The Second Industrial Revolution and the Debate over Its Meaning

The Second Industrial Revolution unfolded roughly between 1870 and 1914, centered on electricity, chemistry, and new metallurgical processes. Thomas Edison developed the first commercially viable incandescent light bulb in 1879 and established at Menlo Park the first systematic industrial research laboratory, while Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse developed the alternating-current system that enabled efficient long-distance electricity transmission, provoking the "War of the Currents" with Edison's rival direct-current system. German chemical industry became a world reference point in synthetic dyes and, later, fertilizers, with firms such as BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst dominating world production; the Haber-Bosch process, developed in Germany around 1910, made it possible to synthesize ammonia artificially, revolutionizing fertilizer production and dramatically increasing global crop yields. The internal combustion engine, developed by Nikolaus Otto and later perfected by Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, transformed transportation, and the automobile began to spread on a mass scale following the introduction of the Ford Model T in 1908, as mass production revolutionized large-scale industrial manufacturing.