1900-1949

Overview

The industrial revolution, which transformed technology in the nineteenth century, entered a second or mature phase by the beginning of the twentieth century. The widespread use of iron, coal, and steam in the 1800s provided a foundation for developments in chemistry, electricity, steel, and increases in mass production and consumption as the century changed. With the spread of industrialism in the Western world, many early-twentieth-century people viewed technology and science as venues for human progress and anticipated a near-future world free of want and war.

No figure of the first half of the twentieth century represents the promise of technology better than Henry Ford (1863-1947). His innovation of the moving assembly line to manufacture the Model T, a complex technological system, with standardized, interchangeable parts, transformed industrial production and made the products of industrialism affordable for a larger population. The...