When called upon to describe the development of technology in the nineteenth century, it would be tempting simply to list individual inventions. There were many: the bicycle, the automobile, the light bulb, the telegraph, steel, barbed wire, the train, the early motion picture camera, the telephone, and the mechanisms that would lead to the development of the airplane.

However, more important than the invention of any one tool or machine was the development of a new way of thinking about tools, machines, and production: systems thinking. Before the Civil War, people identified themselves as individuals leading relatively isolated lives on farms. After the Civil War, with the migration of Americans to the cities, people themselves became parts of systems. They worked in factories, performing only one task in a system of tasks that produced something of value. They lived in large urban tenements, where any one apartment "home" might be one of hundreds just like it. People were no longer isolated individuals who could rely only on themselves for survival. They were part of an interdependent system of consumption as well as production.

The technological developments after the Civil War were also largely systems oriented, with mechanization and mass production being the most obvious. Electric lighting certainly required a system of parts to function. And the utilization of the light bulb and electricity depended upon an entire group of economic, social, political, and technological innovations. In turn, these two developments had an amazing impact on other systems in society. Electricity extended work days, powered factories, made streets safer, and allowed people to travel more quickly between home and work using electric trolleys.