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Roaring Twenties Essay

Decent Essays

The Roaring Twenties

The decade of 1920-1929 was a time of great change, reform, improvement, adjustment and alteration of everything Americans had come to rely on. In other words everything changed. Not one part of common life was unaffected. Exciting new events happened in sports, entertainment, science, politics, communication and transportation. It was the age of prohibition, it was the age of prosperity, and it was the age of downfall. The twenties were the age of everything. It has been called the decade of enjoyment, employment, and for some, disappointment.

The 20's were a decade to remember and it had an impact on the people living through it. During the 1920s the United States was in an economic high point. …show more content…

Jazz was popular for its spontaneity and flare, and it soon captured the new record industry. By 1924, there were more than 2.5 million radios in American households. In 1920 the Westinghouse Company launched the first radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh. KDKA mostly broadcast news reports and talk shows until 1921, when the first musical radio program was aired. Sound movies were first seen in the 1920's. The sound was not on the film, but on synchronized phonograph records, it became very popular and the first full-length "talkie", "The Jazz Singer", was released. In 1928, a 27-year-old Walt Disney introduced his first animated cartoon. The lead character, "Mickey Mouse" would later go on to star in the first animated cartoon to use sound, "Steamboat Willie". George Eastman demonstrated the first color motion picture and in 1929 the first Academy awards were held.

In Politics, Calvin Coolidge was re-elected president in 1924 and J. Edgar Hoover was appointed to head up the Federal Bureau of Investigation the same year. I n 1928 Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president.

History was made in science when Howard Carter assisted Lord Carnarvon in the opening of the tomb of King Tutankhamen or King Tut in Egypt. With improved medicines came increased life-spans. The Bureau of Public Health determined the average life expectancy for an American in 1920 was 54 years, up from 49 in 1901. Albert Einstein came to the US in 1921 to lecture at

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