The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the "Technological Revolution," was a phase of rapid industrialization in the final third of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The First Industrial Revolution, which ended in the early-mid 1800s, was punctuated by a slowdown in macroinventions before the Second Industrial Revolution in 1870. Though a number of its characteristic events can be traced to earlier innovations in manufacturing, such as the invention of the Bessemer process in 1856, the Second Industrial Revolution is generally dated between 1870 and 1914 up to the start of World War I.
Advancements in manufacturing and production technology enabled the widespread adoption of preexisting technological systems such as telegraph and railroad networks, gas and water supply, and sewage systems, which had earlier been concentrated to a few select cities. The enormous expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented movement of people and ideas, which culminated in a new wave of globalization. In the same period, new systems were introduced, most significantly electrical power and telephones.
Growth and Change in Industry
A synergy between iron and steel, and railroads and coal developed at the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution. Railroads allowed cheap transportation of materials and products, which in turn led to cheap rails to build more roads. Railroads also benefited from cheap coal for their steam locomotives. This synergy led to the laying of 75,000 miles of track in the United States in the 1880s, the largest amount anywhere in world history.
By 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry—a few large corporations, some organized as "trusts" (e.g., Standard Oil), dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meatpacking, and the manufacturing of agriculture machinery. Other major components of this infrastructure were the new methods for manufacturing steel, especially the Bessemer process. The first billion-dollar corporation was United States Steel, formed by financier J. P. Morgan in 1901, who purchased and consolidated steel firms built by Andrew Carnegie and others.
Diagram of the Bessemer converter
Air blown through holes in the converter bottom creates a violent reaction in the molten pig iron that oxidizes the excess carbon, converting the pig iron to pure iron or steel, depending on the residual carbon.
Increased mechanization of industry and improvements to worker efficiency increased the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. Mechanical innovations such as batch and continuous processing began to become much more prominent in factories. This mechanization made some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. In some cases, the advancement of such mechanization substituted for low-skilled workers altogether. Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their wage rates grew. Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was quickly growing, especially in northern cities.
The period from 1870 to 1890 saw the greatest increase in economic growth in such a short period as ever in previous history. Living standards improved significantly as the prices of goods fell dramatically due to the increases in productivity. This caused unemployment and great upheavals in commerce and industry, with many laborers being displaced by machines and many factories, ships, and other forms of fixed capital becoming obsolete in a very short time span. Crop failures no longer resulted in starvation in areas connected to large markets through transport infrastructure. By 1870, the work done by steam engines exceeded that done by animal and human power. Horses and mules remained important in agriculture until the development of the internal combustion tractor near the end of the Second Industrial Revolution. Improvements in steam efficiency, such as triple-expansion steam engines, allowed ships to carry much more freight than coal, resulting in greatly increased volumes of international trade.
The Second Industrial Revolution continued into the twentieth century with early factory electrification and the production line, and ended at the start of the World War I.