| Term | Definition |
|---|
| George Westinghouse | Invented the air brake. Made trains safer by stopping each car. |
| Granville T. Woods | Improved the air brake. Developed a telegraph system that allowed workers on different trains to communicate. |
| Theodore Judah | Engineer that took special interest in the idea of a transcontinental railroad. Began looking for people willing to invest in a company to build a railroad. Judah the Big Four formed the Central Pacific Railroad. |
| Big Four | Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker. All four men traveled to California during the gold rush and had grown rich selling goods to miners. Formed Central Pacific Railroad with Theodore Judah. |
| Yee Fung Cheung | Skilled herbalist. He came to California during the gold rush, but instead opened an herb shop. His first shop was in Fiddletown. He served the medical needs of many Chinese miners and laborers, and American Settlers. As his business grew, he opened shops in Sacramento, CA and Virginia City, Nevada. |
| Edwin Drake | Drilled an oil well in Pennsylvania. |
| John D. Rockefeller | In 1863, built an oil refinery near Cleveland, Ohio. In 1867, combined his refineries into Standard Oil Company. |
| Andrew Carnegie | An entrepreneur from Pittsburgh, PA. In Britain, he saw a new process for making steel. Iron ore and other metals were melted together n a way that made the steel stronger. He built a steel mill in Pennsylvania that was so successful that he built more steel mills. He bought mines to supply the mills an d ships to carry the coal and iron. By owning the mines and ships, he saved more money than other companies could. By the 1890s he became one of the wealthiest people n the world. He later gave away much of his money to help build libraries and schools. |
| William Jenney | Used steel frames to build taller buildings, such as the 10 story Home Insurance Building in Chicago. |
| John Roebling | Used steel cables and beams to build suspended bridges. One of his bridges in the Brooklyn Bridge which still links Manhattan with Brooklyn in New York City. |
| Thomas Alva Edison | One of the most important inventors in the US. Edison discovered some of the practical uses for electricity. He invented the first practical light bulb. In 1882, he set up the first central electric power station in New York City. |
| Alexander Graham Bell | Invented the telephone. |
| Lewis Lattimer | An engineer on Edison's team who directed the building of the first central electrical power station in New York City. He also invented an improved lightbulb filament and an efficient way to produce it. |
| Irving Berlin | Wrote song lyrics. Wrote God Bless America. |
| John Philip Sousa | Wrote The Stars and Stripes Forever. |
| Mamie Tape | In 1885, a Chinese girl who tried to attend a public school in California. When the school refused to accept her as a student , her mother fought for her child's rights. The school board set up a separate school for Chinese children. |
| Jacob Riis | Newspaper reporter that described the poor living conditions in New York City. |
| Jane Addams | In 1889, started a settlement house with Ellen Gates Starr called Hull House in Chicago. |
| Samuel Gompers | In 1889, he formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL.) |
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