<P> Alexander Graham Bell obtained a patent in 1876 to a device that could transmit and reproduce the sound of a voice over electrical cables . Bell realized the enormous potential for his telephone and formed the Bell Telephone Company which would control the whole system from the manufacture the telephones and exchange equipment to leasing the equipment to customers and operators . Between 1877 and 1893 (the term of Bell's patent coverage) the number of phones leased by Bell's company increased from 3,000 to 260,000, although these were largely limited to businesses and government offices that could afford the relatively high rates . After the Bell patents expired, thousands of independent operators became incorporated and their competition for services to middle and low - class households as well as rural farmers drove prices down significantly . By 1920, there were 13 million phones in the United States providing service to 39 percent of all farm households and 34 percent of non-farm households . </P> <P> The 1859 discovery of crude oil in western Pennsylvania set off an "oil rush" reminiscent of the 1849 California Gold Rush and would prove to be a valuable resource on the eve of the Civil War . Because crude oil needs to be distilled to extract usable fuel oils, oil refining quickly became a major industry in the area . However, the rural and mountainous terrain of these Pennsylvania oilfields allowed neither economical in - situ refining nor efficient railroad transportation of extracted oil . Beginning in 1865, the construction of oil pipelines to connect the oilfields with railroads or oil refineries alleviated this geographical bottleneck but also put thousands of coopers and teamsters (who made the barrels and drove the wagons to transport oil) out of business . As the network of oil pipelines expanded, they became more integrated with both the railway and telegraph systems which enabled even greater coordination in production, scheduling, and pricing . </P> <P> John D. Rockefeller was a forceful driver of consolidation in the American oil industry . Beginning in 1865, he bought refineries, railroads, pipelines, and oilfields and ruthlessly eliminated competition to his Standard Oil . By 1879, he controlled 90% of oil refined in the US . Standard Oil used pipelines to directly connect the Pennsylvanian oilfields with the refineries in New Jersey, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, rather than loading and unloading railroad tank cars, which enabled huge gains in efficiency and profitability . Given the unprecedented scale of Standard Oil's network, the company developed novel methods for managing, financing, and organizing its businesses . Because laws governing corporations limited their ability to do business across state lines, Standard Oil pioneered the use of a central trust that owned and controlled the constituent companies in each state . The use of trusts by other industries to stifle competition and extract monopoly prices led to the 1890 passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act . In the 1911 case of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the Supreme Court ordered the Standard Oil Trust be disbanded into competing companies that would become Exxon (Standard Oil of New Jersey), Mobil (Standard Oil of New York), and Chevron (Standard Oil of California). </P> <P> The demand for petroleum products increased rapidly after the turn of the century as families relied upon kerosene to heat and light their houses, industries relied upon lubricants for machinery, and the ever - more prevalent internal combustion engine demanded gasoline fuel . Between 1880 and 1920, the amount of oil refined annually jumped from 26,000,000 barrels (4,100,000 m) to 442 million . The discovery of large oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and California in the early 20th century touched off "oil crazes" and contributed to these states' rapid industrialization . Because these previously agrarian western states lay outside of the various Standard Oil's production and refining networks, cities like Long Beach, California, Dallas, Texas, and Houston, Texas emerged as major centers for refining and managing these new fields under companies like Sunoco, Texaco, and Gulf Oil . </P>

How did new inventions of the 1920s directly affect american society