The Industrial Revolution changed the North Carolina, as well as the rest of the western world, from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy. Advances in industry, communication, and transportation brought North Carolina out of the southern reconstruction into the new modern era.

It was on the shores of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina that two men, Wilbur and Orville Wright, changed the world by launching the first airplane into the footsteps on history. Railroads continued to stretch across the state, and the automobile began to give the people of North Carolina a new freedom.