Perils in Transferring Technology to the Frontier

Prudent investors in mid-nineteenth century America had reason to believe that the industrial technology responsible for a burgeoning textile industry in the East was readily transferable to the Midwest. The application of steam power to cotton textile production in the 1830s and 1840s had produced dramatic results from Newburyport, Massachusetts, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and there was nothing mysterious or opaque about this technology. Indeed, the steam engine dated from the seventeenth century, had undergone substantial change and refinement in the eighteenth century, and most recently had benefited from the insight of George H. Corliss. Admittedly, there were some subtleties and nuances not perfectly understood, and these gaps in understanding were periodically dramatized by violent explosions. Nevertheless, mid-nineteenth century engineers were likely to exude confidence on most matters relating to the application of steam power to industry.' There was no apparent reason, therefore

Economic history · Economics · Frontier · Political science · American Environmental and Regional History · Law