I. TIMELINE OF INDUSTRIAL MODERNIZATION

Modern agriculture, electronics, garment, and resource extraction industries all have a tightly interwoven history. The timeline below represents global technological innovations and economic shifts that are especially relevant to the narratives in this book.

1865–1 CE—At the beginning of the common era, the world’s population is about 300 million and the vast majority of human industry is agricultural. The total global population grows less than .1 percent a year for the next 1,500 years before rapid growth is made possible by industrial innovation.

1492—Christopher Columbus first arrives in the Bahamas, accelerating a centuries-long competition between European nations to control access to global resources such as precious metals, agricultural goods, and human labor.

1505—The first recorded sugarcane plantation is established in the New World. Soon, enormous demand for sugar at low cost leads to the importation of thousands of slaves kidnapped from Africa.

1529—The Spanish crown grants conquistador Hernán Cortés the entire Oaxacan Valley in Mexico as personal property (an area covering the modern day state of Morelos and parts of Oaxaca). Spain considers all native inhabitants in the valley to be the property of the state. Indigenous Mexicans are forced to work in plantations (known as haciendas or fincas) and mines owned by Cortés.

1589—William Lee invents the stocking frame, the first fully mechanical loom. Queen Elizabeth I denies Lee a patent with the concern that it would displace handweavers.

1709—Abraham Darby establishes the first European business to produce metal using coke, leading to the development of the steel industry.

1735—Oil sands are mined and the oil extracted at Pechelbronn field in France.

1764—James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny which allows one person to spin many threads at once.

1769—James Watt patents the steam engine, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution.

1773—The first all-cotton textiles are produced in factories.

1779—Failure to pass a bill regulating the frame-knitting industry in Britain leads to protesters smashing 300 frames and throwing them into the street.

1787—Global cotton production has increased tenfold since 1770. In the first major organized labor action against the garment industry, the Calton weavers of Glasgow, Scotland, go on strike to protest the drop in wages because of cheaper garment imports. After the protesters try to seize materials from strikebreaking weavers, the military opens fire on the crowd and kills six. Strikes and other labor actions by garment workers become increasingly common throughout the United Kingdom.

1790—Richard Arkwright builds the first steam-powered textile factory in Nottingham, England.

1794—Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, a machine that speeds up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. This invention leads to cotton becoming a cash crop in the southern United States, creating a huge demand for slave labor.

1800—The world’s population reaches 1 billion. The densest concentrations of people are in China, Europe, and India, with less than 1 percent of the world’s population living in North America.

1804—Joseph Marie Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom, a machine that is able to weave complex designs by threading complex patterns of holes in strings of cards. This will later lead to the development of punch cards, a precursor of computer technology.

1808—A bill that would have guaranteed weavers a minimum wage is rejected by the British House of Commons.

1811–19—On March 11, 1811, British soldiers break up a protest for more work and better wages in the textile manufacturing center of Nottingham. That night workers smash textile machinery in a nearby village. This marks the beginning of the Luddite movement.

1812—In April, two thousand protesters mob a mill near Manchester, England. The owner orders his men to fire into the crowd, killing at least three people and wounding eighteen more. The next day, soldiers kill at least five more protesters.

1833—First documented observation of semiconductor effect on silver sulfide by Michael Faraday. Observations of materials that can be manipulated to conduct more or less electricity forms the basis of modern electronics research.

1848—First gold is found in California, marking the beginning of the California Gold Rush.

1849—Dr. Abraham Gesner distills kerosene out of crude oil. Kerosene soon replaces whale oil as a leading light source fuel and creates a new market for crude oil.

1850—Nearly two-thirds of plantation slaves in the southern United States are engaged in the production of cotton.

1854—Ignacy Lukasiewicz drills the first oil wells in Europe in Bóbrka, Poland.

1856—William Perkin invents the first synthetic dye, a petroleum product.

1858—The first oil well in North America is drilled in Ontario, Canada.

1859—Petroleum becomes a major industry in the United States after the oil discovery at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania.

1884—There are 250 coke works in the United States.

1886—Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler invent the gasoline-powered car in Stuttgart, Germany, creating a new market for petroleum extraction.

1910—Garment workers strike at the Hart, Schaffner, and Marx factory in Chicago. In 1911, the workers receive a wage increase, as well as a work week capped at fifty-four hours.

1911—One hundred and forty-five workers, including many teenage girls, burn to death in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City because the factory lacks adequate fire escapes. The incident launches a workers’ rights movement in the U.S.

1927—The world’s population reaches 2 billion, nearly double that of only one hundred years earlier.

1929—Clothing constitutes the third largest expenditure in the budget of an average American family.

1937—In the U.S., garment unions achieve collective bargaining, the legal framework to negotiate work and wage standards directly with employers.

1943—The Bengal Famine in British-ruled India costs the lives of 4 million people.

1944—The Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program, a joint venture by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, begins its mission of boosting wheat production in Mexico. Norman Borlaug, the “father” of the Green Revolution, is one of the original members.

1945—Norman Borlaug becomes director of the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico. Early attempts to breed high yield crops such as wheat and rice are not successful, as early varietals aren’t strong enough to support the weight of their own produce.

1947—John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley of Bell Labs invent the transistor, an important innovation in the development of modern electronic devices like radios and computers.

1948—The United Nations releases its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, prohibiting slavery and the slave trade “in all its forms.”

1954—Texas Instruments develops the first transistor radio. Gordon Teal, who came from Bell Labs, and his team at Texas Instruments develop the first commercial silicon transistor.

1955—William Shockley leaves Bell Labs and forms Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.

1956—Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley win the Nobel Prize in physics for their semiconductor research leading to the point contact transistor.

1956—Mexico becomes self-sufficient in wheat production by growing more than forty new high-yield wheat strains developed in part by Norman Borlaug.

1957—Sony introduces the pocket-sized TR-63 transistor radio, creating the first consumer market for transistor radios.

1958—Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce develop the first integrated circuit at Texas Instruments.

1960—The world’s population reaches 3 billion, a growth of 50 percent in just over thirty years. Innovations in antibiotics and sanitation reduce infant mortality rates across the globe.

—The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is founded with support from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the government of the Philippines. The IRRI will go on to breed high-yield strains of rice that are less likely to get too heavy and fall over.

1963—Norman Borlaug begins testing high-yielding semi-dwarf wheat varieties in India and Pakistan with the help of Asian scientists who had observed the development of successful strains in Mexico. The Mexican wheat varieties perform exceptionally well.

1964–66—Globally, human beings consume on average 2,358 calories per capita per day.

1965—Gordon Moore, director of Research & Development at Fairchild Semiconductor, predicts that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, which will later serve as yardstick for the exponential growth of technology and called “Moore’s Law.”

1966—Annual rice production in the Philippines increases from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in the next two decades after the introduction of rice strains developed by the International Rice Resource Institute. India adapts the new rice strains in 1966 as well, and rice yields in India triple from two tons per hectare in the 1960s to six tons per hectare in the mid-1990s.

1968—Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore leave Fairchild Semiconductor to found Intel.

1974—The world’s population adds another billion in only fourteen years. The growth rate has nearly doubled since the early 20th century.

1974–76—Globally, human beings consume on average 2,435 calories per capita per day, a 3 percent increase compared to 1964. In developing countries, humans consume on average 2,152 calories per capita per day, a 4.8 percent increase compared to 1964. In developed nations they consume 3,065 calories per capita per day, a 4 percent increase compared to 1964.

1987—The world’s population reaches 5 billion.

1990s—With the emergence of biotechnology, especially genetic engineering, the origins of innovation in agriculture have shifted from public institutions to the private sector. The ability to patent artificially constructed genes and genetically modified plants is now a great profit incentive for private companies.

1998—The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that there are 1.6 billion consumer electronic devices in the country.

1997–99—Globally, human beings consume on average 2,803 calories per capita per day, an 18.8 percent increase compared to 1964. In developing countries humans consume on average 2,681 calories per capita per day, a 30.5 percent increase compared to 1964. In developed nations they consume 3,380 calories per capita per day, a 14.7 percent increase compared to 1964.

1999—The world’s population reaches 6 billion.

—By the end of the twentieth century, more than 98 percent of Americans own televisions, and more than 50 percent own cell phones. By the end of the following decade, more than 80 percent of Americans own cell phones and 75 percent of Americans own computers.

2013—The world’s population has surpassed 7 billion.