50 Fun Facts About Second Industrial Revolution

Whose wife Bertha took his three-wheeled Motorwagen on the first long-distance car journey in 1888 without telling him?

Karl Benz's wife cleared a blocked fuel line with her hat pin on the 65-mile drive and bought more fuel at a pharmacy. She took their two teenage sons along for the ride.

What did US and Canadian railroads introduce on November 18, 1883, some 35 years before Congress made it law?

Standard time zones began as a private railroad agreement, set off by a telegraph signal from an observatory in Pittsburgh. Congress only adopted them in the Standard Time Act of 1918.

Which invention did Elisha Gray and a teacher of the deaf both take to the US Patent Office on February 14, 1876?

The telephone patent went to Alexander Graham Bell, whose lawyer filed on the same day that Gray's lodged a caveat with a similar diagram. Who reached the office first has been argued over ever since.

Which inventor's Pearl Street Station began selling electricity to 82 customers in Manhattan in 1882?

Thomas Edison's plant started with six dynamos and a load of just 400 lamps. Within two years it was lighting more than 10,000 for 508 customers.

Which carmaker's five-dollar daily wage of 1914 more than doubled the pay of most of his workers?

Henry Ford wanted to end the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men a year to fill 100 jobs. The raise worked: Detroit's best mechanics flocked to his plant.

Which Swedish chemist patented dynamite three years after a nitroglycerin blast killed his younger brother Emil?

Alfred Nobel made nitroglycerin safe enough to handle, and dynamite rapidly replaced black powder for blasting rock. The fortune it earned him now pays for the prizes that carry his name.

Which New York landmark with steel-wire cables was completed in 1883 under Emily Roebling's daily supervision?

The Brooklyn Bridge was first crossed by Emily Roebling herself, riding in a carriage with a rooster as a sign of victory. She had run the site for years after her engineer husband fell ill.

Which fuel was the oil industry's main product in the 1800s, decades before cars created a market for gasoline?

Kerosene gave homes a lamp oil cheaper than whale oil, and America's whaling fleet, more than 700 vessels strong in 1846, went into a long decline.

Which nickname for Gilded Age tycoons was borrowed from feudal lords along Germany's Rhine?

Robber barons were medieval German lords who charged illegal tolls on roads and along the Rhine. The label was already being thrown at American businessmen in The Atlantic Monthly by August 1870.

Which steel magnate argued in his 1889 essay 'The Gospel of Wealth' that the rich should give their surplus away?

Andrew Carnegie did as he preached. In the last 18 years of his life he gave away around $350 million, almost 90 percent of his fortune.

Which company did the US Supreme Court order broken up in 1911, partly as a result of Ida Tarbell's reporting?

Standard Oil's breakup actually propelled the personal wealth of its founder, John D. Rockefeller. Its largest fragment, Jersey Standard, later became ExxonMobil.

Which humorist's 1873 satirical novel, co-written with Charles Dudley Warner, gave the Gilded Age its name?

Mark Twain and Warner were neighbors and good friends in Hartford, Connecticut. Their book satirized an era whose serious social problems were masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion.

Which pair honed their skills in a Dayton, Ohio bicycle shop before making the first powered flight in 1903?

The Wright brothers flew near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17. Three days earlier Wilbur had won a coin toss for the first attempt and stalled on takeoff.

Which immigration station in New York Harbor processed about 12 million arrivals between 1892 and 1954?

Ellis Island's first arrival was Annie Moore, a 17-year-old from Cork, Ireland, travelling with her two brothers to meet their parents. By one estimate, two-fifths of Americans descend from people processed there.

Which waterway formally opened on August 15, 1914, when the cargo ship SS Ancon made the first official transit?

The Panama Canal succeeded where a French attempt had gone bankrupt in 1889. An estimated 22,000 men died from disease and accidents during that first effort.

Which Serbian-American engineer's induction motor patents of 1888 became the cornerstone of alternating-current power?

Nikola Tesla had migrated to the United States only four years before, in 1884. Licensing the patents earned him a considerable amount of money.

Which centrepiece of an 1889 world's fair was the world's tallest structure until the Chrysler Building rose?

The Eiffel Tower held the height record for 41 years. Locals nicknamed it the Iron Lady for the 7,300 tonnes of wrought iron in its frame.

Which production method began at Michigan's Highland Park plant in 1913 and cut a Model T's build time to 93 minutes?

The moving assembly line split the car's construction into 45 steps and carried the work past the workers on conveyor belts. The same job had previously taken 12.5 man-hours.

Which Italian inventor reported hearing the Morse letter S sent 2,200 miles across the Atlantic in December 1901?

Guglielmo Marconi caught the signal in Newfoundland on an antenna held up by a kite. Storms had damaged the equipment at the receiving station he first planned on Cape Cod.

Which painkiller did the dye maker Bayer launch under a trademarked name in 1899?

Aspirin is a chemical relative of salicin from willow bark, a remedy used for at least 2,400 years. A Bayer chemist first produced it in a pure, stable form in 1897.

Which camera brand did George Eastman launch in 1888 with a $25 box preloaded with film for 100 exposures?

Kodak was a made-up word. Eastman, who thought K a strong, incisive sort of letter, devised the name with his mother using an Anagrams set.

Laborers from which country were barred from entering the United States by an 1882 act of Congress?

China's laborers were shut out by the first major US law to bar a whole national group. Meant to last ten years, the ban was renewed, made permanent in 1902 and repealed only in 1943.

Which city's ten-story Home Insurance Building, completed in 1885, is often cited as the world's first skyscraper?

Chicago architect William Le Baron Jenney gave the building a weight-bearing metal frame, which is why it earns the title. It stood just 138 feet tall and was demolished in 1931.

In which industry did 'breaker boys' aged 8 to 12 pick slate from the product by hand for ten hours a day?

Coal mining companies made breaker boys work without gloves so they could grip the slick lumps. The sharp slate often left their fingers cut and bleeding.

Which waterfall drove the Adams Power Plant of 1895, the world's first large-scale alternating-current station?

Niagara Falls power was soon carried on by transmission lines to the city of Buffalo. The plant showed that electricity could be generated far from the factories and homes that used it.

Which engine inventor, born in Paris to Bavarian parents, vanished from a steamer bound for England in 1913?

Rudolf Diesel retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m. and was never seen alive again. In the morning his bed had not been slept in, though his nightshirt was neatly laid out.

Which financier pledged his own money and pressed fellow New York bankers to do likewise to halt the Panic of 1907?

J. P. Morgan turned the library of his Madison Avenue brownstone into a revolving door of bank presidents. The scare led Congress to create the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Which commodity's forced collection in Leopold II's Congo Free State was exposed by consul Roger Casement's report?

Rubber was suddenly wanted everywhere after the inflatable tyre set off a worldwide boom in the 1890s. Workers who refused to collect it could be killed and entire villages razed.

Which English inventor, seeking cheaper steel for guns, devised a converter that blew air through molten pig iron?

Henry Bessemer announced it in an 1856 paper on making iron and steel 'without Fuel', which The Times printed in full. Oxygen in the air blast burns off the impurities.

Which railway air brake inventor's company won the contract to light the 1893 Columbian Exposition with AC power?

George Westinghouse had founded his air brake company back in 1869. His bid beat General Electric's, and the fair became a showcase for alternating current.

Which 1890 act of Congress prohibits unfair monopolies and is named for the senator who was its principal author?

The Sherman Antitrust Act carries the name of Senator John Sherman of Ohio. He was the younger brother of the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman.

Which strategy describes a steelmaker owning the iron mines, ore ships and coke ovens that supply its own mills?

Vertical integration puts a whole supply chain under one owner, and American steel was an early example. Buying up rival firms at the same stage of production is the horizontal kind.

Which London-born cigar maker led the American Federation of Labor for all but one year between 1886 and 1924?

Samuel Gompers was born Samuel Gumpertz in Spitalfields, in London's East End, to a Jewish family from Amsterdam. He was still the federation's president when he died in 1924.

Which sleeping-car maker cut wages by up to 30% without lowering rents in his Illinois town, sparking an 1894 strike?

George Pullman refused to reconsider and even dismissed workers who complained. The rail boycott that followed was broken by a federal injunction and troops sent by President Grover Cleveland.

Which shipping magnate nicknamed 'the Commodore' bought control of the New York Central Railroad in 1867?

Cornelius Vanderbilt had quit school at 11 to work on his father's ferry in New York Harbor. Late in life he ordered the building of Grand Central Depot on 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Which arms maker acquired the Sholes and Glidden typewriter in 1873 and put its QWERTY keyboard on sale?

Remington was looking to diversify beyond guns. Its machine fixed features that later typewriters kept, including the cylindrical platen and the four-row keyboard.

Which Pennsylvania steel town saw strikers defeat Pinkerton agents who arrived on river barges in July 1892?

Homestead held the nation's attention again weeks later, when an anarchist shot and stabbed plant boss Henry Clay Frick in his office. Frick survived, and public support for the union collapsed.

Which veterinarian in Belfast developed the first practical air-filled tyre in 1887 for his young son's tricycle?

John Boyd Dunlop tested it at a sports ground in south Belfast and soon adapted his tyres for cycle racing. By then he ran one of the largest veterinary practices in Ireland.

Which English philosopher coined 'survival of the fittest' in 1864 and became a byword for Social Darwinism?

Herbert Spencer came up with the phrase after reading On the Origin of Species. Darwin himself only adopted it in the book's fifth edition, published in 1869.

Which engineer, remembered for timing workers with a stopwatch, wrote 'The Principles of Scientific Management'?

Frederick Taylor noticed in one famous study that workers used the same shovel for every material. He was a sportsman too, winning the first US national tennis doubles title in 1881.

Which retailer opened a mail-order house in 1872 with a general merchandise catalog listing just 163 products?

Montgomery Ward lost his first inventory to a great city fire, and his idea was generally thought to border on lunacy. By 1883 the catalog had grown to 240 pages and 10,000 items.

Which colour was the dye William Perkin found by accident at 18 while trying to synthesise quinine?

Mauve was first sold as aniline purple and became one of the first synthetic dyes to be mass-produced. Quinine, Perkin's real target, was wanted as a treatment for malaria.

Which compound did chemist Fritz Haber first produce from the air in 1909, at a rate of about 125 mL per hour?

Ammonia's nitrogen had previously come from mined niter deposits and guano from tropical islands. By 1914 a BASF plant at Oppau was turning out 20 tonnes of it a day.

Which newly elected president reluctantly sent federal troops to end the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?

Rutherford Hayes faced the strike in his first year in office, after a railroad cut wages by ten percent to raise its dividends. It ran for 52 days and was the first strike to spread across several states.

Which former grocery salesman built the 1876 four-stroke engine whose working cycle still bears his name?

Nicolaus Otto began in 1861 by copying another inventor's atmospheric engine, and his own four-cycle design of 1862 broke almost immediately. Fourteen years later he got it right.

Which Brunel steamship, by far the largest of its day, laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866?

SS Great Eastern was built to carry 4,000 passengers from England to Australia without refuelling. Brunel affectionately called her his Great Babe.

Which Essen steel dynasty, once led by 'the Cannon King', was Europe's largest company at the start of the 1900s?

Krupp began with a steel foundry in Essen in 1811. Its Cannon King, Alfred, first grew rich on steel rollers for making cutlery and on railway tyres.

Which industrialist built the world's first electric passenger train in 1879 and the first electric elevator in 1880?

Werner von Siemens also gave his name to the SI unit of electrical conductance. He is credited with the electric tram and the trolley bus as well.

Which rail line, announced by imperial decree in 1891, has directly connected Moscow with Vladivostok since 1916?

The Trans-Siberian Railway spans more than 9,289 kilometres, which makes it the longest railway line in the world. Ministers appointed by two tsars oversaw its building for a quarter of a century.

Which American city opened the oldest subway tunnel in North America under Tremont Street in September 1897?

Boston's tunnel is the third-oldest still in use anywhere to run only on electric traction. The two older ones are London's City and South London Railway of 1890 and Budapest's Line 1 of 1896.