The evolution was always to greater scale and speed. Other countries did that here and there - GB in textiles, Germany in steel - but we went in that direction almost across the board.
Charles R. MorrisNo specific technology. My guess is that it was the instinct always to go to maximum scale. Great Britain kept much more of a small shop mindset well into the twentieth century, for instance.
Charles R. Morrismerica was middle-class for the very start - the people who came first were hyper-strivers from England. There were no vested interests, no ranks, no classes, it was very lightly populated, there were unlimited natural resources - for free essentially - if you failed, you could always start over.
Charles R. MorrisThe kind of precision manufacturing epitomized in the armories, while it was important, was only a small share of the economy until quite late in the century. Large-scale natural resource development and processing was the name of the game.
Charles R. Morris