Making the Modern World

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Making the Modern World
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The Century We Became Us
1700 1800 1900 2000
Travel across Atlantic Weeks Weeks Days Hours
Travel across U.S. Months Months Days Hours
Communication across Atlantic Weeks Weeks Instant Instant
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Inventions 1800-1900

• Steamship, 1807
• Telegraph 1837
• Automobile 1884
• Bicycle 1885
• Camera (film) 1888
• Dynamite 1866
• Dynamo 1871
• Elevator, 1852
• Electric Iron 1882

• Electric Motor 1837
• Phonograph 1877
• Typewriter 1867
• Welding 1877
• Sewing Machine 1846
• Light Bulb 1879
• Telephone 1876
• Blast Furnace 1856
• Electric Stove 1896

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Overcoming limitations

• Limitations of Space
• Limitations of Time

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Limitations of Time

• Food Preservation
• Telecommunications
• Lighting
• Rapid Production
• Growth of Leisure

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The Impact of Lighting
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Europe - Early 1800's

• Coal Heat Coke.
• Coking, originally developed on a large scale for
  steel making, gives off
• Liquid Fuels
• Gases
• Coking gases lead to piped Gas Lamps. Demand for
  gas soon leads to a gas industry in its own right.

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Lighting in America

• 1830 Whale Oil Except in cities, America too
  dispersed for piped gas. Need for portable
  high-quality fuel answered by whale oil.
• 1860 Kerosene Lamp Kerosene developed as a
  substitute for increasingly scarce whale oil.
• 1876 Electric Light
• 1920 Bulb-blowing Machinery. Brought light bulbs
  down in cost from dollars to pennies. One of the
  oldest unchanged mass-production devices.

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Social Impact of Lighting

• Community life
• Safer to go out at night
• Places to go theaters, social gatherings, etc.
• More Effective Use of Leisure Time
• Easier to Read
• Adult Education for Working Classes
• Demand for more Leisure Time

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The Role of Communications

• You cant have skyscrapers without telephones
• Mail delivery financed transportation technology
• Railroads, 19th Century
• Air Travel, 20th Century

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Effects of Overcoming Time

• Time only matters if it's yours
• More Leisure
• More Effective Use of Leisure
• More Experiences

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Limitations of Space

• Space Time if you have to move slowly
• Railroad (Bulk Transport)
• Personal Transportation
• Air (Personal and Cargo)

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Overcoming Space Canals

• 1800's Canals in England
• 1825 Erie Canal Access to Great Lakes and West
• 1856 Soo Canal Iron to feed U.S. steel industry
• The age of canals was short, and canals don't
  look very impressive on the map, but they were a
  critical link in transportation history

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Railroads

• 1800 Prototypes in Mines
• 1829 Manchester-Liverpool, England
• 1835 1000 Miles in US
• 1840 3000 Miles in US
• 1860 30,000 Miles in US
• 1869 Transcontinental

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Effects of the Railroad

• Opening of Markets
• Rise of Consumer Goods
• Exploitation of Colonies-but-
• Third World (especially India) Rail Systems

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Travel in the U.S., 1800
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Travel in the U.S., 1830
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Travel in the U.S., 1857
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Where the Rails Met
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Historical Oddity
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Union Pacific Cut
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The Rival Routes
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What Happened to the Rails
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Not Far Away
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Travel in the U.S., 1930
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Effects of Overcoming Space

• Manufacturer - Access to Raw Materials
• Seller - Access to Markets
• Consumer - Access to Goods
• The railroad created the consumer society

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Inventing Christmas

• Christmas as we know it is mostly 19th century
• Very much dependent on the evolution of a
  consumer society

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Pre-1800 Christmas Traditions

• 735 AD, St. Bede named the magi Melchior,
  Gaspar Balthazar (black)
• 12th Century O Come O Come Emmanuel (English
  1851)
• Other carols with old roots The First Noel,
  Angels We Have Heard on High, What Child is This,
  God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Deck The Halls, 12
  Days of Christmas (Most Lyrics 19th C)
• Luther??? Away in a Manger (English 1885)
• 1719 Joy to the World
• 1739 Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Words by
  Charles Wesley, Music by Mendelssohn 1840)
• 1742 Handels Messiah
• 1743 O Come all ye Faithful (English 1885)

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1800's Carols

• 1818 Silent Night
• 1847 O Holy Night (1st music on radio?)
• 1848 Once in Royal David's City
• 1850 It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
• 1857 We Three Kings
• 1863 I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
• 1868 O Little Town of Bethlehem
• 1857 Jingle Bells

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Christmas Evolves

• Legal Holiday (Alabama 1836 Federal 1870
  Oklahoma 1907)
• 1834 Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol
• 1841 First Christmas Tree in England
• 1843 Xmas Cards (X X??st??)
• Mass Produced Christmas Ornaments
• 1850s Germany
• 1870s England
• 1880s U.S.
• 1882 Christmas Lights

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Santa Claus

• Fusion of Dutch and English traditions
• 1822, Clement Clark Moore, The Night Before
  Christmas
• 1860s Thomas Nast creates modern image of Santa
  Claus
• 1897 New York Sun Yes, Virginia, There is a
  Santa Claus

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Thomas Nast
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20th Century

• 1916 Carol of the Bells (Melody, Lyrics 1936)
• 1934 Winter Wonderland
• 1942 White Christmas
• 1944 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
• 1946 Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire (The
  Christmas Song)
• 1948 Sleigh Ride
• 1949 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• 1950 Frosty the Snowman
• 1951 Silver Bells
• 1958 Little Drummer Boy
• 1962 Do You Hear What I Hear?

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Christmas Factoids

• Carol of the Bells originated as a Ukrainian New
  Years Carol, 1916. The English lyrics (1936)
  have no relation to the original words
• Do You Hear What I Hear? written by Noel Regney
  and Gloria Shayne in 1962, was written as an
  appeal for peace in response to the Cuban Missile
  Crisis

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Urban Sprawl

• Steamboat suburbs, 1830s
• Railroad suburbs by 1850s
• Commuter, 1865
• Planned suburbs, late 1800s
• Streetcars and Interurban railroads

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Wisconsin Interurban Railroads
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Midwest Interurban Railroads
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Interurban Rail, Los Angeles
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Los Angeles Streetcar Lines
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Los Angeles doesnt sprawl because it has
freeways --Los Angeles built freeways because
it sprawls
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The Downside of Light Rail

• Lines were very unprofitable
• Owners invested in real estate
• Ironically, light rail created urban sprawl
• Sometimes built amusement parks at the end of the
  line
• Lines frequently serviced owners developments
  and bypassed others

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If You Think Cars Pollute, Consider Horses

• New York City generated thousands of tons of
  horse manure a day
• Horses often cruelly overworked
• 15,000 horses a year died on the streets of New
  York each year
• Many were just abandoned

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Roads

• 1790 Nicolas Cugnot, prototype steam carriage
• 1800s Thomas Telford
• Old-style roads damaged by wheels
• Well-graded roads damaged by horses hooves
• By 1830s, Britain (finally) had roads better
  than the Roman Empire

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Roads and Vested Interests

• Telford advocated steam carriages to reduce wear
  on roads
• Prototypes actually ran in 1830s
• Stiff opposition from stagecoach operators, who
  held mail contracts
• Stagecoach operators eventually eclipsed by
  railroads
• Delayed advent of auto by half century

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Personal Transportation

• Bicycle toy for rich in 1830s
• Fully modern design by 1880s
• First true personal transportation
• Not bound by streetcar routes
• Doesnt need to be fed
• Unchaperoned women (Gasp!)
• Pioneered mass production technology and
  metallurgy for automobile

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Another Technological Spiral
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George B. Selden Inventor of the Automobile

• Foresaw mechanized transport coming
• Took out a patent in 1879 on a largely imaginary
  road engine
• Delayed issuance of the patent for 16 years
  (1895)
• Collected royalties for 17 years despite doing
  nothing for the technology
• Seldens gimmick led to reforms

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1883 Stationary Gas Engine
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Early Motorcycle, 1885
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1889 Daimler Auto
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1902 Daimler Roadster
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Mercedes Jellinek
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World War I

• Railroads insufficient for Armys needs
• Army turned to truck convoys
• Civilians found convoy routes featured such
  revolutionary innovations as
• Route Markings
• Regular Maintenance
• Snow Removal

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Pershings Map, 1922
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The Interstate Highway System
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World War II The First High-Tech War

• First war whose outcome depended critically on
  simultaneous technological advances
• Radar
• Computers
• Missiles
• Jet Aircraft
• Nuclear Weapons

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Post-War Political Changes

• Military-Industrial Complex
• Cold-War

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Post-War Lifestyle Changes

• Growth of Suburbs
• Professionalization
• GI Bill
• Growth of Universities
• Overtraining?
• Rise of Materialism
• Erosion of Family?

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Technology and Sex Appeal

• Cross-cultural studies desirability youth
  likelihood of reproductive success
• Most variable norm body mass
• Cultures of scarcity favor heavy build
• Cultures of abundance favor slim build
• Cultural norms often linked to status, control of
  resources, display of wealth, availability of
  leisure
• As technology changes lifestyle or resource
  availability, norms may change

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Blue Blood and Red Necks

• Pre-Modern
• Pale complexion no need to work outside
  wealth and leisure
• Blue blood veins visible through pale skin
• Pale makeup popular
• Redneck sunburned from constant outdoor work

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Blue Blood and Red Necks

• Modern much work sedentary and indoor
• Tan abundant leisure plus resources to enjoy it
• Tanning Salons

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Much of Today's "High Tech" is an improvement on
older "Low Tech." In many ways, the "Low Tech"
advance was the real revolution

• Freeway vs. Railroad
• Light Bulb vs. Gas Lamp
• Internal Combustion or Electric Motor
• vs. Steam
• Automobile vs. Bicycle