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This is a print depicting the 1807 voyage of Robert Fulton’s steamboat the Clermont. Its steam powered engine enabled the Clermont to travel up the Hudson River.

This is an image of the Lippitt MIll in Rhode Island, a cotton textile mill that opened in 1810. This image represents an example of how the factory system replaced cottage industry.

This 1823 print shows an image of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, patented in 1794. The illustration shows the components inside that removed the seeds from cotton.  As described on the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), “While an enslaved person needed about ten hours to separate the seeds from one pound of cotton fiber by hand, two people using the cotton gin could produce about fifty pounds of cotton in the same timeframe….The cotton gin made cotton tremendously profitable, which encouraged westward migration to new areas of the US South to grow more cotton. The number of enslaved people rose with the increase in cotton production, from 700,000 in 1790 to over three million by 1850.”

This is an 1827 broadside for the steamboat Nyack. The text on the notice shows how steamboats were becoming a common mode of traveling for families and for shipping freight.

This print of a Lowell mill girl represents both the role of textiles in the industrialization of the United States and the employment of women in textile mills.

This is one of four images of the patent for Samuel Morse’s telegraph in 1846.  As revolutionary as the Internet in its day, the telegraph not only radically changed the speed of communication across large distances, but in doing so, it also changed commerce and trade forever.

This is an image of the first message sent over Samuel Morse’s telegraph. The translation of the series of raised dots and dashes reads, “What hath God wrought?”

This map shows the railroads, canals, and telegraph lines in the United States in 1850. A legend can be found to the left of the title.

Samuel Colt, whose name is still famous for his Colt revolvers, contracted with Eli Whitney to design and “manufacture the revolvers to his specifications.”  Colt built his factory in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was able to use new factory systems to manufacture guns in volume.

This 1860s image shows a .36 caliber Navy revolver assembled by the Eli Whitney Firearms Company in Connecticut using interchangeable parts.

This map shows the relationship between the invention of the cotton gin and the expansion of slavery across the South in the first half of the nineteenth century. Printed during the Civil War, it carries the inscription, “Sold for the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers of the U.S. Army.”

This photograph shows the coming together of the Union and Central Pacific railroads and Promontory Summit in 1869, completing the first transcontinental railroad and opening the west to faster and cheaper settlement and easier transportation of goods.

The construction of the transcontinental railroad was completed largely through the exploitation of Chinese immigrant workers, under harrowing conditions and with ongoing discrimination and immigration restrictions.

This image of New York represents the city’s growth as a result of industrialization, including the increase in factories and workers and the opening of the Erie Canal.