Innovation/Inventions• Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922

– Born: Edinburgh, Scotland– “Watson, come here! I need

you!”– Starts the Bell Telephone

Company– By the mid 1880’s, 300,000

phones (mostly in business) are in use.

Innovation/InventionsThomas A. Edison 1847-1931Born: Milan, Ohio

1. Phonograph2. Incandescent Lamp3. Builds the 1st central

electric power station. Edison helped make electricity more widely available to American businesses and homes.

*The telephone and electric power help business improve.

Henry Ford• July 3rd 1863 – April 1947• Born: Greenfield Township, Michigan• Mechanical from an early age• Started with the Model A• Most popular and affordable was the

Model T• By 1913 he had decrease production

time from 12 hours to 6 hours to 93 minutes

• Increase wages and reduced hours because the work was repetitious

Andrew Carnegie

• Born: November 25, 1835, Dunfemline, Fife, Scotland

• Died August 11, 1919• Steel industry• philanthropist

John D. Rockefeller

• Born July 8, 1839, Richford, New York

• Died May 23,1937• Oil industry• Philanthropists

The Gilded Age

Business and Industry• Theory of Social Darwinism as it applies to

business refers to the “survival of the fittest”• Marketing techniques that helped change

businesses1. Advertising in magazines and newspapers.2. The use of catalogs.3. The start of department stores.

Government Helps Business

• Laissez – Faire Economics – This is the government’s economic philosophy of “hands off the economy”.

• The laissez – Faire approach allows business to act without many restrictions.

• Tariff – Taxes placed on imports. Tariffs were put in place to protect American Industries.

Monopolies• Andrew Carnegie built a Steel Empire.• Carnegie creates Vertical Consolidation (Vertical

Integration) which is a form of business in which a manufacturing corporation acquires firms that contribute to the completion of a finished product.

1. Owns Steel Mills2. Buys the mining companies3. Buys the R. R. and shipping4. Sells all finished products

• Carnegie uses the Bessemer Process to produce stronger, more durable steel.

• The Bessemer Process revolutionized the steel Industry by taking the impurities out of steel. It also greatly changes construction of buildings and bridges in the United States.

• Rockefeller built an Oil Empire and names it Standard Oil.

• Rockefeller creates Horizontal Consolidation (Horizontal Integration) which is a form of business organization in which a corporation acquires rival companies for the purpose of eliminating competition.1. He eventually controls all oil wells in the U. S. by

accumulating stocks.2. Buys all oil refineries in the U. S.3. Markets and sells his products.

John D. Rockefeller