Life in the Camps of Workers on the TCRR

Tanner Nielsen

Period 2

US History

Hell On Wheels:

By: PBS, Charles Crocker, Jack Casement, and Francis Casement

Life in the Camps:
   Samuel Bowles observed representatives of the American culture in North Platte, Nebraska and this christened what he saw as "Hell on Wheels". Many boomtowns followed the town of North Platte, and they grew without law, causing a state of anarchy. This allowed the scoundrels of the town to do as they please. An amazing thing about these workers and their camps was that they could pack up at a moments notice and be on their way. They had no emotional attachment to any town and they would move wherever the economy was good and there was plenty of work. Cheyenne was the first town that was created to try and stop the hell on wheels that were happening in other camps and to create a sense of security for those that lived there. Cheyenne had laws and rules to keep the peace as well as a military post outside the city for protection. "Hell on Wheels" camp life was nonexistent in Cheyenne which caused it to be a very popular town that housed thousands. In May of 1868, the town Laramie in Wyoming was founded with a new type of town run government. The newly run government resigned after only 3 weeks. As soon as this happened, anarchy pillaged the streets and murders took place nightly.

      Life in the camps was aweful and was a pain everyday to even be there. There were so many hard times and problems in the boomtowns that it was amazing they were able to sustain (how ever long they did). Boomtowns were very unstable overall and very unsafe to live in.

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/tcrr/

Lightbulb SWAGZ

First Lightbulb (1870):
By: Parker Tugaw

The inventor Thomas Alva Edison (in the USA) experimented with thousands of different filaments to find just the right materials to glow well and be long-lasting light bulbs. In 1879, Edison discovered that a carbon filament in an oxygen-free bulb glowed but did not burn up for 40 hours. Edison eventually produced a bulb that could glow for over 1500 hours. Edison placed his filament in an oxygenless bulb. (Edison evolved his designs for the lightbulb based on the 1875 patent he purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans.)  However, Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb.

Sources:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/edison/lightbulb.shtml

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllight2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

Typewriter Blog Post

     The concept of the typewriter was first thought of back in the early 1700's. It wasn't until 1808 that the "first" typewriter was actually created by an Italian man named Pellegrino Turrie. There were many Europeans and Americans who were inventing different types of typewriters throughout the 19th century; however many didn't take on commercial use until the "Writing ball" was created. This was a typewriter so to speak that looked somewhat like a pincushion. The most influential typewriter of the late 19th century was the Sholes and Glidden Type Writer. It began production in late 1873 and appeared all over American markets in 1874.

     The Sholes and Glidden had limited success in the markets, but its successor, The Remington, soon became a big influence on the industry of typewriters. The Sholes and Glidden was an understroke or "blind" typewriter (like many of its time). This meant that the typist couldn't see their work while they were typing, the had to lift up the printing part of the typewriter. Another example of this type of typewriter in the American market was the Caligraph of 1880. Many typewriters introduced the QWERTY keyboard which became a universal keyboard to use across most typewriters.





     The standard price for a typewriter was around $100.00 (several times more than a personal computer in today's time). There were a lot of efforts to make typewriters cheaper, so they created the "index" writers. The index writer were a lot less heavy duty, and were only meant for someone who needed to do occasional typing. They were used by pointing to a certain letter in the index and then making another motion to print that letter picked out in the index. An example of these index typewriters is the American index typewriter, which sold for $5.00. Index typewriters actually survived well into the 20th century as children's toys. An example of this is the "Dial" typewriter created by Marx Toys in the 1920s and 30s.

Hiring Workers

Parker Tugaw
2nd period
U.S. History

Hiring workers (Summary):

* Chinese Peasants from the Canton Province began arriving on California's shores in 1850, pushed away from their homeland. The attitudes changed from the Irish workers, when they complained over the wages they received. Strobridge, the recruiter of the workers, then hired 50 more chinese workers to lower the workers wages. The Chinese workers were well behaved, which is no wonder why they were hired so much. However they were not paid much, like the Irish. One day, Strobridge was so convinced with his team, that they tried for a 10 mile track day. "Straightners led the chinese gangs shoving the rails in place and keeping them to gauge while spikers walked down the ties, each man driving one particular spike and not stopping for another, moving on to the next rail; levelers and fillers followed, raising ties where needed, shoveling dirt benerath, tamping and moving on...."

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-cprr/

Group Discussion

5 things that could cause trouble with building a railroad from coast to coast:

1. The supplies (getting supplies to railroad)
2. The workers
3. Native Americans, and Buffalo
4. Mountains
5. Weather conditions

Part 2:

Hiring workers:

1. The attitudes of the owners towards the workers of the railroad were not very nice. It sounds like the people were mean, and not so thoughtful towards the workers. They probably hired anyone they could find.

Dealing with Workers:

1. Working conditions were probably intense, and brutal.
2. The employer should have made sure everything was safe like, equipment.
3. The worker should wear safety equipment like, Helmets, and closed toe shoes.

Life in the Camp:

1. The camps built near the railroads were most likely big enough to fit all the workers in an area. However, they might have been really crappy.

The Builders:

1. I think people, mass amounts of people built the railroads.
2. The builders probably didn't get that much money. They probably had enough money to buy themselves food.

Impact of Transcontinental Rail Road:

1. The impact of the railroad, made transportation easier, and faster. Going east to west, or west to east.