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The Erie Canal opens allowing goods to be shipped from New York City to Cleveland and eventually to Chicago.
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John Deere introduces the first steel plow to the United States. Successive new technologies make each acre more productive but smaller farms less competitive.
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Start of the Irish Potato Famine, this results in many Irish immigrants coming to the United states and filling the factories with low paid workers.
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Leading railroads emerge as the nation's first big businesses with modern managerial hierarchies.
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Henry Bessemer invents process for making cheap steel from pig iron, in response to call for guns for Crimean War.
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Road Locomotives Act restricts speed of road vehicles to 5mph. HMS Warrior, first ironclad battleship, launched. Start of construction of London Underground.
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The first transcontinental railroad is completed linking the United States into a huge single market.
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John D. Rockefeller and partners establish Standard Oil Company of Ohio, establishing a vertically integrated company and later a trust which limited competition and controlled the industry.
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Invention of electric lightbulb. This leads to an even more industrialized system with factories able to stay open later due to the easy lighting.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decides Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, awarding civil rights to corporations, making it more difficult for state legislatures to regulate them.
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