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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos
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U.S. History 1877-Present 7: Electricity and Mass Production 50 Views
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Description:
Today we'll learn about how electricity jump-started mass production and eventually led to electronic books named after rain forests that currently sell over 200 million different products. Whoa, that is scary-big. Where's a good ol' Sears catalog when you need one?
Transcript
- 00:03
By the 1920s most American city folk had electric fans [Man teaching class]
- 00:08
washing machines radios record players vacuum cleaners lamps yeah what if we
- 00:14
just kept naming appliances how thrilling would that be okay well our
- 00:17
goal is never bore you with our vast knowledge of appliances so why did [students sleeping on their desk]
- 00:21
everybody suddenly have so much stuff well because mass production had made
Full Transcript
- 00:25
more stuff that we had that's kind of why they call it mass production like [Box opens and items fall on people]
- 00:29
math lots of people's nothing to do with Catholicism well the key thing to focus
- 00:33
on is all this good stuff suddenly got super cheap the intense efficiency
- 00:38
requirements on the line made it profitable for factories to produce [Factory's pumping out cars]
- 00:41
three times as much stuff before while selling it all for about half as much
- 00:47
and still keep the same profits well the US of A was number one in the world at [USA with a trophy jumping up and down]
- 00:51
lack to which the old champ Britain said well nobody heard what it said because
- 00:56
they were busy chanting USA USA right well seriously it was a manufacturing
- 01:02
explosion of epic proportions we made more stuff than we knew what to do with [Factory explodes]
- 01:06
need evidence check out Amazon in 1910 back then it
- 01:10
was called the Sears catalog we're sure somebody's grandma has one keeping a [Table with Sears catalog under a leg]
- 01:15
table somewhere from wobbling well it's not just know that the catalog of the
- 01:19
Sears Roebuck company was once a corny flippin copia of stuff it was a
- 01:25
mail-order catalogue that allowed country folk to buy big-city goods they
- 01:29
couldn't get otherwise remember back then there were a lot more [Horses in a field]
- 01:32
farms here than there are today and there weren't a lot of big stores and
- 01:37
stuff in it with no Amazon well on one page there might be 13 kinds of bathing
- 01:41
suits each with a detailed description of what makes it unique and yeah 13
- 01:46
kinds of swimsuit well even 30 years earlier soon was one kind of swimsuit
- 01:49
for men and one kind for women and they were both kind of ugly and the MP brands
- 01:54
enough ended Bennett yet not only are there a bunch of varieties but these [Woman in bathing suit appears on a beach]
- 01:59
1910 swimsuits also have to have umbrellas shoes and parasols that come
- 02:04
with that it was crazy well the Sears catalog was enormously
- 02:07
huge and every year it updated its product offering killing trees by the [Catalog using chainsaw on a tree]
- 02:11
thousands we're talking or thousands of pages with 13 items on
- 02:16
each page somebody else has to do the math we're doing history a lot of stuff
- 02:21
anyway electrification created new businesses even new industry suddenly
- 02:25
there was a radio industry that included companies making radios somebody's
- 02:29
making the parts to make radios radio stations the things that broadcast radio
- 02:34
performers and you know radio news reporters suddenly Americans were
- 02:38
sitting around listening to music at night and arguing about who made the
- 02:41
best version of that new product they had never even dreamt of a year earlier [Girl arguing with boy and holding a radio]
- 02:45
well the point is that mass manufacturing flooded the American
- 02:49
market with things to buy and Americans were polite enough to respond by buying
- 02:54
them so good job America yep manners are important [Boy holds arm aloft while being covered in appliances]
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