Nicolaus August Otto invents the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine.
• 1876—Melville Bissell patents the carpet sweeper.
• 1878—Thomas Edison invents the cylinder phonograph (known then as the tin foil phonograph).
• 1878—Eadweard Muybridge invents moving pictures. 
• 1878—Sir Joseph Wilson Swan invents the prototype for a practical electric lightbulb. 
• 1879—Thomas Edison invents the first commercially viable incandescent electric light bulb.
  

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• 1880—The British Perforated Paper Company debuts toilet paper.
• 1880—English inventor John Milne creates the modern seismograph.
• 1881—David Houston patents camera film in roll format.
• 1884—Lewis Edson Waterman invents the first practical fountain pen.
• 1884—L. A. Thompson built and opened the first roller coaster in the United States at a site on Coney Island, New York.
• 1884—James Ritty invents a functional mechanical cash register.
• 1884—Charles Parson patents the steam turbine.
• 1885—Karl Benz invents the first practical automobile powered by an internal-combustion engine. 
• 1885—Gottlieb Daimler invents the first gas-engine motorcycle. 
• 1886—John Pemberton introduces Coca-Cola.
• 1886—Gottlieb Daimler designs and builds the world's first four-wheeled automobile.
• 1887—Heinrich Hertz invents radar.
• 1887—Emile Berliner invents the gramophone. 
• 1887—F.E. Muller and Adolph Fick invent the first wearable contact lenses.
• 1888—Nikola Tesla invents the alternating current motor and transformer.

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• 1891—Jesse W. Reno invents the escalator.
• 1892—Rudolf Diesel invents the diesel-fueled internal combustion engine, which he patents six years later.
• 1892—Sir James Dewar invents the Dewar vacuum flask.
• 1893—W.L. Judson invents the zipper.
• 1895—Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière invent a portable motion-picture camera that doubles as a film-processing unit and projector. The invention is called the Cinematographe and using it, the Lumières project the motion picture for an audience.
• 1899—J.S. Thurman patents the motor-driven vacuum cleaner.

Everyday things consumers took for granted by the 20th century—the light bulb, telephones, typewriters, sewing machines, and phonographs—were all products of the 19th century. Even as we embrace the 21st-century technology that has rendered some of these marvels obsolete, while we might not know the names of the 19th-century inventors who created the precursors to computers, smartphones, and streaming media, more than a century after their inventions first saw the light of day their ideas live on, continuing to inspire current and future generations of inventors, scientists, and innovators.