Introduction: The Second Industrial Revolution (1840-1900) - Research Paper Example

CONDITIONS FOSTERING TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES DURING THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The period between 1840-1900 is often known as the Second Industrial Revolution since a large number of innovative technologies were invented and developed during that time. These inventions announced the onset of a period of about 70 years of continuous and rapid technical advances. Many of these creations have had a profound impact on the living standards of the 20th century. Some of most popular technologies invented during second industrial revolution included electricity, the internal combustion engine, petroleum and other chemicals, telephones and radios, and indoor plumbing (Atkeson & Kehoe, 2001).

These pathbreaking inventions in energy, materials, chemicals, and medicine were fundamental not because they themselves had inevitably a huge impact on production, but because they amplified the effectiveness of research and development in microinventive activity. The conditions that led to the widespread development and adoption of scientific knowledge and technologies in the years following 1870 cannot be looked in isolation for that period, in fact they were brewing right from the start of the first industrial revolution.

However, there are certain distinctive characteristics of this period that made such a groundbreaking movement possible. Firstly, the second Industrial Revolution fast-tracked the mutual interactions between two forms of knowledge (explicit and implicit) and broad technology (Mokyr, 1988). Even before 1870, a number of natural processes such as floods or other regularities were appropriately understood by pioneers to provide some direction as to how to make science and technology more applicable.

However, this concept was much more valued and understood during the second industrial revolution era. For example electricity was already discovered, further applications of electricity were invented. The other aspect of the second Industrial Revolution worth noting is the transcending nature of the organization of production. The second Industrial Revolution observed the growth in some industries due to huge economies of scale. With the growth of the chemical industry, oil refining, and other containers, in addition to engines of various types, size began to play an increasingly important role.

Some economies of scale were organizational, such as mass production by interchangeable parts knowledge while others were more in the nature of marketing benefits, or even because of pursuit of monopolies (Jevons, 1931). The consequence of varying manufacturing technologies was the rise of technological systems. Again, some rudimentary systems of similar nature were already in operation before 1870 such as railroad and telegraph networks and in large cities gas, water supply, and sewage systems were in existence.

However, the second Industrial Revolution scaled up the sizeable technological system from an exception to a commonplace (Bekar & Lipsey, 2003). Works Cited Atkeson, A., & Kehoe, P. J. (2001, December). THE TRANSITION TO A NEW ECONOMY AFTER THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH , pp. 1-40. Bekar, C., & Lipsey, R. G. (2003, January 7). Science, Institutions, and the Industrial Revolution . Retrieved June 22, 2011, from Lewis and Clark College : http://legacy.lclark.

edu/~bekar/Econ256ScienceIR.pdf Jevons, H. S. (1931). The Second Industrial Revolution. The Economic Journal , 41 (161), 1-18. Mokyr, J. (1988, August). The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914. Retrieved June 22, 2011, from NorthWestern University: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jmokyr/castronovo.pdf