-
Steamboat
The steamboat allowed for travel back up rivers. Before this, boats could only flow down. Steamboat is still used today, but there are more ecologically friendly versions -
Train
In 1829, the Stephensons built the famous locomotive Rocket, which used a multi-tube boiler, a practice that continued in successive generations of steam engines. -
Reaper
A straight blade (protected by guards) was linked to a drive wheel; as the drive wheel turned, the blade moved back and forth in a sawing motion, cutting through the stalks of grain, which were held straight by rods; the cut grain stalks then fell onto a platform and were collected with a rake by a worker. -
Telegraph
In 1835 he devised a system of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. In 1837 he was granted a patent on an electromagnetic telegraph. Morse’s original transmitter incorporated a device called a portarule, which employed molded type with built-in dots and dashes. -
Steel Plow
John Deere invented the steel plow in 1837, in Grand Detour, Illinois when the Middle-West was first being settled. The soil was richer than that of the East and the farmer’s wood plows kept breaking. -
Barbed Wire
On October 27, 1873, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer named Joseph Glidden submits an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his clever new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West. -
Windmill
The first commercially successful selfgoverning windmills in America were invented and patented in 1854 by Daniel Halladay in Connecticut.
