Buy this book on Amazon: A Short History of the World
The westward growth of the United States took place in unison with a technological revolution whose impact was so large that it is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution.
In 1831 an English scientist, Michael Faraday, realised that an electric current could be produced by passing a magnet through a copper wire, thereby creating a potent new power source. He had invented the electric dynamo, upon which both the electric generator and electric motor are based.
Almost 40 years passed before a practical electric generator was built by the American serial inventor, Thomas Edison. For the first time in its history, humanity had found cheap and reliable power that could be generated almost anywhere. By 1879, Edison had developed a practical and long-lasting light bulb that changed the way in which people lived. Electricity was rapidly adopted all over the world in every imaginable field, from transportation and communications to the home.
A whole flurry of inventions took place around the turn of the century: Alexander Bell invented the telephone in 1876, in 1885 Karl Benz produced the first gasoline-powered automobile, and in 1903 the Wright brothers took off in the first airplane. Advances in electricity were accompanied by huge advances in science that helped unlock the secrets of physics and chemistry. Fertiliser, pharmaceuticals and antiseptics were just some of the outcomes.