New American Industries

Warm Up
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
● Identify examples of advancements and inventions that increased he safety reliability
and effectiveness of railroads
● Explain how the expansion of railroad networks led to the growth of other Industries,
such as steel, coal, and meat packing
Instruction

Lesson Question

How did the development of railroads Lead to the growth of other Industries in the United
States?

Bringing Standardization to railroads

● In the early 1800s, no system existed to compare times in different regions
● all time was measured locally
● Each company used its own measurements
● railroads needed standardization
● Standardization: the removal of differences

Standardizing Time
● In 1883, the general time convention set four time zones for the continental United States
● From west to east, they were named Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern

Standardizing Railways
● Creating standardized rails meant that building rails became the same distance apart
● This meant that companies could use each other’s tracks
● It made it easier for trains to be able to travel from coast to coast

An 1883, who was responsible for creating the first system of time zones in the United States?
the railroad industry

Trains became safer

● In 1869, air brakes were invented
● In 1873, Knuckle Coupler was invented
● In 1865, the pullman car is invented
● In 1877, the refrigerator car is invented

Railroad drove demand for resources

The railroads needed:

● Lumber for ties
● Iron and steel for rails and cars
● Coal to fuel locomotives
● The more railroads, the more resources
Accessing raw materials
● Petroleum
● Coal
● Benefited steel factories

New Industrial Centers

● Cities became manufacturing centers that processed raw materials

Railroads and land in the west

● The US government gave land to the railroads
● Railroads used land in three ways
● Using land to build tracks
● Selling land to farmers and ranchers
● Building towns to help

New food industries

● Railroads brought grain to mills and carried flour to markets
● For example, the owners of Minnesota’s Pillsbury flour mills helped build the region’s
railroads

MeatPacking and Growing cities

Railroads brought cattle to stockyards in growing cities
● Chicago
● Kansas City
● Cincinnati
● Omaha
● Refrigerator cars then carried fresh meat across the country