Sunday, May 17, 2020

Significant Inventors of the Industrial Revolution

The inventions and innovations of the Industrial Revolution transformed the U.S. and Great Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Tremendous gains in science and technology helped Britain become the worlds dominant economic and political power, while in the U.S. it fueled a young nations westward expansion and built vast fortunes.   A Revolution Twice Over British innovations harnessed the power of water, steam, and coal, helping the U.K. dominate the global textile market of the mid-1770s. Other advancements made in chemistry, manufacturing, and transportation allowed the nation to expand and fund its empire around the globe. The American Industrial Revolution began after the Civil War as the U.S. rebuilt its infrastructure. New forms of transportation such as the steamboat  and the railroad helped the nation expand trade. Meanwhile, innovations such as the modern assembly line and electric light bulb revolutionized both business  and personal life. Transportation Water had long been used to power simple machines such as grain mills and textile spinners, but Scottish inventor James Watts refinements to the steam engine in 1775 launched the revolution in earnest. Up until that point, such engines were crude, inefficient, and unreliable. Watts first engines were used primarily to pump water and air into and out of mines. With the development of more powerful, efficient engines which would operate under higher pressure and increased output, came newer, better forms of transportation.  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹Robert Fulton  was an engineer  and  inventor who had become fascinated with Watts engine while living in France at the turn of the 19th century. After several years of experimenting in Paris, he returned to the U.S. and launched the Clermont in 1807 on the Hudson River in New York. It was the first commercially viable steamboat line in the nation.  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹Ã¢â‚¬â€¹ As the nations rivers began opening to navigation, commerce expanded along with the population. Another new form of transportation, the railroad, also relied on steam power to drive the locomotives. First in Britain and then in the U.S., rail lines began appearing in the 1820s. By 1869, the first transcontinental rail line linked the coasts. If the 19th century belonged to steam, the 20th century belonged to the internal combustion engine. American inventor George Brayton, working on earlier innovations, developed the first liquid-fueled internal combustion engine in 1872. During the next two decades, German engineers including Karl Benz and Rudolf Diesel would make further innovations. By the time Henry Ford unveiled his Model T car in 1908, the internal combustion engine was poised to transform not just the nations transportation system but also spur 20th-century industries like petroleum and aviation. Communication As the populations of both the U.K. and the U.S. expanded in the 1800s and Americas boundaries pushed westward, new forms of communication that could cover great distances were invented to keep pace with this growth. One of the first significant inventions was the telegraph, perfected by Samuel Morse. He developed a series of dots and dashes that could be transmitted electrically in 1836; they came to be known as Morse Code, though it wouldnt be until 1844 that the first telegraph service opened, between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. As the rail system expanded in the U.S., the telegraph followed along, literally. Rail depots doubled as telegraph stations, bringing news to the far-flung frontier. Telegraph signals began flowing between the U.S. and the U.K. in 1866 with Cyrus Fields first permanent transatlantic telegraph line. The following decade, Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, working in the U.S. with Thomas Watson, patented the telephone in 1876.   Thomas Edison, who made a number of discoveries and innovations during the 1800s, contributed to the communications revolution by inventing the phonograph in 1876. The device used paper cylinders coated with wax to record sound. Records were first made of metal and later shellac. In Italy, Enrico Marconi made his first successful radio wave transmission in 1895, paving the way for the  radio to be invented in the next century. Industry In 1794, the American industrialist Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. This device mechanized the process of removing seeds from cotton, something that had previously been done largely by hand. But what made Whitneys invention particularly special was its use of interchangeable parts. If one part broke, it could be easily replaced by another inexpensive, mass-produced copy. This made processing cotton cheaper, in turn creating new markets and wealth. Elijah McCoy, a mechanical engineer, filed more than 50 patents for various industrial inventions. Although he did not invent the sewing machine, Elias Howes refinements and patent in 1844 perfected the device. Working with Isaac Singer, Howe marketed the device to manufacturers and later consumers. The machine allowed for the mass production of clothing, expanding the nations textile industry. It also made housework easier and allowed the growing middle class to indulge in hobbies like fashion. But factory work—and home life—still were dependent upon sunlight and lamplight. It wasnt until electricity began being harnessed for commercial purposes that industry truly was revolutionized. Thomas Edisons invention of the electric light bulb in 1879 became the means by which large factories could be illuminated, extending shifts and increasing manufacturing output. It also spurred the creation of the nations electrical grid, into which the many inventions of the 20th century from TVs to PCs would eventually plug. Person Invention Date James Watt First reliable steam engine 1775 Eli Whitney Cotton ginInterchangeable parts for muskets 17931798 Robert Fulton Regular steamboat service on the Hudson River 1807 Samuel F.B. Morse Telegraph 1836 Elias Howe Sewing machine 1844 Isaac Singer Improves and markets Howe's sewing machine 1851 Cyrus Field Transatlantic cable 1866 Alexander Graham Bell Telephone 1876 Thomas Edison PhonographIncandescent light bulb 18771879 Nikola Tesla Induction electric motor 1888 Rudolf Diesel Diesel engine 1892 Orville and Wilbur Wright First airplane 1903 Henry Ford Model T FordLarge-scale moving assembly line 19081913

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Raising The Legal Drinking Age - 1900 Words

Everyday there is an alcohol related incident in the world. The poor decision making by young adults cost people’s lives everyday. The original drinking age was 18 years old, it was changed because scientists discovered the brain doesn t fully develop until the age of 21. But what people don’t know is that the brain fully matures at the age of 25 years old. Car rental places have the age at 25 to be able to rent a car because of young people decision making on drinking and driving. For students in college alcohol can ruin not only their future of becoming something but it can ruin their life by doing stupid things. Most college kids who stay out and party in college fail or flunk out. The dangers of drinking young can lead to many things,†¦show more content†¦Also at this age everyone knows the rules of drinking alcohol, that they shouldn t drive and not to have too much but younger people think much differently. Younger adults still teenagers think they can st ay out drink and party all night and sneak back home by driving. Little do they know almost all alcohol related deaths and accidents happen this way because of what the younger mind thinks. The very first reason why the drinking age of 21 should be raised to 25 is because the brain and your body full reaches its maturity by the age of 25 years old. With age limit to age 25 it changes a lot of things on the road for people who are driving, walking , and the other drivers. It creates a more safe environment for the people surrounding you while you drive instead of driving intoxicated.If the alcohol age is raised to 25 at a more mature age it could cause a more profound effect on the body when there older( narconon). What this means is that not drinking at a young age will make you body fully develop without any problems, but if you do drink you put yourself at risk for when you re older because your body never got the chance to develop in certain places.Young adults that live in neigh borhoods with bars or nightclubs are being sold alcohol and driving home because they think it s a short drive, an older age of maturity would stop the thinking of driving(Drinking Age ProCon.org).Younger drivers that think about driving home when they drink

Long Swings in the Exchange Rate and the Excess Re Essay Example For Students

Long Swings in the Exchange Rate and the Excess Re Essay turns Puzzle: The Role ofImperfect KnowledgeLong Swings in the Exchange Rate and the Excess Returns Puzzle: The Role ofImperfect KnowledgeWilliam StraussThe paper is a clear breath of dirty air in the sterile world of perfectforesight. The authors offer a well worked out model of how agents persistentlybid the exchange rate away from the expected long-run equilibrium rate. Itseems intuitively comfortable to see the mathematical justification for theunexplained excess returns to be a function of the distance from the bench-mark(PPP). The uncertainty of a switch occurring in a regime (the Peso Problem) isan interest-ing form within which to embed the imperfect information. It is aformat that seems ready to ex-pand into many other areas of economic modeling inwhich expectations are at the core of the models dynamics. Of course, the choice of the benchmark is key to the mechanics of the process. In this case, PPP is an obvious choice but, since the idea of PPP drives thismodel so strongly, it is interesting to look at its place and itscharacteristics. In the paper, the authors note that if PPP holds, relativeexcess demand for domestic and foreign goods is zero. The obvious suggestion,based on the model, is that the flow of goods and services is the foundation forthe equilibrating dynamic. Behind the flow of goods and services is the gapbetween the gap between, domestic and foreign short-term rates, and the steadystate long-run interest rate gap that sets goods flows to zero. The assumptionis that the prices of the domestic and foreign goods in their respective for-eign currencies are incorrect based on the fundamentals of the respectivecountries and that agents know this (and know that the exchange rate path isunstable) but cannot be sure of the de-gree of incorrectness or thepersistence of the di vergence. Embedded into this model are as-sumptions aboutPPP that provide comf ort about this benchmarks ability to give the correctrelative prices. It is possible that these assumptions, to some degree, maskthe complexity of the situation with respect to PPPs ability to proxy relativeprices. At the theoretical level, PPP should simply offer equal purchasingpower for equal commodity bundles through the exchange rate. Unfortunately, theproblem of explaining stylized facts requires some matching with reality. Set-tling for getting the signs right mitigates much of the angst, but, as has beendemonstrated by the predictive abilities of many of the models to date, theproblem is not really solved. Perhaps the model of PPP as a function ofinterest rates only misses somethingBut here we have a BIG step (from the real exchange rate side, not from the sideof better modeling PPP) toward not only getting the signs right, but alsounderstanding the dynamics of the switch. If PPP were built from a micro-foundation choice-based model (where demand-side ef-fects influencesavin g/investment and interest rates), I suspect that we might see a realconver-gence toward understanding the excess returns puzzle. Business