IHSS C2021-22

Electric Lighting Urbanization and Its Challenges - Aiden C        The light-bulb was invented in 1879 by Thomas Edison in order to serve as a replacement for candles, which were inefficient for lighting and needed to be constantly replaced. The addition of light-bulbs in large cities and homes allowed people to keep areas around them lit at all times, which would allow for full day productivity, rather then the great decrease in productivity that cities would normally see at night. Following the introduction of light-bulbs came into the general public, cities immediately jumped on them and they were installed on almost every major city street that had access to electricity. Sadly, despite how helpful this new addition was, there raised some major problems in the process of transporting electricity to the lights in order for them to run. First of all was the issue of distance, as currently, direct current technology could only travel relatively short distances. With ...

 Communication is the key to life. Without communication, it would be chaos. Communication ranges all the way back to the caveman era. The first form of communication was cave paintings and now we all have phones.  David Alter had created Telegrams. It was the first big advancement in communication.  A telegraph is a communication system that sends information by making and breaking an electrical connection. It is most associated with sending electrical current pulses along a wire with Morse code encoding. It was a big advancement that eventually led to the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell is often credited with being the inventor of the telephone since he was awarded the first successful patent. However, there were many other inventors such as Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci who also developed a talking telegraph.  We advanced so much that we now have Phones!

           Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 April 2022 Public Transportation                 The first modes of public transportation started in the 1820s with horse drawn carriages. It was not as popular as you might think it was, it took a while to spread around the public as a popular mode of transportation. Once the horse drawn carriages were fully fledged and people started looking into other more modern modes of public transportation. The next step to this was cable cars, then rail lines, and then they created the modern way of public transportation, buses. Back in 1662 Blaise Pascal created a system of horse drawn carriages that he tested in Paris, these were called "Five-Penny Coaches". This did not catch on because barely anyone could afford these coaches. This plan quickly failed and the next model of early buses was created in 1826. In 1826 the Omnibus was created. These were no...

The first article mentioned the many issues of mass migration into urban areas. One of these problems is slums forming in cities. I found this to be very interesting as previously I thought that slums don't exist and have never existed in the US. The population of New York City was doubling every century from 1800 to 1880. At the time, New York didn't have enough resources and infrastructure to hold this many people and this much growth. The first slums in the US actually started appearing in the  1700s, also in New York. But this quantity of growth was not present at the time, and these slums really began to grow exponentially in the 1800s. Slums in New York peaked in 1900 when around 100,000 out of the 2.9 million people in New York were living in slums. These Slums started to disappear in the early 20 century when higher quality, cheaper living conditions began to be built. But this only slowed down the growth of slums. Major slums didn't disappear in New York until the ...

  Ethan Zweig Mr. Roddy IHSS April 29, 2022 History of City Public Transportation Transportation is a major part of city history. It leads people to their destination whether it’s work, restaurants, or home. Public transportation started in the 1820s in France and London with the introduction of the omnibus and a horse drawn car which could hold up to 10 people. In 1873 the city of San Francisco tested their first of many cable cars. Due to the rolling hills there, Andrew Smith Hallidie was inspired to create this form of transportation to make sure the poor horses weren’t overly exhausted by climbing up those steep hills. In 1890 the first railway in the form of a metropolitan railway on what would become the London Underground. The first rapid transit system in the United States was built a few years later in 1892 in Chicago - the “L” train still runs today. Boston, Massachusetts opened the first subway system in the U.S 1897 to avoid severe weather conditions. 1922 led to the ...

Wyatt Quillin Mr, Roddy IHSS 29 April 2022 The Rise of Skyscrapers The first skyscraper ever built was in 1885 in Chicago. It was called the Life Home Insurance building, it was only 10 stories tall and  was completely supported by a steel frame. From here, skyscrapers only started to get taller and more sophisticated. As technology improved, stronger frames could be built, resulting in taller skyscrapers. These massive towers were becoming more popular not just for their conservative use of horizontal space, but for their status. As cities were becoming more urbanized, space was becoming less and less of a resource. Because of this, builders started taking to building vertically to adapt to the denser areas. With the growing urban population, real estate prices started to increase, making skyscrapers more desirable as they could pack a lot more people in for a lot less space. Because these buildings were so impressive, businesses began using them as symbols of status and power. An...

Urbanization - Transportation Some of the aspects that contributed to the urbanization of cities in the 19th century were electrical lighting, advancement in communication and transportation, and the addition of skyscrapers. I wanted to look further into the advancement of transportation throughout the years. With the start of urbanization, trains and railroad systems became the most efficient way to travel between cities. These trains also made it easier to carry heavy amounts of cargo and were powered by coal, wood, or oil during the time. Today we definitely don't use trains as much, but they still are around. The trains of the 21st century run at an incredibly high speed and are powered electrically.  The use of trains for transportation became much less popular when cars and smaller automobiles were introduced to cities in the 1900s. Automobiles became an even more efficient way to get from place to place. They used to run on diesel, or gasoline, like most cars today, but beca...

 Skyscrapers                  By: Camila Yengle      The earliest times of skyscrapers occurred in Chicago and New York between 1884 and 1945. Cities in the United States always had low rise building until economic growth due to the civil war. In the beginning skyscrapers were only occupied by male workers but this changed when female office workers became more popular in the 1890s.  Skyscrapers started to become popular due to the limited space of buildings being wide.With skyscrapers they can use a short amount of space considering width and a very large amount of space considering height.In the 1880s and 1890s there was the American technological revolution which contributed to helping architects build higher buildings. Due to the large amount of office jobs in the world led to a high demand of office space which led to more skyscrapers being built. Changed in urban life including street tr...

  Claire Thacker  Mr. Roddy  IHSS 26 April 2022  The Rise of Skyscrapers The first skyscrapers were built in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The first skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, it finished construction in 1885. This skyscraper was 10 stories tall which is much smaller than our skyscraper now. Which can get to 100 stories or taller. The building originally reached 138 feet tall but was brought up to 180 feet because of extra stories added in 1891. However, this skyscraper was demolished in 1931 and replaced with an even bigger skyscraper, the Feild building which stands 45 stories tall.    Chicago's Home Insurance Building.  Chicago History Museum / Archive Photos / Getty Images A skyscraper is a tall commercial building with a steel or iron framework. The Bessemer process is the inexpensive mass production of steel beams. Making the building of skyscrapers was possible. In 1855 the Bessemer decarbonization proc...

 Baker Croyle  Mr. Roddy  IHSS April 28, 2022 John D Rockefeller John D Rockefeller was an extremely wealthy and powerful US businessman. He is most known for his work in the oil and gas industry and he dominated it in 1870. during his early life, he worked for a few different businesses including as a bookkeeping assistant at the age of 16. When he turned 20 he accepted a couple of business partnerships and began to focus his work in the oil and gas industry. He went on to create Standard Oil, one of and if not the largest oil industries in the history of the united states. At one point, Rockefeller controlled 90% of all oil in the United States. However, he needed a way to transport all of the oil around and so he used railroads and began to dominate the railroad industry as well. He gained huge sums of money that he used to fund other businesses, churches, the University of Chicago, and Rockefeller University. In 1911, Standard oil came under fire by the US government ...

  Carson Dunaway Mr. Roddy IHSS 4/12/2022 Cornelius Vanderbilt Cornelius Vanderbilt was so ridiculously rich in the late 1800s and early 1900’s that he was one of the most wealthy men in America. So how did Cornelius Vanderbilt become so rich? Well, Cornelius Vanderbilt made generally all his money off of shipping and owning very large amounts of railroad tracks that reached from the East coast to Chicago, and to Illinois. However more importantly it would be too easy to just say Cornelius Vanderbilt simply own railroads and shipping when he did more than just that. Cornelius Vanderbilt had an amazing talent for recognizing up-and-coming changes and trends. Thus being very susceptible to changes and knowing what the next big idea was he became a great investor. This is what Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors to strike deals in his favor and make lots more money. In 1834 Cornelius Vanderbilt was turning 40, and owned over 500,000 dollars which was so much more money...

Claire Thacker  Mr. Roddy  IHSS 12 April 2022  Andrew Carnegie  Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-born American industrialist, born in 1835 and died in 1919. Carnegie made his fortune through the steel industry where he would become the dominant force. He was also a philanthropist, prior to making his fortune he gave away 350 million, after selling The Carnegie Steel Company to a banker John Pierpont Morgan for 480 million.  Carnegie began his life working at a cotton factory as a bobbin boy earning $1.20 a week. Carnegie worked a number of jobs including being a messenger in a telegraph office, a secretary, and a telegraph operator. He would later become a superintendent for a railroad division. As the superintendent, he made a number of investments in different businesses including coal, iron, and oil companies. As Well as a manufacturer of railroad sleeping cars. The US railroad industry began to take off and Carnegie got more involved by founding an iron brid...

     It always starts the same way: an ordinary hardworking boy makes an extraordinary amount of money by working hard. Rags to riches, grimy slacks to business suits, et cetera, et cetera. The interesting thing about Cornelius Vanderbilt is that he, unlike many other filthy rich businessmen in his era, never reached the philanthropic, Robinhood-esque, chairman turned charity-man status. In other words, he didn't make significant donations to charity or philanthropic causes apart from a shiny university building with his name on the side.       So, what exactly did he do? Well, young Cornelius stuck to what he knew best: steamboats, the industry he had worked in with his father since childhood. His foundation at sea allowed him to build his own steamboat business where he worked as an operator and builder. By the mid-1820s, Vanderbilt had a reputation as a ruthless and competitive man--he was probably, I would say, the most feared man in the steamboat...

     Cornelius Vanderbilt        Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in the U.S. in the late 1800s. Vanderbilt was "self made" which means he didn't come from money and he built his wealth by himself. Vanderbilt used his power to invest his profits in steamboats, lending money to other businessmen, building real estate, and buying stocks in private corporations. Vanderbilt became rich by not only taking one industry but two, the steamboat industry and the railroad industry.     "Cornelius Vanderbilt possessed many good habits that elevated him above his peers" Cornelius Vanderbilt used a tactic that his mother used which was spending less that he earned and then saving and investing the difference. Another reasons Vanderbilt became so rich was because he was never in debt. He never took out loans or borrowed money. "He never flaunted his wealth or his money".  Vanderbilt spent most of his time surrounding himself and making rel...

  Gustavo Alvarez  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  4/12/2022      Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish born, American industrialist that was well known for his philanthropy and his success in many different industries. At a young age he moved from Scotland to the U.S where he worked as a boy in a Pittsburg Cotton factory and eventually moving up as a division superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad company at the age of 19. He then began to invest in various Oil and Iron companies were he began to gain a fortune by his early 30's. In the early 1870's he began his steel business where by the next two decades he was a dominant force in the industry. He later started to devote his wealth to philanthropy and began to speak for worker unionization. This however begun to turn to hypocrisy, as in July of 1982, while on vacation at his castle in Scotland one of the deadliest worker strikes had begun in one of his steel mills. After a contract of three years with one...

John Rockefeller's Wealth John D. Rockefeller didn't grow up with a lot of wealth. It was through his businesses and involvement in the oil industry that he became a multi ($418) billionaire. Even as a child Rockefeller was thinking of business and money. He would sell small things and do jobs for his neighbors to start earning an income.  Most of Rockefeller's money came from the Standard Oil Company which he started and owned. In the late 1800's the popularity of gasoline and kerosene grew and with that so did the prices. Because of that Rockefeller started earning a lot of money since the oil being sold through his company was just getting more expensive. Big oil companies like Cheron, Exxon, and BP used to be part of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, leaving a legacy of his success behind.  John Rockefeller became one of the most richest people in the world and grew incredibly popular during his time. Part of his popularity came from his philanthropy. Through ...

  Oscar Rawson Mr. Roddy IHSS 4/12/22 How did the robber barons of the gilded age amass their wealth? IHSS Gilded Age Blog The rich of the gilded age obtained their wealth through methods of exterminating all competition. They bought up the companies owned by the competitors in their industries until their company and its subsidiaries were the only ones left standing in the industry. These men sought to eliminate the competition by buying shares of their competitors, slowly gaining a larger and larger say in their businesses in order to serve their own self-interest. The most famous example is that of Vanderbilt and the railroad war. Vanderbilt sought to attain control of the Erie Railroad Company, and competed with financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk to have the largest share of the company. He conspired with the man in charge of the company at the time, Daniel Drew. Drew was eventually forced out of power within the company as Gould and Fisk gained control. This event triggered the...

 Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 12 April 2022 Cornelius Vanderbilt     Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in 1794, and as a child would make money with his father by working on a ferry that went in between Staten Island and Manhattan. Vanderbilt built up his job and worked as the captain of a steamship after working the ferries with his father. He brought his career to the next level, and became the largest steamship operator in America. From this he built up his net worth, when he died he was worth around 100 million dollars. After building up his business in steamships, he invested in railroads, which built up the rest of his fortune. In the 1840s Cornelius built the Vanderbilts' a giant mansion in New York using his money that he got from the railroads and steamships. While investing in railroads, he encountered James Frisk who he fought for the Erie Railroad, which would have made him lots of money. Unlike other people at the time who had that amount of money, Vanderbilt...

Wyatt Quillin Mr. Roddy IHSS 12 April 2022 John D. Rockefeller John D. Rockefeller was the founder of Standard Oil Company and lived during the late 1800s into the early 1900s. He is known to be one of the richest men to ever live, and his current family is worth $11 billion dollars, which was just a fraction of his wealth, which if transferred to 2020 value, would be around $285 billion. He was born in New York, lived a long and very prosperous life, and died at 97 in Florida. Because he gained so much money over his lifetime and built a huge empire, many people believed his methods to be unethical. Standard Oil was forced to dissolve in 1911 because the government found that it had violated anti-trust laws. He was seen as a flourishing businessman and philanthropist by some and a greedy, ruthless tyrant by others. This is to be expected for pretty much any very wealthy person because rumors and theories always find their way into media and the press. John D. Rockefeller and his wife ...

 John D. Rockefeller, the man who was known until recently as the richest person to ever live, has a backstory that might not be as reputable as his hundreds of charitable donations make his history seem. Standard oil, the company created by Rockefeller, started out as a simple startup oil company, but at the end of it's lifetime was forced to break up into around 34 separate companies due to several charges of all kinds of crimes and strikes. Throughout the lifespan of his company, Rockefeller's first tactic was to start buying out other competitors, making it impossible for any small company to compete against his massive oil tycoon, thanks to the growth of oil use. Later on, he would go on to start spontaneously lowering his prices, which would temporarily put him close to a loss in money, but would put other smaller competitors out of business because they simply could not afford to loose money. He used a number of other different tactics, but eventually, customers and othe...