Business Life in the 19th Century

Business in the larger cities was well advanced compared to that of the prairie towns. The development differences as you traveled across the country in the 19th century was more like time travel.

	This is business in the prairie cowtown of the 19th century.
	And main street USA 1869 style.
	Downtown San Francisco 1857, even though 12 years earlier than the Main Street USA shown above notice the development in the big cities compared to the pioneer towns.
	While expansion was moving by wagon train, horse & mule the coastal cities were bringing shiploads of merchandise and more settlers into our country. This is the San Francisco Harbor of 1870.
	The hardware store provided the prairie town more than just hardware it was general merchandise, grocery, building materials and an active catalog business for all the items not found in the store.. definitely one stop shopping.
	This is how the newspaper of 1869 set up in a tent.. Getting the news out was an important function of the west.
	This is the pharmacy of pioneer times and if lucky enough to have a doctor in town he probably saw patients in the back room.
	The blacksmith...every cowtown needed one and in 1889 his only shop was outside.
	Men often had to leave home and travel to where they could find work.. The transcontinental railroad provided many jobs during its construction.
	A lot of business was done in 1889 out of a city office.Here you see the U.S. Land Office, the clerical staff and the U.S Marshalls.

1808 - John Astor founds the American Fur company

1826 - American engineer John Stevens builds the first U.S. steam locomotive

1837 - British scientist Charles Wheatstone designs an electric telegraph system

1837 - Louis Dagueere invents the daguerreotype method for taking permanent photographs

1838 - John Deere develops a steel-tipped plow capable of turning heavy prairie soil

1838 - Samuel Morse developed the Morse code for electric telegraph system

1839 - American inventor Charles Goodyear develops the vulcanization of rubber

1841 - William Talbot patents the collotype photographic process

1844 - Samuel Morse establishes the first U.S. telegraph link

1847 - The U.S. post office begins using adhesive postage stamps

 
1850 - Allan Pinkerton founds the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

1851 - James Singer invents the first practical sewing machine

1851 - Jacob Fussell begins making ice cream in quantity for commercial sale in Baltimore

1857 - Elisha Graves Otis installs the first passenger elevator in a New York City store

1858 - Cyrus Field lays the first trans-atlantic telegraph cable

1860 - The pony express is inaugurated to deliver mail from Missouri to California

1861 - The U.S. first national income tax is introduced

1862 - Richard Gatling invents the first practical machine gun

1868 - Christopher Sholes patents the first practical typewriter

1869 - The first manufacturing patent is issued for chewing gum

1870 - American industrialist John D Rockefeller founds the Standard Oil Company

1873 - The Panic of 1873 leads to 5 years of economic depression in the U.S.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bells patents his invention of the telephone

 
1877 - Thomas Edison invents the phonograph

1879 - Thomas Edison develops the first workable incandescent lamp(light bulb)

1882 - Edison's New York plant begins supplying 59 customers with electricity.

1884 - Lewis E Waterman invents the first fountain pen with its own ink reservoir

1885 - J.K. Stantley introduces his safety cycle, the basic model for the modern bicycle

1888 - American inventor John Loud gets a patent for the first ball-point pen

1888 - George Eastman introduces the Kodak box camera

1891 - The American Express Company introduces the first traveler's checks

Design by Lennon Parker