The Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution (c. 1870–1914) was the wave of technological innovation that followed the original Industrial Revolution, driven by electricity, steel, petroleum, and chemical engineering. It transformed daily life more dramatically than the first revolution and made the United States and Germany the world's leading industrial powers.

The Bessemer process (1856) and open-hearth furnace made steel cheap and abundant, enabling skyscrapers, bridges, railways, and warships. Thomas Edison's electric light (1879) and alternating current systems illuminated cities and powered factories. The internal combustion engine created the automobile industry. Chemical advances produced synthetic dyes, fertilizers, and explosives. The telephone, phonograph, and cinema transformed communication and entertainment.

Henry Ford's assembly line (1913) was the revolution's culmination — mass production that made automobiles affordable for ordinary workers. The Second Industrial Revolution created the consumer economy, the modern corporation, and the technological infrastructure of the 20th century. But it also intensified imperialism (industrial powers needed raw materials and markets), labor exploitation, and environmental destruction, while providing the industrial capacity that made the world wars unprecedentedly destructive.