Transformation of the U.S. Economy – Part I

This invention allowed factory owners to build factories in the nation’s most populous cities:

• telegraphs

• coal power

• steam power

• renewable energy

The difference in speed between prairie schooners (covered wagons) and steam locomotives was:

• negligible

• significant

• minute

• comparable

Telegraphs and Morse Code were transformative for the U.S. Economy because they:

• Carried news and information quickly

• Were encoded to protect the secrecy of messages and information sent using them

• The cost per message was much lower than sending a traditional letter

• Both B & C

Beginning in 1880, coal became the largest source of energy in the U.S. – which it would maintain for ______ years, until it was surpassed by oil:

• 20

• 50

• 70

• 100

The Bessemer process– developed by English inventor Sir Henry Bessemer, was used to mass produce:

• coal

• steel

• steam

• iron

Throughout the latter half of the 1840s, the 1850s, and into the 1860s, ______ miles of telegraph wire were laid across the nation

• tens

• hundreds

• thousands

• hundreds of thousands of

Unlike ______ powered factories, ______ powered factories could be built almost anywhere:

• steam powered..... water powered

• coal powered .... steam powered

• water powered .... coal powered

• water powered... steam powered

It took ______ tons of wood to produce as much energy as a half-ton of coal:

• 2

• 3

• 4

• 6

Steam-powered trains– first built in Britain in the 1800s, would not gain popularity in the U.S. until _______.

• 1830

• 1840

• 1860

• 1890

Morse code, a system of dots and dashes to represent each letter of the alphabet, was developed by:

• Robert Fulton

• Samuel Morse

• Morse’s business partners

• both B & C