Wayback Wednesday: Inventions During the Progressive Era

Wayback Wednesday: 

Inventions from the Progressive Era

The Progressive Era in the United States encompasses the two decades from 1900 to 1929 and was a period of sweeping social activism and political reform across the nation. Per Wikipedia: “Progressives sought to address the problems caused by rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption as well as the enormous concentration of industrial ownership in monopolies. Progressive reformers were alarmed by the spread of slums, poverty, and the exploitation of labor.”

President Theodore Roosevelt was a leader in the Progressive movement and promised trust-breaking, regulations in the railroad industry and pure food and drugs. Conservation was one of his major focuses, and he established national parks, forests, and monuments. Other well-known progressives include author Upton Sinclair, journalist Ida Tarbell, social worker and reformer Jane Addams, and suffragist Susan B. Anthony.

Technological advances and inventions played a large role during the era with many items still in use today:

• A nickel-zinc battery is a type of rechargeable battery that may be used in cordless power tools,

  

  Pixabay/Thomas

  cordless telephones, digital cameras, etc. In 1900, Thomas Edison filed U.S. Patent #684,204 for the nickel-zinc battery, and it was issued on October 8, 1901. Today’s nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery is very similar with slightly less voltage.
• Fly-swatter: This one surprised me in that I thought it would have been invented long before 1900. The first modern fly-destruction device was invented in 1900 by Robert R. Montgomery, an entrepreneur based in Decatur, Illinois. On January 9, 1900, Montgomery was issued U.S. patent #640,790 for the "Fly-Killer."
• A windowed envelope is a conventional envelope with a plastic window to allow the recipient's address to be printed on the paper contained within. Calling it the "outlook envelope", Americus F. Callahan of Chicago was the first to patent the windowed envelope. U.S. patent #701,839 was filed on December 9, 1901, and issued on June 10, 1902.
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  The airplane was invented by Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, who made the first powered and sustained airplane flights under control of the pilot in the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
• Perhaps mundane, but very important, nonetheless, the flushometer, or royal flushometer is a water pressure system that uses an inline handle to flush toilets and urinals The flushometer is still in use today in homes and public restrooms around the world. The flushometer was invented in 1906 by American businessman and inventor William Elvis Sloan.
• Do you use an electric blanket? The first electric blanket was invented in 1912 by American physician Sidney I. Russell. This earliest form of an electric blanket was an 'underblanket' under the bed that covered and heated from below.
• Traffic circles (AKA cloverleaf interchange) was first patented in the United States by Arthur Hale, a civil engineer in Maryland, on February 29, 1916.

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Love and Chocolate

She just needs a job. He wants a career. Is there room in their hearts for love?

Ilsa Krause and her siblings are stunned to discover their father left massive debt behind upon his death. To help pay off their creditors and save the farm, she takes a job at Beck’s Chocolates, the company her father despised and refused to supply with milk. Then she discovers her boss is Ernst Webber, her high school love who unceremoniously dumped her via letter from college. Could life get any more difficult?

A freshly-minted university diploma in his hand, Ernst Webber lands his dream job at Beck’s Chocolates. His plans to work his way up the ladder don’t include romantic entanglements, then Ilsa Krause walks back into his life resurrecting feelings he thought long dead. However, her animosity makes it clear she has no interest in giving him a second chance. Can he get her to change her mind? Does he want to?

Pre-order Link: https://books2read.com/u/mdQerZ