From the Seaport to Silicon Alley : A History of Technology in New York City, 1820-2000
By Thorin Tritter, Ph.D.

As the twenty-first century dawns, Americans are inundated with technology. Our homes and offices are cluttered with electronic gadgets that wake us up in the morning, make our coffee, show us our mail, print out our work, and entertain us as well. News stories are filled with details about NASA missions to Mars, bioengineering, cloning, or some other wondrous development. And in between the news stories, advertisements rain down a constant barrage of details about home computers, CD players, DVDs, cell phones, palm pilots and other devices that are now available. We then buy these items, supporting a huge electronics industry and allowing stores like Sharper Image, Brookstones and Hammacher Schlemmer, that sell only the newest inventions, to flourish.

But the omnipresence of new technology means we take for granted much of what came before. Even if we still rely on older machines or inventions, they become mundane objects that elicit hardly any excitement. Things like electricity, running water, and telephones are so basic that we only give them a second thought when there is a problem. Similarly, we don't think much about the roads we drive on, the bridges we pass over, the way we get around, or the medical advancements that allow us to do these things for more years than ever before. Yet this technology underlies our American lifestyle. And as this virtual exhibition shows, much of this technology was developed in New York City. The Big Apple has been a crucible of innovation and invention.

The list of significant inventions or demonstrations that took place in New York City, as you can see in the exhibition's timelines, goes on and on. In communication and media, it was where the telegraph, transcontinental phone service, fax machines, and long-distance television broadcasting were all initially demonstrated, not to mention Thomas Edison's work in phonographs and motion pictures.

In engineering, New York was the site of such pioneering projects as the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park and the Empire State Building. Even more impressive is that the Brooklyn Bridge was the first of five New York spans to earn the title of longest suspension bridge in the world;1 Central Park was the first of four major works in the city by famous landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux;2 and the Empire State Building is one of nine New York buildings to stand as the nation's tallest between 1890 and 1980.3

In finance, not only has New York served as the headquarters of hundreds of banks and investment houses, but it's New York Stock Exchange and, more recently, NASDAQ have proven to be two of the world's premier financial markets. In addition, it's where the country's first plastic charge card was created, laying the foundation for that entire industry.

Less well recognized, is New York's significance in medicine and utilities. However, it was where the first X-Ray was taken, where the country's first cancer hospital opened, and where one of the nation's first new academic research hospitals formed in the 1960s. It was also where one of the nation's most elaborate water systems was created in the 1840s, where Thomas Edison opened his first commercial electric power plant in the 1880s and where, in the 1950s, the first utility company in the country secured a license for a commercial nuclear power plant.

More well known, is New York's role in transportation. It was where Robert Fulton invented the first American steamship, where Charles Lindbergh began his first transatlantic solo flight, and where one of the most elaborate subway systems in the world was built. It also is where the first recorded airplane flight took place, where the first traffic signal was installed, where airmail delivery was first introduced in the United States, and where the longest underwater vehicular tunnel in North America is located.

These examples are just a sample of the innovations that have taken place in New York City and they suggest how important the city has been to technological innovation. To many Americans, it may seem strange that this one city has been the site of such varied inventions as electric power, plastic charge cards, X-Rays, and fax machines. It seems appropriate to question why? Why has New York City played such a dominant role in the country's technological advancement?

There is, of course, no one answer to this question, but there are four inter-related factors that help explain New York's prominent role in invention: (1) the city's large population, (2) its mass media, (3) its capital markets, and (4) the demands associated with New York being the country's largest city.

The first three factors suggest why new inventions initially come before the public in New York. The simple fact is that New York has been the country's most populous city since the late 1700s and its population has always been densely settled on Manhattan Island.4 This means someone wanting to put their invention in front of a large audience quickly, finds New York an ideal location. The inventor recognizes that the crowds for which the city is known represent potential customers. And for someone who has put their life savings into an invention, those customers can be a significant force attracting them to Manhattan.

Inventors have also recognized that New York, since the 1820s, has been the newsgathering capital of the country. It was where the first Associated Press was established in the 1840s and it has been home to the nation's leading newspapers, radio stations and television broadcasters. This has made New York an ideal place to demonstrate inventions. Articles written by Gotham reporters who witness the testing of some new machine are published throughout the city and can quickly be wired all over the country. A similar demonstration in an inventor's hometown, while it might draw local attention, would be less likely to get national press. Thus the inventor who wants rapid recognition and notoriety comes to the Big Apple.5

Recognition in New York can also translate into not only news stories, but investment capital. Inventors have seen New York as a mass of potential customers and, more importantly, a large pool of possible financial backers. Since colonial times, its wealthy elite have provided funding for technological inventions and entrepreneurial projects ranging from shipping lines to steel plants.

Today it seems obvious that New York is the center of American finance, but in the early 1800s this was by no means assured. At the end of the Revolution, the city had no major staple like tobacco or cotton found in the south and its port handled fewer goods than Boston, Philadelphia or Charleston. However, several key events helped catapult the port into a position of dominance and the city into a central role in financial affairs.6

First, at the end of the War of 1812, British merchants and manufacturers chose New York as the place to sell goods that had accumulated on English docks during the fighting. As Kenneth Jackson has described it, New York was on sale. Items that had been unavailable in the U.S. for almost three years were suddenly being auctioned off at great discounts in the city. Local merchants benefited as they became suppliers to the country.

Second, in 1818, four New York ship owners pooled their resources and created the Black Ball Line, the first regular American packet service to England. Previously ships sailed without any regular schedule. Captains would delay departure to load more goods even if that meant previously loaded cargo spoiled in the process. In addition, most captains chose to sail during the calmer months of the year, leaving periods of a month or more when no ships left the port. Regular packet service, however, meant that Black Ball Line ships departed on a specified day, once a month throughout the year. Thus, after 1818, farmers and merchants around the country who wanted to guarantee that their goods were sent to England by a certain date, sent them through New York.

A third reason for the rise of New York as a financial center was its hinterlands. The city was connected by the Hudson River to thousands of acres of farmland. In addition, it was well situated between the two heavily settled portions of the eastern coast, New England and the Chesapeake Bay. It was a natural center of trade between these areas and benefited from a well-protected harbor. Its merchants, therefore, could rely on a flourishing volume of trade from these three different regions. Moreover this balance of trade protected New York's economy. Even if storms or drought hurt one of its trading regions, New York would not suffer. Its merchants would continue to flourish.

Finally, and most often emphasized, the building of the Erie Canal helped assure New York's significance. Built between 1817 and 1825, this 363-mile long water route linked New York City to the Great Lakes. While hundreds of other canals would follow in its wake, none had such a dramatic impact on the flow of trade in America. Before 1825, farmers west of the Allegheny Mountains sent their goods down the Mississippi River to New Orleans for sale. After the Erie Canal, however, those same farmers sent their crops through the Great Lakes, down the canal, and out to New York City. Similarly, after 1825, goods being sent into the heartland of America went through New York. With this one project, the Empire City became the gateway to the country.7

The combination of these events had lasting repercussions. They secured New York's national significance by making its port the largest in the country. They also encouraged entrepreneurial activity in the city. Since both packet service and the canal had been started by innovative thinkers who turned their dreams into reality, the lesson from New York history was that others could succeed with projects that followed in the model of these early efforts. In addition, these events meant New York's markets became the busiest in the nation and its merchants became some of the richest. Importantly, there developed a class of men in the city who had earned the financial capacity to fund new projects.

These financiers, as they became known by the middle of the nineteenth century, made New York a particularly appealing place for an inventor to get started and examples of their work abound. In the early 1800s, for instance, Robert Livingston backed Fulton's work on steamships. Thirty years later, New York merchant and banking houses were funding much of the cotton trade between the southern states and Europe. After the Civil War, men like Jay Gould, who funded construction of some of the city's first elevated trains, and J.P. Morgan, who financed Edison's work on lighting, represented this type of investor. In addition, less famous New Yorkers supported Samuel Morse's work with the telegraph, Elisha Otis' work on elevators, and hundreds of other inventions in the city. This trend has also continued through the twentieth century as seen in August Belmont's backing of the subway system, John J. Raskob's investment in the Empire State Building and the development in the city of a host of well known investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Salomon Brothers.8

However, neither New York's population, nor its central role in newsgathering, nor its capital markets fully explain all of the technological innovations that have taken place in the city. Certainly, they made it a place where inventors were likely to concentrate, but New York has also played a more active role in directing innovation. Put simply, because New York has been the country's largest city since the end of the eighteenth century, it has had to come up with solutions to urban ills before anywhere else.

As New York's population soared in the nineteenth century, it faced a number of difficulties that had not yet developed to the same degree in other cities. There was over crowded housing, water shortages, epidemics, traffic congestion, and uncoordinated development, to name but a few of the problems. The city could no longer manage, as smaller cities still could, with the informal jumble of public and private services. It responded with a number of municipal projects that were on an entirely new scale. It created a system of dams and aqueducts that drew water from a catchment area hundreds of miles away. It built thousands of acres of parkland for recreation, miles of bridges and tunnels to link its disparate parts together, and elaborate transportation and communication systems to better integrate it as one city. It even went so far as to pass the first zoning laws in the country to regulate and shape expansion. These projects were rarely the result of a single individual and were not signs of a particularly benevolent city government. They were projects that grew out of necessity. And to complete them, New Yorkers had to come up with innovative solutions that often relied on technology never used before.

A construction project like the Brooklyn Bridge shows how demand led to innovation in New York. By the 1860s, Manhattan and Brooklyn were the first and third most populous cities in the nation. Standing on either side of the East River, these independent municipalities found their economies indelibly tied together. Yet, no physical connections existed between them, forcing all trade through a cumbersome and inefficient system of ferry lines. The problems with this system were exacerbated in the winter of 1866-67, when the East River froze and all traffic between the cities was brought to a standstill. People couldn't get to work, stores ran out of goods, and businesses stood on the verge of collapse. When the ice melted, merchants in particular called for a bridge that would prevent such an event from happening again. However, the bridge would need to be built over the busiest waterway in the world. It would also need to be 50% longer than any span ever built and at a height that allowed ocean-going vessels to sail beneath it.

John Roebling, hired to design the structure, solved these issues by turning to a range of new technologies. He used elaborate caissons to ensure adequate foundations under the water, steam powered cranes to lift loads to great heights, newly developed electric lights for better visibility, and, most importantly, the unprecedented use of steel cables to support the weight of the roadway. In addition, he designed two towers, on which the cables were draped, that when completed stood as the tallest man-made structures in North America. Necessity had been the mother of invention and the resulting bridge was a marvel of design and ingenuity.9

This process of innovations was repeated during the building of the Empire State Building, the construction of the Croton Aqueduct, and in any number of other projects. In other cities too, designers facing new problems have had to come up with new solutions. New York, however, because of its rapid growth in the nineteenth century, has faced many problems before the rest of the country. Thus, it has been at the forefront of modernization.

Of course, modernization does not always mean improvement and just because something is new does not mean it is better.10 Technology solves some problems, but causes others. Nuclear power, for example, created entirely new types of weapons that can destroy thousands of lives in an instant and result in genetic mutations that continue for generations. Similarly, while providing a new energy source, today's nuclear power plants produce radioactive waste that our children's children will have to confront.

It seems appropriate, therefore, to question whether New York's leadership role in technology has always been for the best. It is hard to argue that any of the medical breakthroughs that have taken place the city have done anything but help people. Communications technology like the telegraph and telephone also appear to have few damaging effects. However, many of Gotham's other innovations and inventions have downsides. Electric power, for example, has improved America's standard of living, but depletes our natural resources and produces pollution. The Croton Aqueduct provides a great water supply for the city, but encourages waste - New Yorkers consume an average of over 150 gallons of water per day. Inventions in radio, television, and moving pictures provide entertainment, but have helped create a generation of passive couch potatoes. In addition, these inventions have fueled the rise of a consumer society over the more communal one that existed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Perhaps, however, the question of "good" and "bad" is irrelevant. These inventions and aspects of American culture are here to stay and we must deal with all their related consequences.

A more important question for the city may be what role will it play in future technological innovation? In terms of mass media, it remains an important hub for national newsgathering, but communication technology has reduced the significance of its dominance in the field. Likewise, its capital markets still flourish, but technology has made it possible to find potential investors from almost any location. And while still the nation's largest city, there are now almost two dozen American cities with more than two million inhabitants. These other cities certainly have large enough markets to encourage invention within them. Furthermore, the larger population trends show a movement out of cities. Thus New York with its dense urban core may no longer be the first place to face the problems of our more suburban nation. These changes suggest New York will not play such a prominent role in future technological breakthroughs as in the past.

However, New York does have a history of innovation to build on. It also may continue to benefit from its high population density. As other cities sprawl outward and technology makes it possible to live a more isolated existence, the interaction between people that is part of the invention process may be harder to find elsewhere. New York's active urban core, with the cross fertilization of ideas that it fosters, may be a feature that helps the city remain a center of change and innovation.

Whatever happens in the city, historians and future Americans must hope that the inventors of tomorrow do as good a job, if not better, at keeping the records of their experiments and achievements as those that have come before. Their documents will allow for a critical study of their work, just as this exhibition relies on the primary sources available in New York area archival holdings today. Each photograph and document in the exhibition is part of a larger collection and represents an invitation to scholarship. In these materials, the stories of invention, adaptation, and change are waiting to be told. In them, the power of an individual can be weighed against the power of the state or the economy. And in all of them, there is a doorway to learn about the past that has shaped the present.

Copyright © 2001 by Thorin Richard Tritter. All Rights Reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the exhibition. For other permission, please contact the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York.