Setting the Scene
📖 Setting the Scene
History glossary
- What was a "flapper"?
- Young urban woman who challenged traditional expectations, short hair, short skirts, smoked, danced jazz, went out without chaperones
The automobile wasn't just a faster horse, it reshaped American society in ways no one predicted:
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🧠 Memory Aid: Changes to Everyday Life
The "CRC" framework for remembering what changed everyday life:
- C: Cars (27 million by 1929; suburbs; new industries; social freedom)
- R: Radio (10 million households; national culture; advertising; jazz)
- C: Cinema (110 million tickets/week; Hollywood stars; "The Jazz Singer" 1927)
The credit statistics to know cold:
- 60% of cars bought on hire purchase
- 80% of radios bought on hire purchase
- Both numbers are surprisingly high, which is exactly why examiners like them
The "110 million" cinema stat: 110 million cinema tickets were sold per week in the late 1920s, while America's total population was about 122 million. This means the weekly audience was nearly as big as the whole country! Use this to illustrate how central cinema was to 1920s culture.
Key dates:
- 1925: Model T costs $290: affordable for working families
- 1927: "The Jazz Singer", first talkie, revolutionises cinema
- 1929: 27 million cars on US roads; 10 million radio households
Visual association, "The Living Room Revolution": Picture a 1920 living room (dark, quiet, newspaper on the table) transforming into a 1929 living room (radio in the corner, car keys on the hook, hire-purchase receipt on the mantelpiece). The living room is the site where the consumer revolution happened, and it's a concrete image to anchor all these changes.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
How many cars were registered in America by 1929?
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