Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid industrial growth in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based on new technologies and sources of energy. Cheap steel, made with the Bessemer process, spread, electricity and the telephone appeared, along with the internal combustion engine, chemical industries and the use of petroleum. Railways and telegraph lines expanded, and mass production methods, later developed by Henry Ford, transformed factories. The United States and Germany overtook Britain as industrial leaders. The period brought large cities, big corporations and a growing working class, and it prompted both labour movements and new debates about the role of the state in the economy.

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