The 1920s Science and Technology: Topics in the News

AUTOMOBILES: FORD AND CHEVROLET LEAD THE COMPETITION

During the 1920s, the story of the motorcar remained the story of Henry Ford (1863–1947). This giant of American industry continued to dominate the field of automotive production and engineering. Between 1908 and 1926, more than fifteen million of his Model T's, the Ford Motor Company's mass-produced automobile model, were sold. Then in 1927, Ford introduced his new Model A. This was no retooled, restyled Model T; rather, it was a completely new automobile with a safety-glass windshield, hydraulic shock absorbers, an all-wheel braking system, and a high-geared transmission.

The Ford Motor Company did not monopolize the American automobile industry, however. Chevrolet also kept adding new styles of cars, each with improved engineering. In 1927, the year Ford shifted models, Chevrolet actually outsold Ford for the first time by marketing over one million vehicles. The following year, with the Model A in full production, Ford regained the sales lead only to lose it again in 1929. That year, Chevrolet added a bold innovation: the "valve-in-head" engine design (in which the valve compartments are parts of a single, precast engine block). This design would become the standard in the automotive industry.

Across the decades, the Ford Motor Company remained one of America's leading automobile producers. Yet it never again thoroughly dominated the industry as it had during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

AVIATION: PILOTS SEEK PEACETIME EMPLOYMENT

During World War I (1914–18), military aircraft technology went through exceptional (not to mention rapid) development. In the decade that followed, civilian pursuits dominated the aviation world.

Ex-fighter pilots, who had battled their nation's enemies during the war, now were unemployed. The commercial airline industry was in its infancy, and there were no jobs awaiting them. So for a few hundred dollars, many pilots purchased war-surplus planes, usually two-seater Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" trainers, and barnstormed (toured rural areas to perform shows). They flew from county fair to county fair, offering rides to one person at a time for the then-significant fee of $5 or $10. These romantic daredevils became the subjects of movies, in which they were shown flying upside down, under bridges, and through barns. In fact, one of the decade's hit movies, and the first film to win a Best Picture Academy Award, was titled Wings (1927). Its characters, however, were not stunt flyers, but all-American boys fighting in World War I. The film featured combat flying sequences that dazzled audiences.

In the 1920s, anyone able to operate an airplane could fly one. There were no official inspections of aircraft, no mandatory pilot training, and no rules of flight. In 1926, the U.S. Congress passed an Air Commerce Act, creating an Aeronautics Branch connected to the Department of Commerce. Planes and pilots became subject to qualification standards and licensing, and the recklessness of the barnstormers came to an end. As the decade progressed, the best way for a pilot to make steady money in aviation was by taking a job with a private company or landing a government contract to deliver mail.

"Boss Kett"

"Boss Kett" was the beloved nickname of Charles Franklin Kettering (1876–1958), the man responsible for some of the most important innovations in the automobile industry. By 1920, he already was acclaimed as the inventor of the electric self-starter: a motor that turned over the engine of the car, eliminating the necessity of dangerous and laborious hand-cranking. During the decade, Kettering was vice president for research at General Motors (GM). He worked on the development of leaded gasoline, which increased octane and prevented engine knock. He helped to develop Duco, a durable, fast-drying lacquer finish for auto bodies. When Duco was introduced in 1925, it came in only one color: light blue. GM chemists eventually came up with additional colors.

Perhaps Kettering's greatest accomplishment during the decade was the development of a high-speed, two-cycle diesel engine (an internal combustion engine in which fuel is ignited when air is compressed until it reaches a high temperature). During the following decade, this engine revolutionized the manner in which the world powered its trucks, ships, and locomotives.

The first regular airmail route had been established in 1918 between New York and Washington, D.C. Two years later, the U.S. Post Office expanded its airmail service across the continent, initiating a route between New York and San Francisco with stops in major cities. Initially, mail was airborne only during the day and was transported by train at night. Day-and-night air transportation was attempted in 1921, but discontinued because of the dangers of night flying. In fact, flying after dark was the main cause for the deadly crashes of thirty-one of the first forty airmail planes. Not until mid–1924 was day-and-night airmail service permanently established. Meanwhile, passenger service on airplanes was slower to develop. Flying was uncomfortable, and most people feared potential air accidents. Despite this, the end of the decade saw the major American cities linked by regularly scheduled airline service.

While the decade was not an active period for the evolution of military aircraft, the armed services remained involved in aviation. U.S. Army Air Corps Brig. Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell (1879–1936) was the champion of military aviation. Mitchell steered U.S. aviation during World War I (1914–18), and in the 1920s he became a vocal, controversial advocate of the establishment of an air force: a military branch to be operated independently

of the U.S. Army and Navy. In 1921, Mitchell demonstrated the potential of air power by showing how airplanes could be used to help sink large naval vessels. Yet several of his superiors questioned his testing procedures. Upon harassing his critics, he was demoted. In 1925, Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination after blaming the crash of the dirigible (a balloon-powered airship with a rigid hull structure) Shenandoah on "incompetency and criminal neglect." After being suspended from active duty for five years, he resigned, and his downfall hurt efforts to win congressional appropriations for military aviation in the late 1920s. (During this time, private aeronautics were assisted financially by the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, a philanthropic fund established by American mining entrepreneur Daniel Guggenheim [1856–1930].) It was not until World War II (1939–45) that Mitchell's dream of an independent U.S. Air Force was realized.

During the decade, airplanes were used as racers. From 1920 to 1925, army and navy planes and civilian sports planes were entered in the National Air Races and other international meets. The competing planes, primarily built for speed, included a range of single-and double-seat models with high-compression engines. In 1925, U.S. Army Lieutenant James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle (1896–1993) set a world air speed record of 245.7 miles per hour while competing in the Schneider Trophy Race. Doolittle was enlisted by the Guggenheim Fund to perform aeronautical experiments that led to the development of instrument flying, which minimized crashes caused by fog or night blindness. The fund also assisted American aviator and explorer Richard E. Byrd (1888–1957) on his polar expeditions.

In 1925, Byrd headed up the air unit that accompanied an Arctic expedition led by Donald B. MacMillan (1874–1970). This group was sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Its purpose was to experiment with the use of airplanes and shortwave radio in the Arctic. That same year, Byrd flew over the North Pole. Three years later, he flew over the South Pole. Starting in 1928, he made the first of five major expeditions to Antarctica.

AVIATION: "LUCKY LINDY" CROSSES THE ATLANTIC

Pioneer aviator Charles A. Lindbergh (1902–1974) was one of the most celebrated Americans of the 1920s. He earned his fame for accomplishing the decade's greatest and most publicized aeronautic feat: a solo, nonstop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, which Lindbergh accomplished in 1927.

Lindbergh's flight was not the first Atlantic air crossing. Eight years earlier, five Navy fliers piloted a seaplane, the NC-4, from Newfoundland, Canada to the Azores to Portugal and finally to England. Still, no one ever had flown solo from America to Europe. Lindbergh was determined to do so. He was backed by civic boosters and aviation buffs from St. Louis, Missouri; for this reason, he named his plane "The Spirit of St. Louis." The plane was specially constructed for the flight. It featured a nine-cylinder, air-cooled Curtiss-Wright engine with redundancies (back-up parts), such as two ignition systems and a double carburetor. Lindbergh supervised and assisted in the plane's construction, which was accomplished in sixty days at a cost of $10,580.

On May 10, 1927, Lindbergh left San Diego (where "The Spirit of St. Louis" had been built) for New York, making a brief stop in St. Louis. On May 12, he landed at Roosevelt Field on Long Island. After a week of final preparations, interviews, and weather-watching, the U.S. Weather Bureau issued a guardedly optimistic forecast for the North Atlantic. The date was May 20. It was pouring rain at Roosevelt Field, but Lindbergh optimistically ordered his plane pushed out of its hangar and into take-off position. The flier and his plane bumped across the muddy airstrip, barely reaching sufficient speed to clear a parked tractor and some overhead wires at the end of the runway. Finally, at 7:52 a.m., Lindbergh was completely airborne. "The Spirit of St. Louis" carried 425 gallons of gasoline. Its cockpit was completely stripped down. It contained no radio and no parachute. To minimize the plane's weight, its cockpit seat was made of wicker (interlaced twigs), rather than metal. The only food Lindbergh carried on board was five sandwiches.

As he flew, Lindbergh was aware that his greatest enemy was lack of sleep. He had prepared for the flight by deliberately depriving himself of sleep for long periods. Before reaching Nova Scotia, he fell asleep, then woke up with a jolt. Upon opening a window to allow cold air to blow onto his face, the chart on which he had plotted his course almost was sucked out of the plane. Lindbergh buzzed (flew low) the "Spirit" over St. John's, Newfoundland, to signal his presence. Then he headed out over the vastness of the open Atlantic. By then, he was flying blindly in dense clouds. In an effort to rise above them, he attempted to increase his altitude to over ten thousand feet. As he climbed, the plane's wings began to ice up. Lindbergh quickly descended, thereby escaping the ice and clouds.

Just as he had figured, sleeplessness continued to strain him. He hallucinated. He dozed off. Sometimes, he snapped awake just as the "Spirit" was about to set down in the Atlantic. Eventually, Lindbergh observed the Irish coast. He fixed his position and headed for his final destination: Paris. A tumultuous crowd of one hundred thousand excited French men and women awaited his arrival at Le Bourget airport. A cheering throng surged onto the runway as Lindbergh taxied to a stop. His epic flight of 3,610 miles took him thirty-three-and-a-half hours. Lindbergh did not fly the "Spirit" back to the United States. Instead, he returned home on board the U.S. Navy cruiser Memphis. The media dubbed him "Lucky Lindy" and the "Lone Eagle." He was presented awards and made the subject of popular songs. President Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) bestowed on Lindbergh the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

DIRIGIBLES: FLOATING ACROSS THE SKY

During the 1920s, airplanes were not the only aircraft that took to the skies. Such lighter-than-air craft as dirigibles and blimps (nonrigid airships with limp hull structures that fell flat when deflated) swept across the skies. These airships were devised in France during the late eighteenth century. They remained strictly experimental for more than a century, until Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838–1917), a German aeronautical engineer, designed and constructed fewer than one hundred powered balloons, which were named for him. Zeppelins were employed by the Germans on bombing raids over England during World War I (1914–18). The huge crafts soaked up antiaircraft fire before floating back behind German lines.

In 1920, the U.S. Navy contracted with the British government to purchase their R38 dirigible. A crew was sent abroad to be trained to operate the ship and fly it back to America. Tragically, the airship broke in half during a strenuous test run over Hull, England, in 1921. Like the German airships, the R38 was filled with highly flammable hydrogen. The breakage started fires on board, and forty-four passengers, sixteen of whom were American, were killed. It was the worst aviation disaster in history up to that time.

In 1923 the Shenandoah, the initial American-made dirigible, went airborne. Unlike its predecessors, the Shenandoah was the first rigid airship to be filled with helium. Helium is not flammable like hydrogen, but it also weighs more and thus has less lifting ability. Helium also was extremely expensive; in the 1920s, it cost over two hundred times more than hydrogen. In 1924, the Shenandoah was joined in its home hangar in Lakehurst, New Jersey, by the Los Angeles, its German-made sister ship. There was insignificant helium available to lift both dirigibles, which kept the Shenandoah out of commission until June 1925. That September, it left Lakehurst to commence its fifty-seventh flight, a public-relations tour of large cities and state fairs in the Midwest. While floating near Ava, Ohio, the ship encountered a fierce line of thunderstorms. It rose uncontrollably, with violent rolling and pitching. Then it dived out of control. Within three minutes, the Shenandoah dropped more than three thousand feet. The crew discharged ballast (a weighty substance employed to control the dirigible's ascent), and the ship leveled out. But two minutes later, it was caught in another updraft. This time, the Shenandoah broke in half, spilling out some of its crew. Eventually, the survivors managed to maneuver the forward part of the ship to a relatively soft landing. Fourteen members of the forty-three person crew died, including the ship's captain.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles remained in active service for eight years, a lengthy time for a dirigible. It completed 331 flights and was retired in 1932.

HELICOPTERS: A NEW FLYING MACHINE

In 1922 Emile Berliner (1851–1929), who previously had invented the microphone, and his son Henry made the first successful helicopter flight. While the helicopter attained an altitude of only fifteen to twenty feet and flew at just twenty miles per hour, the flight was significant because the machine rose from the ground and then flew horizontally. At the time, other experimental aircraft could rise and set down vertically but were incapable of horizontal movement.

In 1909 and 1910, before he emigrated to the United States from Russia, aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky (1889–1972) had constructed two prototype helicopters. Neither would fly, however. Sikorsky decided that his work on the helicopter would have to wait for "better engines, lighter materials, and experienced mechanics." In the 1930s, he returned to work on rotary-bladed aircraft and developed the first truly workable helicopters.

THE LIE DETECTOR: A NEW INVESTIGATIVE TOOL

In the early 1920s, John Augustus Larson (1892–1983), a Berkeley, California police officer, developed the first practical polygraph. With three pens swinging back and forth on a slowly moving strip of paper, Larson's polygraph measured changes in his subject's blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate. Leonarde Keeler (c. 1904–1949), who worked with Larson, added a fourth measurement: changes in perspiration. Because these indicators allegedly would increase when a subject lied, the moving pens were supposed to swing more widely when untruths were spoken.

As the lie detector evolved, a trained operator asked the subject a series of "control" questions. This established a base pattern of readings against which to compare deviations. Early operators also mixed relevant and irrelevant questions, a tactic that Larson himself faulted. This tactic was abandoned in large part by the 1950s.

Larson and Keeler never stated that their machine could measure a subject's candor with 100 percent accuracy. Indeed, skeptics then and now have claimed that some people under examination might be so nervous and intimidated that their sessions would produce plenty of false readings. Even though polygraph machines and operators have become more sophisticated across the decades, reservations about their reliability remain, and lie detector results continue to be inadmissible as evidence in most courts of law.

MOVIES WITH SOUND: SILENCE NO LONGER IS GOLDEN

The 1920s were the golden age of the silent motion picture. American movie fans by the millions flocked to see comedies, dramas, and action-adventure films that were acted without words. While the movie played, pianists often accompanied the action on the screen with appropriate background music to enhance the mood. In the larger theaters, located in major cities, full orchestras even played live music for their patrons.

Since the dawn of the motion picture in the 1890s, inventors and visionaries had attempted to unite sight and sound on screen. The problem stymied Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931), perhaps the greatest inventor in American history. In 1895 and 1913, he produced devices to accomplish this goal, called Kinetophones, that were failures. Attempts by others, resulting in such contraptions as the Synchroscope, the Cinematophone, and the Cameraphone, also misfired. Some, however, were promising. From 1922 through 1925, Lee De Forest, Theodore Case, and E. I. Sponable devised a system for photographing synchronized sound on film, which was called Phonofilm. In 1960, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (MPAA) awarded De Forest a special Academy Award "for his pioneering inventions which brought sound to the motion picture."

In the 1920s, radio engineers at Western Electric and telephone engineers at Bell Laboratories worked on a sound system for films. Sam Warner (1887–1927), one of the four brothers who founded the then-struggling Warner Bros. studio, learned of their efforts. Warner believed that talking pictures which actually worked might be a bonanza for his company. He mentioned this to his brother Harry (1881–1958), who allegedly responded, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Nonetheless, Harry became convinced of the potential for talking pictures. In 1926, Warner Bros. established a subsidiary company, Vitaphone, in conjunction with Western Electric. Their goal was to implement a sound-on-disc system for motion pictures. In this process, large phonograph records were played on a special projector-turntable system. The sounds emanating from the disc were synchronized to the onscreen images.

Vitaphone first produced and released several experimental short films. Before the year was out, it released Don Juan, a feature-length swashbuckler. While its actors did not speak, Don Juan featured synchronized music (recorded by the New York Philharmonic) and sound effects. Then in the summer of 1927, the studio produced The Jazz Singer, a melodrama with musical numbers starring Al Jolson (1886–1950), a popular stage entertainer. While essentially a silent film, The Jazz Singer did feature a synchronized soundtrack that included background music and sound effects. One sequence featured dialogue; Jolson prophetically blurted out the lines "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet." The film's phenomenal box office success marked the beginning of the end for silent film. Sadly, Sam Warner died the evening before the film's New York premiere.

Warner Bros. then released its first all-talking picture, Lights of New York (1928). Other studios quickly began producing sound films, which became known as "talkies." Walt Disney (1901–1966) completed his first animated talkie, Steamboat Willie, in 1928, starring Mickey Mouse. Fox Studios released its first sound Western, In Old Arizona, in 1929; Variety, the show business trade magazine, described it as "the first outdoor talker" and noted, "…that it's right for box office is unquestioned at this time." Legendary film-maker Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) directed the first British-made, feature-length talkie, Blackmail, in 1929. The advent of the sound film also saw the birth of a new motion picture genre: the movie musical.

The success of these "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing" motion pictures resulted in a major upheaval in the motion picture industry. Previously, screen actors were selected for their ability to physically act out roles. Speaking voices were unimportant, because they were unnecessary to an actor's performance. Now, Hollywood stars with thick foreign accents or thin, tinny voices found themselves unemployable. Meanwhile, the motion picture studios began importing actors from the Broadway stage: performers whose voices were trained. Hollywood movie sets had to be equipped with sound-recording equipment, and theaters needed to be furnished with sound systems.

Computer and Television Beginnings

In the 1920s, important research was being carried out in computer and television technology. Even so, it would be decades before the fruits of this research affected American life.

During the decade, American electrical engineer Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) and a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists began work on devising a "differential analyzer": the world's first analog computer (which was operated by numbers derived from such measurable quantities as rotations or voltages). In 1923 and 1924, Russian-born American electrical engineer Vladimir Zworykin (1889–1982) applied for a patent for his kinescope, an electronic scanning device for recording television programming.

MOVIES IN COLOR: ADDING BRIGHTNESS TO MOTION PICTURE SCREENS

The employment of color film stock in motion pictures was pioneered by Herbert T. Kalmus (1881–1963), an educator who had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Zurich. In 1912, he established the Technicolor Company and began experimenting with color film processes. In 1917, Kalmus produced a short color film, The Gulf Between, in which he superimposed two strips of film with different primary colors. Despite its novelty, The Gulf Between received little notice.

During the early 1920s, Kalmus made significant improvements over his original technique. He developed a process whereby two layers of film were exposed, dyed (one in red-orange, the other in blue-green), and photographically printed onto one another in a film laboratory. This process first was employed during the filming of The Toll of the Sea (1922). Other two-strip Technicolor shorts and feature-length films were produced during the decade, most notably The Black Pirate (1926), a swashbuckler. Kalmus eventually developed a three-strip process. La Cucaracha (1933) and Becky Sharp (1935) would be the first short and feature-length films shot using the three-strip process.

THE RADIO BOOM: COMMERCIAL RADIO IN ITS INFANCY

Back in 1901, Italian physicist and inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937), one of the pioneers in the evolution of radio, had successfully received the first transatlantic radio communication, transmitted from England to Canada. Yet by 1920, radio still was in its experimental stages. This was despite the U.S. government's taking control of the medium during World War I (1914–18) and funding research into wireless technology.

During the war, developments in vacuum tubes (devices similar to lightbulbs and the ancestors of the modern transistor) allowed the sending and receiving of radio signals to become far more precise and powerful. In 1918, Edwin H. Armstrong (1890–1954) developed the super-heterodyne radio receiver, which allowed for the reception of a wide range of radio transmissions. The following year, this receiver went into production. Such advances allowed for the advent of the commercial radio industry in the early 1920s: An industry that would revolutionize mass communication,

as well as the manner in which millions of people across the world were entertained, enlightened, and pitched to by advertisers.

The first commercial radio station was started in east Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by Frank Conrad (1874–1941), a Westinghouse engineer. Conrad, who was experimenting with voice-transmitting equipment for the U.S. Navy, set up a small radio in his garage. He tested his equipment by communicating with the Westinghouse plant some four or five miles away. In April 1920, Conrad received a license to use the call letters 8XK, and began communicating with a circle of radio-buff friends living in the Pittsburgh area. Additionally, he began playing phonograph records over the air. A local department store learned of Conrad's enterprise and placed an advertisement in the Pittsburgh Sun, hoping to sell radio receivers to those who might want to listen to Conrad's "programming." Conrad's work led Westinghouse to establish its own radio station, KDKA, which broadcast from a more powerful transmitter located on the roof of its Pittsburgh factory. In October 1920, the U.S. Department of Commerce licensed the station to operate at a wavelength of 360 meters. One of its most important early broadcasts reported the returns from the 1920 presidential election, in which Republican Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) ran against Democrat James M. Cox (1870–1957).

Due to pending litigation involving hundreds of radio-related patents, additional radio stations did not immediately flood the market. Nonetheless, commercial stations did begin to appear. A second station, WEAF in New York, began broadcasting in September 1921. By the end of 1922, there were 508 stations nationwide. In 1921, $9 million worth of radio equipment was sold. Two years later, that figure increased to $46 million. By 1926, it was up to $400 million. In 1922, sixty thousand radios could be found in American households. By 1933, there would be almost twenty million. The April 1923 issue of Scientific American magazine noted that "1922 will stand out in the history of radio. For it was during the past year that radio broadcasting became a regular feature of every-day life, and radio entered the average home life of the average man."