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The Roaring Twenties
New Inventions
Radio: People living in isolated rural communities were less isolated due to the
invention of the “wireless”.
The first radios were crystal wirelesses—they used a crystal and a fine wire whisker
instead of tubes or transistors.
Early wireless sets were powered by large rechargeable batteries.
Canadian Ted Rogers invented a way of powering a radio with the household AC
power in a house. The battery-less radio invented by Rogers cost about $150.
Guglielmo Marconi (inventor of the wireless radio) established the first commercial
radio station in Montréal.
Shortly after, Ted Rogers (Edward Samuel Rogers Sr.) established the first radio
station in Toronto (CFRB, which still exists today) the R and the B in the call letters
stand for Radio and Battery-less (Ted Rogers’s son was the founder of Rogers
Communications, including cable televisions and cellular phones).
The vast majority of programmes came from the USA (this is Canada, after all).
Motor Cars
The first self propelled mechanical vehicle was invented and built in 1769 by French
inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot.
Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz fame) was the first person to build a car with a four
stroke engine (Mannheim, Germany, 1885).
The large-scale, production-line manufacturing of affordable automobiles was
debuted by Ransom Olds at his Oldsmobile factory in 1902. This concept was
greatly expanded by Henry Ford, beginning in 1914.
Henry ford’s first assembly line did not move—the workers moves along and build
the cars in a line.
Division of labour is the main concept in the efficiency of assembly lines: each
worker had one specific job, and he would do the exact same thing on each car
as it moved along the assembly line.
By 1924 the Model T Ford (commonly called the Tin Lizzy) cost $395.
Cars later became status symbols
Early cars usually came with a crank to start the ignition, and a tow-rope in case the
car got stuck in mud or broke down.
Sam McLaughlin (McLaughlin-Buick in Oshawa, Ontario) sold his factory to General
Motors in 1918. This later became General Motors of Canada. The MaxwellChalmers Company in Windsor was sold to Walter P. Chrysler in 1925.
The large American car manufacturing companies all operated assembly factories
in Ontario by the mid 1920s, in order to avoid tariffs and to sell cars duty-free to
countries throughout the British Empire.
Economic effects: Spin of industries.
Negatives: Pollution, Traffic Jams, accidents, crimes committed with the use of a car
(get-away cars), etc.
Read 164 (Aviation) to175, including the spotlight on Joseph-Armand Bombardier
on page 165.