ABSTRACT
If one claim of the United States for the world's attention has been rooted in its political systems and ideologies, its weight as a technological leader and industrial power has been equally prominent. Any account of the broad sweep of American history has to address the sheer power, scope, and wealth of the United States economy and the means by which the United States achieved its world-leading position. The United States had started out as an overwhelmingly rural and agrarian society, and some of its founders — notably Thomas Jefferson — probably hoped that it could stay that way. But within a century of gaining its political independence the new nation was becoming a leading industrial power. By 1894 United States manufactures almost matched in value those of Britain, Germany and France combined. Industry, and the technological developments that lay behind it, had become central both to American power and to the world's image of the United States as a dynamic, inventive culture. Throughout the twentieth century, too, industry and technology remained hallmarks of American accomplishment and influence, critical not only in substantive economic terms but in symbolising America's role as the archetypal ‘modern’ society.
