Christian Schussele’s 1892 painting Men of Progress portrays 19 of the era’s greatest living inventors, the heroes of America’s recent technological ascendancy.

Gathered in this fictional assembly are inventors Cyrus McCormick (reaper), Samuel Colt (revolver pistol), and Joseph Saxton (precise balances) — all of whom came to the attention of the public in 1851 during America’s spectacular showing at the Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace. Even as the Civil War threatened to tear the nation apart, Schussele’s painting boldly asserted the indivisible, unassailable, and unstoppable power of the empire of technology. From the life- and world- altering transformations wrought by the Industrial Revolution emerged the potent idea that technology was the engine of all social progress. Amid the ruin of two world wars, modern historians would come to view this idea as naive, calling it “the myth of progress.”

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