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New Jersey Survey
The history of science and technology in New Jersey has been primarily
influenced by the nature of
the state’s geography and geology. The effort to understand and
exploit the state's natural resources
dominated much of the scientific work that took place in New Jersey
and those resources were
extremely important in determining the kinds of technology and industry
that took root in the state.
New Jersey’s position on the Atlantic seaboard, poised between two
of the nation's principal cities
proved equally important as an influence.
The Native Americans who populated the region were skilled farmers and
passed knowledge of
indigenous plants to the European settlers. In time, the fertility
of the soil and the ready markets of the
nation would earn New Jersey the nickname, “The
Garden State.” Even today the state remains a
leading producer of fresh market produce output for the United States.
It is second in blueberries
and eggplant, third in cranberries, peaches, spinach, and bell peppers,
fourth in asparagus, and fifth
in head lettuce.
Food has been an important focus of New Jersey innovation. Commercial
canning began in the 1840s
when Harrison Woodhull Crosby of Jamestown started selling his canned
tomatoes. Dr. John T.
Dorrance later invented condensed soup, which becmae the mainstay of
the Campbell Soup
Company
of Camden. In Jersey City, Peter
Henderson industrialized horticulture, building huge technologically
sophisticated greenhouses. By 1890 he had five acres covered by glass.
His contemporaries called him
“the father of horticulture and ornamental gardening” in the United
States. Forty years later, the
frozen-food industry got its start at Seabrook
Farms. The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment
Station at Rutgers University
The first important industrial technology introduced into New Jersey
was the watermill, which was
used for a variety of purposes. The rivers and streams in the
northern part of the state are better
suited to water power than those of the coastal plain and for this
reason manufacturing centered in
the north. Colonists built the first grist mill in 1667 and by
the 1830 census there were 864 such
mills in the state. Other watermills were used for products such
as linseed and castor oil, tanbark,
iron, and nails. The first new national technological enterprise
in New Jersey was the Paterson
mills,
built in the 1790s to take advantage of the 77-foot falls on the Passaic
River. Although this
enterprise ultimately failed, Paterson became an important textile
center, especially for silk and it
became known as "The Silk City."
Iron was the most important early technological enterprise in New Jersey.
Although the Lenni Lenape
knew of iron deposits, they seem not to have used the metal themselves.
Iron was a mainstay of
European culture, and colonists built ironworks as soon as they could.
New Jersey had significant
iron deposits near the surface and the first forge appeared in 1674
at Tinton Falls (Monmouth County).
Iron mining in the Jersey
Highlands began shortly after the turn of the eighteenth century and
became a
major industry. Seth Boyden's development of a means to make
malleable iron in Newark in 1826
helped to boost the iron industry in New Jersey. Because iron
forges used so much wood for fuel the
Highland forests were soon denuded. This gave a spur to
bog
iron industry in the Pine Barrens in the
early nineteenth century. By mid-century, however, the arrival
of anthracite coal, delivered via the
Morris Canal, revived
the Highlands iron industry and doomed the southern mines. Iron
remained an
important industry in northern New Jersey until the end of the century
by which time most of the state's
high-grade ore had been mined. The Morris Canal, built to connect
the New York metropolitan area
with the northern Delaware River, was a marvel not just for its size
but for the way boats were cranked
up inclined planes to scale the northern heights of the state.
One of the most important early iron enterprises was the Speedwell
Iron Works founded by Stephen
Vail near Morristown. It was here that Vail's son Alfred assisted
Samuel Morse in developing his
electric telegraph in 1837-38. Even more significant was the
Trenton Iron Works, established by
Peter Cooper and
Abram
Hewitt in 1845 and which was the industry leader in America until the
1880s.
One of the most important uses of iron was for railroads. The
Stevens family—Colonel
John and his
sons Robert
and Edwin—were in the vanguard of inventors and promoters of steam
railroads. They
imported the famous ten-ton English locomotive “John Bull” for their
venture. Among their many
innovations, Robert devised the T-rail design still in use, the spike
to hold it, the plates and rivets to join
it, and the use of wooden ties with crushed stone for a roadbed.
The Stevens Institute
of Technology was
founded in 1870 by a bequest in the will of Edwin A. Stevens.
Another important iron enterprise was
the Roebling Wire Rope works established by John
Roebling in Trenton. Roebling's innovations lay
behind the nation’s great suspension bridges as well as the elevators
that made skyscrapers possible.
Iron helped to make Trenton,
which also became a noted pottery center, one of the important industrial
cities of New Jersey.
New Jersey's most important industrial city through most of the the
nineteenth century was Newark.
The city's leading industry was shoemaking, which was advanced by Seth
Boyden’s 1818 invention of
patent leather; by 1860 Newark manufactured 90% of America’s patent
leather. By the eve of the Civil
War Newark had a larger percentage of its popoulation engaged in manufacturing
(73.5%) than any other
city in the nation. Newark's industrial development, however,
came at a significant cost. Newark was
also the nation's unhealthiest city. Industrial, human, and animal
waste created a major public health crisis
in the city. Industrial pollution of the Passaic
River, which was Newark's primary source of water, was a
particular problem in the 1880s.
Newark's growing pollution problems led the young inventor Thomas
Edison to abandon the city. Newark's
supply of skilled mechanics and its proximity to New York had attracted
him to the city in the early 1870s
when he established his first telegraph manufacturing shops in which
he developed important inventions for
that industry. By 1875 Edison had established a full-scale laboratory
in Newark but soon decided to escape
the city and built a new laboratory in bucolic Menlo
Park. Here, at the world's first industrial research and
development laboratory, Edison invented the phonograph, the carbon
telephone transmitter, and the first
system of incandescent electric light and power. In 1887 Edison
opened an even larger laboratory in
West Orange, where he
worked improved the phonograph and helped establish the sound recording
industry.
By the early twentieth century Edison's major competitor was the Victor
Talking Machine Company, which was
located in Camden and produced disc records that customers preferred
over Edison' clinder recordings. Edison
also made important contributions to the development of motion pictures
and storage batteries at his laboratory.
During the 1890s his energies were devoted to mining and processing
the remaining low-grade iron ore in the
northern part of the state but the opening of large rich deposits in
the Midwest doomed this enterprise to failue.
So Edison took much of the technology he used for crushing ore and
employed it in the manufacture of Portland
cement manufacturing at a large automated plant he built near Stewartsville.
Edison's laboratories provided a prototype for other inventors, including
Edward
Weston, an important pioneer
of the electrical industry, whose factories and laboratories were located
in Newark. Edison's laboratories were
also important in preparing the ground for the modern industrial research
laboratories developed by such
companies as General Electric and AT&T. During the second
half of the twentieth century advances in
telecommunications technology were almost monopolized by Bell
Laboratories, which moved from New York to
Murray Hill, New Jersey. RCA
established its laboratories near Princeton University and it was in
these labs that
much of the development work on television took place.
In the nineteenth century Princeton University was home to one of America's
leading American scientists, Joseph
Henry, later
the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
who did important work on electrical science,
including the discovery of the principles underlying the operation
of electromagnets that made possible Morse's
telegraph. Beginning in the 1930s the newly established Institute
for Advanced Study at Princeton University
became home to Albert Einstein.
The most important scientific work in nineteenth century New Jersey
centered around the state's natural resources.
In 1836 the state's first geological
survey was conducted by Henry Rogers, geology professor at the University
of
Pennsylvania. A more detailed survey was begun in 1854 under
the direction of state geologist William Kitchell.
On Kitchell's staff was George
Hammell Cook, who headed a more complete survey between 1864 and 1868.
This last and most important of the early state surveys included a
significant section on what was known as
economic geology, including information on fertilizers, building materials,
ores, manufacturer’s materials and other
useful products. It also included appendices of railroad surveys.
As a professor of chemistry at Rutgers College, George Cook was
instrumental in having Rutgers made the recipient
of the federal Morrill Act land-grant funds and helped found the Rutgers
Scientific School in 1864. Scientific
agriculture was centered at Rutgers, especially in the agricultural
experiment station established in 1880 with Cook as
its first director. Under Jacob Lipman the school investigated
soil microbiology in the early twentieth century.
Lipman was followed by Selman
Waksman, discoverer of streptomycin and other antibiotics (a word he
coined), and
founder of the Waksman Institute
of Microbiology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The
pharmaceutical
industry, which already well-established in the state, was bolstered
by his work.
From from malleable iron and canned tomatoes to the transistor and antibiotics,
New Jersey has a remarkable record
of achievement in science and technology. It remains today a center of
innovation, with the highest concentration of
scientists in the nation and a ranking of fourth among states in the amount
of money spent on research and development.
Paul Israel
September 2002