America in the early 1800's

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Classification Task

In the pre-1812 era, one of the fastest growing enterprises in the world was America's industry.  Many new things were being created.  One of these inventions was the textile machine.  Knowing of the British power in textile, Samuel Slater built many improved versions of the textile machines and set up many factories, allowing the textile industry to flourish. Elias Howe also developed his invention off of the textile machine, the sewing machine. Of course, sewing doesn't work without material, like cotton. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, allowing a worker to clean cottonseeds out over 300 times faster than before.

        Another important part of industry was farming. Many innovations were made to help make farming more efficient. The main tool used by farmers was the plow. Originally, the plow was made of wood. However, in 1797, Charles Newbold invented the iron plow to make plowing faster. Many ideas were based off of this new idea of the iron plow. In 1814, Jethro Wood improved the iron plow, and in 1837, John Deere created the self-cleaning steel plow. Another important farm tool was the reaper. Invented by Cyrus McCormick, the reaper was a device that harvested faster than a scythe.

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        Of course, transportation is a very important part of life, and it always will be. The invention of the steam engine helped speed up boats. To show everyone the improvement, Robert Fulton traveled up the Hudson River through New York in 32 hours on a steam-powered boat. John Ericsson helped develop the steam engine to make it even faster.  Each one of these inventions were breakthroughs at the time, and greatly helped America become more proficient.

Analysis Task

America wasn't always just the hunk of land it is today.  It started out as just a small ...

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