2. Cars
Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863 and
grew up in Michigan
In 1891, Ford became an engineer with
the Edison Illuminating company in
Detroit
He began experimenting with internal
combustion engines.
3. These experiments culminated in 1896
with the completion of his own self-
propelled vehicle-the Quadricycle.
The Quadricycle had four wire wheels
that looked like heavy bicycle wheels,
was steered with a tiller like a boat, and
had only two forward speeds with no
reverse.
4. After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a
company to manufacture automobiles, the
Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903
with Henry Ford as vice-president and chief
engineer.
The infant company produced only a few cars
a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in
Detroit.
Groups of two or three men worked on each
car from components made to order by other
companies.
5. By 1918, half of all cars in America were
Model Ts. To meet the growing demand for the
Model T, the company opened a large factory
at Highland Park, Michigan, in 1910.
Here, Henry Ford combined precision
manufacturing, standardized and
interchangeable parts, a division of labor, and,
in 1913, a continuous moving assembly line.
Workers remained in place, adding one
component to each automobile as it moved
past them on the line.
6. Delivery of parts by conveyor belt to
the workers was carefully timed to keep
the assembly line moving smoothly and
efficiently.
The introduction of the moving
assembly line revolutionized automobile
production by significantly reducing
assembly time per vehicle, thus
lowering costs.
7.
8. Credit
Everything came together in the 1920s:
mass production, electrification,
highway construction, mass
communication, the expansion of
consumer financing.
Auto manufacturers perfected assembly
line production and began to turn out
cars at a price that would “put the
middle class on wheels”.
9. Public investment in a federal highway system
helped to expand the market even further.
Other manufacturers adapted assembly line
techniques to produce affordable home
appliances and consumer electronics: ovens,
refrigerators, washing machines,
phonographs, radios, telephones.
And investment in the utility infrastructure -
electrical power grid, phone lines, water and
sewer systems - helped to bring these
products into more homes.
10. But the catalyst - the thing that helped to bring
all these industrial and technological marvels
within the reach of so many consumers - was
the expanded use of installment credit.
The big breakthrough came in 1919 when
General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC)
became the first to make financing available to
middle-income car buyers.
Instead of having to come up with the entire
purchase price, prospective car buyers needed
only a down payment and an income that was
big enough to cover monthly payments over the
life of the loan.
11. Before long, manufacturers of other “big
ticket” items began to adopt the
practice.
And if consumers were hesitant to go
into debt, the flood of advertisements in
mass media outlets - newspapers,
magazines, and radio - helped them to
overcome their inhibitions.
12. During the early years of the 20th
century, a few hotels issued credit cards
to favored guests, but the cards were
mainly a gimmick - status symbols that
distinguished the cardholders from the
masses of cash-paying customers.
Retail stores and oil companies were
issuing credit cards during the 1920s, but
they were single-party cards issued by
merchants who saw them as a way to sell
more goods and services.
13. They offered cardholders a certain measure of
convenience but very little flexibility.
Department store cards weren’t accepted by
competitors, and unless they were issued by a
national chain, they weren’t much use when
traveling.
Gasoline credit cards covered a wider market
area, but they weren’t accepted by
competitors, nor were they much use if you
needed something that wasn’t sold at a gas
station.
14. Movies
By the mid-20s, movies were big business (with a
capital investment totaling over $2 billion) with
some theatres offering double features.
By the end of the decade, there were 20
Hollywood studios, and the demand for films was
greater than ever.
Most people are unaware that the greatest output
of feature films in the US occurred in the 1920s
and 1930s (averaging about 800 film releases in a
year) - nowadays, it is remarkable when
production exceeds 500 films in a year.
15. Throughout most of the decade, silent films
were the predominant product of the film
industry, having evolved from vaudevillian
roots.
– Vaudeville: stage variety show, with singing, dancing, comedy skits, and
animal acts; highly popular in America from the late 1880s to the 1930s
But the films were becoming bigger (or
longer), costlier, and more polished. They
were being manufactured, assembly-line style,
in Hollywood's 'entertainment factories,' in
which production was broken down and
organized into its various components
(writing, costuming, makeup, directing, etc.).
16. Experimentation with sound film technology, both
for recording and playback, was virtually constant
throughout the silent era, but the twin problems
of accurate synchronization and sufficient
amplification had been difficult to overcome.
In 1926, Hollywood studio Warner Bros.
introduced the "Vitaphone" system, producing
short films of live entertainment acts and public
figures and adding recorded sound effects and
orchestral scores to some of its major features.
17. The real turning point came in late 1927,
when Warners released The Jazz Singer,
which was mostly silent but contained the first
synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a
feature film.
The change was remarkably swift. By the end
of 1929, Hollywood was almost all-talkie, with
several competing sound systems (soon to
be standardized).
18. Creatively, however, the lightning-paced transition was a
difficult one, and in some ways, film briefly reverted to the
conditions of its earliest days.
The late '20s were full of static, stagey talkies as artists in
front of and behind the camera struggled with the stringent
limitations of the early sound equipment and their own
uncertainty as to how to utilize the new medium.
Stage performers, directors and writers flooded the
cinema as producers sought personnel experienced in
dialogue-based storytelling. Many major silent filmmakers
and actors were unable to adjust and found their careers
severely curtailed or even suddenly over.
