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#Industry

90 entries

People (12)
Alexander Graham Bell
Scottish-American inventor of the telephone, 1847–1922
Andrew Carnegie
Scottish-born steel magnate and America's greatest philanthropist
Cornelius Vanderbilt
The railroad and shipping baron who built the template for American monopoly capitalism
Eli Whitney
Inventor of the cotton gin who accidentally expanded slavery and deliberately built American mass production
George Westinghouse
The air-brake inventor who bet his fortune on alternating current, 1846-1914
Henry Ford
Industrialist who put the automobile within reach of ordinary Americans
J.P. Morgan
Banker, Financier, and Architect of American Industrial Power
John D. Rockefeller
Founder of Standard Oil and the wealthiest private citizen in American history
Madam C.J. Walker
The washerwoman who built a beauty empire and a Black fortune
Nikola Tesla
Serbian-American inventor who built the modern electrical world
Thomas Edison
Inventor of the phonograph, the practical light bulb, and the modern research laboratory
Wright Brothers
Wilbur and Orville Wright, pioneers of powered flight
Places (19)
Chicago
The city that built itself from nothing, burned down, rebuilt, and became America's most American city
Detroit
The Motor City that built America's middle class and paid the price of its collapse
Erie Canal
The 363-mile engineering marvel that connected the Atlantic to the Great Lakes and made New York supreme
Los Angeles
The city that became America's second metropolis by inventing itself from scratch
New York
The empire state — gateway, financial capital, and engine of American ambition
New York City
America's largest city and the commercial, cultural, and immigrant capital of the nation
Niagara Falls
The Great Lakes-fed waterfall that powered the second industrial revolution
Pearl Street Station
The first commercial central power station, Manhattan, September 4, 1882
Promontory Summit
The Utah meeting point where two railroads joined and a continent was crossed
Route 66
The "Main Street of America" that carried a nation west
San Francisco
California's gateway city, remade by gold, catastrophe, and perpetual reinvention
Seattle
Gateway to Alaska, birthplace of Boeing, and capital of the Pacific Northwest
Silicon Valley
How a stretch of California orchards became the engine of the digital age
The Brooklyn Bridge
Fourteen years, three Roeblings, and a span of steel wire, 1883
The Chrysler Building
Art Deco's peak and the secret spire, 1930
The Home Insurance Building
Chicago's contested first skyscraper, 1885
The Interstate Highway System
The largest public works project in American history
The Niagara Falls Power Plant
The Adams Station and the current that reached Buffalo, 1895-1896
The Willis Tower
The Sears Tower and the bundled tube, 1973
Eras (1)
The Gilded Age
The era of industrialists, immigrants, and inequality that remade America, 1877–1900
Events (14)
Haymarket Affair
The 1886 bombing that defined — and distorted — the American labor movement
Homestead Strike
The 1892 labor battle that broke the steel union and defined Gilded Age industrial conflict
Labor Day
The first-Monday-in-September holiday honoring American workers
Spindletop
The 1901 gusher that launched the American oil age
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The first nationwide strike — and the violent dawn of the American labor war
The Hamburger
Contested origins, the 1904 fair, and the rehabilitation of ground beef
The Johnstown Flood
The 1889 dam failure that drowned a city and shamed the Gilded Age elite
The Northeast Blackout of 1965
The night the grid failed and thirty million people went dark, November 9, 1965
The Pullman Strike
The 1894 railroad shutdown that sent a labor leader to prison — and radicalized him
The TV Dinner
Swanson's 1953 aluminum tray and the rearranged American evening
Transcontinental Railroad
The 1869 rail line that stitched the continent together — and transformed everything it touched
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The 1911 factory disaster that transformed American labor law
World's Columbian Exposition
Chicago's 1893 "White City" and the showcase of an industrial America
Wright Brothers' First Flight
The 12-second powered flight at Kitty Hawk that opened the aviation age
Documents (3)
Interstate Commerce Act
The 1887 Law That First Subjected American Business to Federal Regulation
Pacific Railway Act
The 1862 legislation that authorized the transcontinental railroad and opened the continent
Sherman Antitrust Act
The 1890 law that gave the federal government its first tool against monopoly power
Concepts (7)
American Food
How Indigenous crops, forced labor, immigration, and industry built a continental cuisine
American Innovation
How a culture of invention turned the United States into the engine of the modern world
Capitalism
The economic system that built American prosperity — and its persistent contradictions
Fast Food
The automobile, the assembly-line kitchen, and the franchise that carried them worldwide
The Industrial Revolution
The transformation of American labor, production, and daily life, 1820–1900
Trust-Busting
The Progressive Era campaign to break up industrial monopolies and restore competition
Urbanization
The great demographic transformation that moved America from a rural to an urban nation
Organizations (21)
Amazon
The online bookstore that became the everything store, founded 1994
Apple
The company that made the computer personal — and beautiful, founded 1976
Boeing
The company that built America's airliners and warplanes, founded 1916
Coca-Cola
The Atlanta soda that became a global symbol of America, 1886
General Electric
The Edison company that grew into an industrial empire, founded 1892
General Motors
The automaker founded in 1908 that overtook Ford, armed democracy in WWII, and ruled the American road
IBM
The company that ran on data, from punch cards to the computer age
McDonald's
The San Bernardino hamburger stand that became a global system
Microsoft
The software giant that put a computer on every desk, founded 1975
Sears, Roebuck and Company
The mail-order catalog that outfitted a nation, 1893
Standard Oil
Rockefeller's oil empire — the monopoly that remade American business, 1870–1911
The Associated Press
The cooperative wire service, founded 1846
The Bell System (AT&T)
The telephone monopoly that wired America, 1877–1984
The Ford Motor Company
The company that put America on wheels, founded 1903
The Pennsylvania Railroad
The "Standard Railroad of the World" and once America's largest corporation, 1846
The Teamsters
The powerful trucking union dogged by clout and corruption, founded 1903
The United Auto Workers
The union that organized Detroit and helped build the American middle class, founded 1935
The United Mine Workers
The coal miners' union at the storm center of American labor, 1890
The Virginia Company
The joint-stock venture that founded Jamestown — and seeded corporate America
U.S. Steel
The 1901 merger that made the world's first billion-dollar corporation
Walmart
The discount retailer that became the world's largest company, founded 1962
Technology (13)
Edison's Incandescent Light Bulb
The 1879 Menlo Park demonstration that ended the gaslight era
The Automobile
How the car became the machine that reshaped American life
The Cotton Gin
The 1793 invention that mechanized cotton — and entrenched slavery
The Electrification of America
How a nation lit by flame became a nation wired for current, 1880s to 1950s
The Ford Model T
The car — and the assembly line — that put America on wheels
The Moving Assembly Line
The 1913 innovation that made mass production — and the modern economy
The Pacemaker
The wearable box and the implant that took over the heartbeat
The Power Grid
How isolated stations became a machine the size of a continent
The Skyscraper
The American invention of building up, from the 1880s
The Telegraph
How Morse code severed the link between communication and travel
The Telephone
The 1876 invention that let the human voice travel across the wire
The Transistor
The tiny 1947 device that made the digital age possible
The War of the Currents
Edison's direct current against Westinghouse and Tesla's alternating current, 1886-1893
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