Part NINE = The 20th Century

The 20th Century. 

The 20th century brought an explosion in technology and the start of mass media.

The early 20th century was the height of the British Empire, with Britain controlling around a quarter of the worlds land mass and one fifth of it's population.

Over time, the empire crumbled, as countries were given back for them to control themselves.

World War One, was between 1914 to 1918. During this great war, about 8 million people died. Out of it though new technologies were invented. A prime example being phone cabling and wires for communication as these were so desperately needed.

The press became important as it was them that kept the population informed. Radio, also a big communicator, later became commercial radio.

In 1929, there was a great depression, when the major stock-markets crashed. This in turn slowed down our economy and the investment in technology.


 
During World War Two, which was between 1939 to 1945, more technology came from the military e.g. army radios, which led to mobile phones.

The Cold War, mostly between the USA and the USSR, with Capitalism against Communism, was from 1947 to 1991. Again technology progressed, especially in the space race, with each country trying to be the first to land on the moon. This period also brought us the first orbital satellites, which in turn gave us GPS and mobile signals.

Photojournalist photographers covered the wars but a lot of their photos were censored, with a lot not being allowed to share to the general public. It was used in a propagandist way to sway the peoples opinions.
Even today, some people do question whether the first moon landing was real or staged...

A series of important invention and other dates are:

 Film: 1894

Stop motion animation: 1899

Full colour photograph: 1907

Radio: 1920 

Paperback books: 1931

Television: 1950

The information age: 1980
World Wide Web: 1990

A lot of important items that we take so much for granted were invented in the 20th century.

TV's came about in the 1950's. Originally, would you believe it, that there was only one channel?!? With satellites, we now have so many channels to choose from. We also have the facilities of recording programmes; catchup; as well as constant television programmes and news on a 24 hour basis.

It has to be remembered that we now expect to hear unbiased news (although this isn't always the case.) News and information was used to companies and peoples own benefit, who told a one sided (i.e. their own) view, which hearing nothing else, the public would take to be true.

Mobile phones, although large and expensive when they first came out are now carried by almost everyone in the western world. They give us immediate contact and we are able to find out information so much quicker than we could previously.

Laptops and PC's, were based on the typewriter. The 1980's gave us the beginning of Desk Top Publishing (DTP) at home. Following on from this came video and picture editing and then the World Wide Web (WWW.) and the Internet, which was originally set up by a University to enable them to share information with other ones.