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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?

Language:
English Language

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

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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