SS5 The student will describe how life changed in America at the turn of the century
Download 0.67 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Thomas Edison
- The Spanish-American War
George Washington Carver Born around 1864 in Diamond Grove, Missouri, Georgia Washington Carver became one of America’s trailblazers in agriculture. Left fragile by childhood illnesses, Carver found himself tending to household tasks and gardening. His particular care of plants at an early age penned him as the “Plant Doctor” and laid foundation to a lifelong passion in horticulture. The recipient of numerous awards and faculty appointments at Iowa State and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, respectively, Carver taught his students that “nature is the greatest teacher and that by understanding the forces in nature, one can understand the dynamics of agriculture.” Carver's labor yielded more than 325 products from the peanut, 100 products from sweet potatoes and hundreds more from plants indigenous to the South. These discoveries bettered the rural economy and equipped southern farmers with crops other than cotton, which often exhausted the soil of essential nutrients. 
http://www.biography.com/articles/George-Washington-Carver-9240299 http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/gwc/bio.html Alexander Graham Bell Chief pioneer in communication, Alexander Graham Bell was born March 03, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His mother Eliza Symonds, was deaf and his father, Alexander Melville was the creator of “Visible Speech,” a series of symbols deduced from human sound. Bell received special schooling from Edinburgh High and University under his father’s supervision to correct his speech impediment. He attended the University in London for a brief period in 1867, but later joined his father in Canada in 1870. In 1872, he travelled to the United States to introduce his father’s system on deaf-mute instruction and later became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. Pursuing a lifelong interest in communication, Bell sought to develop a devise that would transmit sound through electricity. In numerous attempts to improve the telegraph, a one-dimensional devise that used Morse code, Bell experimented with his assistant Thomas A. Watson with a technique called “harmonic telegraph.” He discovered that sound could be heard over a wire. In Philadelphia in 1876, Bell invented the telephone, which eventually replaced the telegraph. The following year he established the Bell Telephone Company. 
http://gardenofpraise.com/ibdbell.htm http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/telephone/peopleevents/mabell.html http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/inventor/bell.html Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison, “The Father of the Electrical Age,” was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He received little formal education, as he was homeschooled by his mother. Young Thomas suffered a lifetime of poor hearing, completely deaf in his left ear and 80% deaf in his right ear, caused by an early bout scarlet fever and further aggravated by an accident at a rail station. This disability did not disable his inquisitive nature, as he became enthralled in conducting chemical experiments in his basement laboratory. In his teen years during the American Civil War, Edison travelled across the country as a telegraph operator. Shortly after, he would create his first invention, the tinfoil photograph and patent the electric voting machine. In 1876, Edison established his “invention factory” in Menlo Park, New Jersey where he created countless inventions and made great technological advances. Edison went on to perfect and create a number of inventions, including the Dictaphone, mimeograph, storage battery, and improving the use of rubber, concrete and ethanol in World War I. Along with his 1,000 plus inventions, he was granted 1,093 U.S. patents. More than 500 applications for patents had not been filed at the time of his death in 1931. Edison was not the creator of the first light bulb, but rather improved on an already existing model by patenting the incandescent electric light. 
http://www.nps.gov/edis/historyculture/edison-biography.htm http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html The Spanish-American War 
The Spanish-American War was a brief encounter fought between the United States and Spain in 1898. Conflict ensued on February 15, 1898 after the destruction of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. With Spain’s denied involvement in the explosion and refusal to declare Cuba independence, the U.S. Congress motioned for war against the European nation on April 20, 1898. The introduction of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 in mid-August signaled the end of the Spanish-American War. Certified on December 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris required Spain to grant Cuba independence and surrender Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. President William McKinley questioned whether these newly acquired territories be subjected to the laws of the Constitution. U.S. Congress voided the application of the Constitution since the unincorporated territories were not part of the contiguous United States and lay outside the free trade area. The outcome of the Spanish-American War was met with opposition throughout the world, but proved as a significant triumph for United States as it emerged as a superpower and the influence of its President reached beyond the Western Hemisphere. http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/mckinley.html http://www.pocanticohills.org/amprogress/the_spanish_american_war.htm http://www.spanamwar.com/McKinley.htm Download 0.67 Mb. Share with your friends:
|