Steamboat Research Paper

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Everyone knows that the Industrial Revolution was quickened by steam engine. However, not a lot of people know that steamboats were the major contributor to kick off the industrial revolution. Steamboats are ships or boats that run on steam power, which was invented in the Industrial Revolution. With the steam power invented, there were numerous inventions that came with the invention, but one of the most important ones were steamboats. Steamboats were the most important in American society, but to divide the role to three parts, they played a huge role in transportation, increased trading, and boosted the economy by aiding out other industries.

Steamboats was a very efficient type of transportation, especially because it traveled through water. In the early 19th century, where water transportation was just swimming or small boats that relied on wind or human power, steamboats were innovative. Before the invention of steamboats, people found it very hard to commerce between the East and the West, just because of its vast distance and the amount of rivers and lakes you had to go through. Believe it or not, trades between towns had to be stopped because the keelboat, which was the common boat before the invention of steamboat, could not go upstream because the power propelling the boat was simply just too weak. In addition, these keelboats and flatboats were also very weak as it easily broke in the middle of the voyage, and even if they finished the voyage, the boat owner would dismantle the wooden planks and sell them because that gave them more profit than actually reusing the boat. Like these, without these steamboats, the people who travelled through rivers often had to go through many adversities. On the other hand, with th...

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...n became a large trade center and it boasted milling, packing, brewing, tanning, shipbuilding, and had many factories like steam engine manufactory, railroad car works, furniture factories, and lumber mills. Because of steamboats wide-use it improved the market economy and boosted other industries to further speed up the Industrial Revolution.

Steamboats were the most important in American society because it greatly improved transportation, increased trading, and boosted the economy and other industries, and also was the main factor that speeded up the Industrial Revolution. Even though the Industrial Revolution speeded up with the inventions of railroads, if it was not for steamboats being invented, it would’ve been impossible because people wouldn’t be able to trade long distances or upstream and limit trading, stalling the Industrial Revolution from happening.

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