The twenties. An era of Prohibition (and gangsters)…jazz…flappers…The Great Gatsby…and an accelerating stock market. I thought it might be fun to take a look at the state of technology as it stood a century ago, in 1925. This post first post of a series will focus on communications and entertainment..
Radio had been pioneered in the early 1900s, but was initially restricted to wireless telegraphy for point-to-point or ship-to-shore use. Broadcasting has to wait for the introduction and improvement of vacuum tubes and development of a viable business model. The first US broadcasting station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air in November 1920 and reported the results of that year’s presidential election. By 1925, there were about 500 US radio stations, and nearly 20% of households owned a receiver. Good receivers were expensive, though: $119 for a loudspeaker model (headset-only versions were cheaper)…that’s about $2200 in our present money.
Broadcast stations all transmitted with vacuum tubes, however, there were still some earlier technologies (spark, arc, and alternator-based transmitters) in use for other applications.
One important broadcasting event of 1925 was the debut of WSM in Nashville and its most famous program, The Grand Old Opry; along with portable recording for the phonograph (discussed later), this would have a real impact on the national spread of music that had previously been regional or local.
The telephone was still far from universal–only about 35% of households had phones, and those that did used it mainly for local communication. (Telephone connections were often ‘party line’, so privacy could not be assumed) Transcontinental telephone service had been launched in 1911 (again, enabled by vacuum tube amplification) but was still very expensive. Rapid long-distance communication was usually conducted by telegraph. Morse code was still very much in use, although printing telegraphs had long been available and were handling a growing proportion of the traffic. One specialized form of printing telegraph was the stock ticker–these devices were shortly to get a real workout, in 1929.
Dial telephone technology had been developed and was expanding, but most calls were still completed manually by operators. There were 178,000 women working as operators in 1920 (men and boys had been tried, but did not work out well) and the number was still growing, reaching 342,000 by 1950. And those numbers count just the employees working in phone company central offices, not the switchboard operators in businesses and government offices.
Transoceanic telegraph cables had been in use since the 1860s, but undersea telephone cables were far from being a practical possibility. Still, a transatlantic telephone service would soon be available (launched in 1927), based on high-power long wave radio stations at each end…but not many could afford to use it.
Movies had reached extreme levels of popularity. I can’t find specific numbers for 1925, but by 1930, the weekly movie audience would reach 65 million. These were black & white films, and without sound–musical accompaniment was usually provided by local orchestras. Sound wasn’t too far away, though, the first mainstream sound film, The Jazz Singer, came out in 1927. The early sound films used a process called Vitaphone, which required synchronization of the sound on a phonograph record with the stream of images on film. It would be replaced by a process in which the soundtrack was recorded on the film itself.
Newpapers were a huge deal in 1925. Their success was enabled by a convergence of technologies: the rotary printing press, the Linotype machine, photography and halftone printing, and the telegraph. (That line from the song The Easter Parade about “you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure” wouldn’t have made sense to people in 1925, since rotogravure printing wasn’t introduced until 1926.)
Just over the horizon (1927) was the teletypesetter,which allowed stories transmitted by telegraph to be entered directly into a Linotype machine for typesetting, without the necessity of being re-keyed…so a news item written by an Associated Press reporter in (say) New York City could be inserted into the copy for hundreds of newspapers around the country, almost untouched by human hands.
Books and magazines were increasingly popular–this phenomenon was driven more by expanded literacy than by any particular technological improvement, although mechanized binding and reduced paper costs (driven by improvements in chemical pulping processes) contributed to the growth of the book-publishing industry, while magazines benefited from highly-selective use of color. Grok says that in a mass-circulation weekly like the Saturday Evening Post you might see 1 full-color cover, 5-15 color ad pages (5-10% of total pages), occasional two-color accents (eg, blue headers) on 10-20% of editorial pages, and 80-90% black & white interior pages, and notes:
Where color appeared, it dazzled. A 1925 reader flipping to a Lucky Strike ad with a green pack and golden smoke in Collier’s (circulation ~1 million) felt the modernity of the Jazz Age. Publishers knew color sold—ads with it often doubled engagement, per early ad studies—and it became a status symbol. But for every color page, dozens stayed monochrome, balancing art with economics.
There’s a great documentary made in 2015, American Epic. An original 1925 recording machine was restored by engineer Nicholas Berg (the electronics runs off batteries and the recording lathe is powered by a descending weight) and the producers took the restored machine on an extended trip, introducing 1925 recording technology to some present-day performers and having them record their own renditions of music from the machine’s younger days. Highly recommended. The move website is here. The book that accompanies the program is subtitled The first time America heard itself.
Photography had been accessible to the casual picture-taker since the introduction of the Kodak Brownie in 1900. You’d just point, shoot, and send the film off to be developed. More serious photographers wielded folding cameras or large-format view cameras, often with bellows, which used glass plates or sheet film. These required tripods and a good understanding of exposure, since there were no automatic settings. 1925 marked the introduction of a compact 35mm camera, the Leica I.
Film was black-and-white, Kodachrome wouldn’t arrive for another ten years. Flash bulbs were just starting to arrive, displacing the earlier magnesium-based flash systems. The potential for home movie-making first emerged with Kodak’s 16mm film and the Cine-Kodak camera, introduced in 1923. These systems (camera plus projector) were priced at $335 in 1925 money, so not yet a product for mass adoption.
In response to my question about photography in 1925 versus photography in 1915, Grok said:
In 1915, photography was still more of a niche pursuit. World War I was raging, and photography’s role leaned heavily toward documentation—think gritty battlefield shots by official war photographers using bulky glass-plate cameras. The gear was similar to 1925’s in some ways (view cameras, folding cameras), but less refined. Roll film existed, thanks to Kodak, but it wasn’t as widespread or user-friendly yet. Developing was strictly a darkroom affair, often left to professionals or dedicated hobbyists, and the average person wasn’t snapping casual photos much—cameras were pricey and less portable.
By 1925, the war was over, and the Roaring Twenties brought a lighter, more consumer-driven vibe. The Kodak Brownie had matured, making photography cheaper and simpler, so families started capturing everyday life—picnics, kids, vacations. The Leica I’s debut in 1925 introduced 35mm film to the masses, shrinking cameras down and hinting at candid, on-the-go shooting, though it was still pricey and mostly for enthusiasts. Artistically, 1915 was peak Pictorialism—soft, romantic images mimicking paintings—while 1925 saw modernism creeping in, with sharper focus and bolder experiments. Plus, the rise of illustrated magazines demanded more dynamic press photography, shifting the medium’s purpose from static art to storytelling.
So, 1925 was more accessible and versatile than 1915, with a growing amateur base and a pivot toward capturing a booming, post-war world.
One limitation of that ‘dynamic press photography’ was the time consumed to send photographs for long distances, which required physical transportation of the image…a photo of an event in Europe could not arrive in New York in much less than about a week. This problem began to be addressed in 1924 with a Western Union service called Transoceanic Photography, which enabled transmission of photos via undersea cable. It was expensive and provided only limited quality, though: timely photographs from abroad would not be a common thing in newspaper until AP’s introduction of its Wirephoto service in 1935.
Not everyone was happy about the new media. Composer Arnold Schoenberg, for one, was a harsh critic of radio, saying that it “accustoms the ear to an unspeakably coarse tone, and to a body of sound constituted in a soupy, blurred way, which precludes all finer differentiation.” He worried that radio gave music a “continuous tinkle” that would eventually result in a state wherein “all music has been consumed, worn out.”
Joseph Roth, who lived in Berlin in the 1920s, said about radio:
There are no more secrets in the world. The whispered confessions of a despondent sinner are available to all the curious ears of a community, which thanks to the wireless telephone has become a pack…No one listened any longer to the song of the nightingale and the chirp of conscience. No one followed the voice of reason and each allowed himself to be drowned out by the cry of instinct.
Roth didn’t much like photography, either:
People who had completely ordinary eyes, all of a sudden obtain a look. The indifferent become thoughtful, the harmless full of humor, the simpleminded become goal oriented, the common strollers look like pilots, secretaries like demons, directors like Caesars.
That comment about photography driving people to “obtain a look” mirrors today’s discussions about the influence of Instagram.
The next post in the Technology in 1925 series will focus on transportation–land, sea, and air.
I have a weakness for children’s book from that era, when kids would read a 300 page book, for enjoyment. My favorites include The Radio Boys series, as they were doing their thing when radio was cutting edge technology.
I mentioned the Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine from 1884 in a thread on X about Reading. One comment was:
“That’s when the working classes were capable of reading Das Kapital and getting ideas of how things should be. Such a situation couldn’t be tolerated and changes were implemented to educational systems to stop them having such capability.”
…to which someone replied:
“The working classes of Europe were FAR more susceptible to the ahistorical and utopian bullshit that Marx spewed, BECAUSE their education was so much inferior.”
https://x.com/JeremyTate41/status/1899608100375613643
It would be interesting to look at the timing of the rise and decline of book-reading for pleasure in the United States…my perception is that it was still definitely on the upswing in 1925. (As one indicator, the Book of the Month company was founded in 1926)…My guess is that voluntary reading continued to grow at least through the 1950s, although it was increasingly faced with competition from television…then at some point, poor teaching methods and chaotic school environments began to exert a malign effect.
Considering competitive time allocation between reading and radio: magazines and books had the advantage of the use of illustrations–photographs–color photographs..newspapers could even display recent-news photographs, initially restricted to local areas and later telecommunications delivered…whereas of course radio had no image capability until it became television.
Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America, 1927 gives us a snapshot of the decade.
It was clear into the ’50’s before portable radios became smaller than a small suitcase with fairly bulky, heavy and expensive, non-rechargeable batteries. Books and magazines were a lot more portable. Phonographs were tied to the form factor of records and it took a surprisingly long time for someone to exploit the possibilities of magnetic tape. And that only lasted until solid state memory caught up.
When you think about it, photographic film and vacuum tubes followed a similar trajectory. Early, somewhat slow early development followed by ubiquity, followed by an almost overnight decline and disappearance except for certain niche uses. As the transistor was being invented, the big news was ever smaller, miniaturized tubes and early experiments with what we would call printed circuits. It took about 30 tears fro tubes to disappear from most things, hanging on in CRT’s, and broadcast power level transmitters and still in microwave applications. I suppose the desk top computer is headed the same way, just waiting for them to figure out how to put a 34″ display in a pocket size package.
Portable radios…I saw something about a business that *rented* portable radios to people…mostly teenagers, it looked like…who didn’t have their own, for taking to the beach or somewhere.
“photographic film and vacuum tubes followed a similar trajectory. Early, somewhat slow early development followed by ubiquity, followed by an almost overnight decline and disappearance except for certain niche uses”…and it is very difficult for those companies that make such things, and for people who have built their careers around them, to accept what is happening.
You really feel (or discover, through empirical evidence, whatever) the beginnings of the American mass culture by looking through antique stores and certain estate sales. Full-page ads with paragraphs of copy, brand names that were powerful when their products were necessary, like for lard, or tractors (I see Jeep is trying this now by slapping “Willys” on their vehicles). Names that are forgotten now. Products that saved people a ton of time before automation made them obsolete, like flour sifters.
Imagine seeing these things for the first time and being inspired by the novelty, by the time you would save, thinking, as you struggled through a life people today would see as grinding and/or boring, “what a time to be alive!”
Gary McVey writes at Ricochet about the impermanence of film/tv fame. It’s often been said that a lot of silent-film stars didn’t make it in the sound era because of their voices, but Gary says “John Gilbert, the silent era screen Romeo, whose star is (incorrectly) thought to have plunged in early talkies because his voice recorded as too high-toned and “fruity”. It wasn’t so; he was in a bunch of early sound films whose soundtracks prove it. But what Gilbert did suffer from was a sudden cultural change towards Depression-era realism that made his florid, flapper-era “Great Lover” mannerisms suddenly a laughingstock. Gilbert hung on for a couple of years in smaller roles. He died of drink. It wasn’t all Gilbert’s fault; if Rudolph Valentino hadn’t died a year before talkies took off, it’s very likely the same thing would have happened to him.”
https://ricochet.com/1793725/film-tv-fame-yes-it-fades/
It’s an honor to get a shout-out on Chicagoboyz! Thanks, David!
Great to see you here, Gary! Stop by any time!
About Gary:
https://www.garymcvey.com/index.php
At book club, we discussed regional music becoming increasingly national in the first half of the 20th C, and I mentioned Alan Lomax. He did not start his recordings until 1935, though his father, a Texas A&M professor and collector of cowboy songs had done some before that. It would be interesting to try and figure out whether radio or recordings were the stronger driver of a national popular music.
Radio networking began in 1926–I don’t know to what degree music was transmitted via the network, versus to what extent it was more news-focused with music left to the local stations.
Think about being on a farm in the middle of Kansas during WWI with a brother, father, son or husband in the army. In the cities, most papers published at least four editions daily with EXTRA!’s. You had a weekly paper that might have as few as four pages for everything, may have subscribed to a national news service by mail. If you even saw it the week it was published, it was because of Rural Free Delivery that brought you those, so important, letters from places you had to look up on a map.
So when radio became possible, you got one. Never mind the expense, including some way to charge the battery because you might only go to a town with electricity once a month or less. In a town, you’d haul the heavy lead acid batteries to a garage or other establishment periodically to get them charged.
Fame of all sorts has always been fleeting. Who remembers the name of the very popular, then famous orator that delivered one of his two hour orations, taken down by shorthand reporters and published in many papers, just before Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address
The market for entertainment has always been both wide and deep. Go to any of the western mining towns and you’ll find an opera house. There wold have been other, probably less well preserved dance halls as well. And, yes, they did put on real operas as well as plays, Shakespeare was very popular. Remember the Booth’s were famous as tragedians. Famous European singers toured recitals through places like Leadville, Cripple Creek and Carson City very profitably. I’ll bet the proportion of “working class” that had seen a live Shakespeare play in 1890 was far greater than in 1990. So, low fi as early AM was, the demand for all sorts of music and other entertainment was near insatiable.
AVI
My take is that live music on the radio preceded recordings as the driver of a national popular music–at least based on what I know of Western Swing.
Consider the Light Crust Doughboys, who first played on the radio in January 1931on KFJZ in Fort Worth to promote Burris Mills’s Light Crust Flour. (Pappy O’Daniel, the mill owner, parlayed his radio announcing of the Doughboys into being elected Governor.) Milton Brown and Bob Wills were the leading members of the Doughboys. Before transforming into the Doughboys, Bob Wills and Milton Brown had performed in 1930 on radio station WBAP in Fort Worth as the Aladdin Laddies—sponsored by Aladdin Lamp Company.
Going back even further, we find out that Bill Boyd, another Western Swing pioneer, made his live performing debut on radio in 1926 on KFPM in Greenville.
In that era, western swing bands made their living by sponsors paying for their live performances on radio, or by playing in dance halls. (Crystal Springs for Bill Boyd and his Cowboy Ramblers.)
I should have asked my mother, who as a teenager danced to Bob Wills’s music in the late 1930s and early 1940s, if she listened to him by radio or by record. She was too far out in the country for him to have performed at her dances. At least my mother knew that her New England born and raised son was a Western Swing aficionado. My guess that recordings did it by then.
Radio made the Western Swing star…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Brown
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1366313-Bill-Boyd-And-His-Cowboy-Ramblers
Good thing I wrote “at least based on what I know of Western Swing.” For the Carter Family, recordings preceded radio. They were first recorded in 1927, which according to the Wiki article preceded radio performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Family
The documentary on the recording project, American Epic, shows the Carter Family as first being recorded during that project, and apparently being unknown outside of that area.