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 second post of the series is focused on transportation: land, sea, and air. (The first post, centering on communications and entertainment, is here.)
Land Transportation. Although there was much excitement and innovation around aircraft and automobiles, in 1925 the railroads still ruled, they were vital for passenger as well as freight transportation. John Stilgoe’s book Metropolitan Corridor is an interesting exploration of the psychological and cultural impact of the tracks that connected the country.
No traditional spatial term, not urban, suburban, or rural, not cityscape or landscape, adequately identifies the space that perplexed so many turn-of-the-century observers. Reaching from the very hearts of great cities across industrial zones, suburbs, small towns, and into mountain wildernesses, the metropolitan corridor objectified in its unprecedented arrangement of space and structure a wholly new lifestyle. Along it flowed the forces of modernization, announcing the character of the twentieth century, and abutting it sprouted new clusters of buildings. Its particular juxtaposition of elements attracted the scrutiny of photographers and advertising illustrators; its romance inveigled poets and novelists; its energy challenged architects, landscape architects, and urban designers. Always it resisted definition in traditional terminology.
To many rural Americans, the Corridor was the connection to a more exciting and glamorous kind of life:
So magnificent was the Illinois Central crack express–The Panama Limited–that every day for twelve years the Sixth Mississippi District Court at Vaiden recessed so that everyone could watch it come through the station…Until the 1920s, such trains represented prosperity and the promise of greater prosperity, luxury, futuristic design, and urbanity. To some Depression-era watchers, the expresses announced good times returning; to others, they advertised an unequal distribution of wealth. Long before and well into the Depression, however, the fast trains bespoke a peculiarly American strassenromantik, one centered on cities flashing across farms and forests, attracting the wondering admiration of children and adults…Every railroad right-of-way shared in the glamor that lingered like a whiff of coal smoke left after the all-Pullman express had passed. In the remotest corners of rural American, in suburbs of broad lawns, in small towns, the luxury express advertised the crackling energy of urban industrial zones.
The steam locomotive was king, and hauled the vast majority of intercity traffic. Some heavily-travelled corridors were electrified, as was freight service in some mountainous districts. New York City had banned steam locomotives downtown effective in 1908, leading to the electrification of the relevant lines and the covering over of the New York Central tracks, thereby creating new and highly valuable real estate. (“Taking wealth from the air”) Gasoline and diesel power were largely limited to rail yard work and local/suburban passenger service, but a demonstration locomotive for diesel-electric power had been built by American Locomotive Company, GE, and Ingersoll-Rand in 1923, with the first commercial diesel-electric locomotive delivered in 1925.
The steam locomotive had been greatly improved from its earlier days. Boiler pressures had increased to around 200-250 psi, and superheaters had become common, increasing efficiencies by 25-30%. Although manual firing was still used on smaller locomotives, the automatic stoker had been introduced in the early 1900s and was now common (I believe legally required) on larger engines. Compound locomotives had been developed, and significantly improved efficiency, but were more commonly used in Europe than in the United States. Why? An article in the 1930 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine explains that while compound locomotives did save fuel, they required more maintenance-and in Europe, fuel was more expensive than in the US, but labor was cheaper–an interesting point, I think.
Safety by 1925 had been greatly improved from the early days of railroading; the air brake was key to this accomplishment, as were sophisticated interlocking signal systems. Centralized traffic control systems, which allowed a dispatcher to observe track occupancy and control signals and switches from an office dozens of miles away, were on the horizon–CTC would be introduced on the New York Central in 1927.
Electric trolleys were pervasive in most cities of any size–they had replaced earlier horse-drawn services that ran on tracks–but their dominance was beginning to be challenged by buses and automobiles.
On the roads, the Ford Model T was still the dominant product, with 15 million units being sold from its introduction in 1908 up through its replacement by the Model A in 1927. The newer Ford would feature a self-starter and a three-speed transmission, as opposed to the hand-cranking and two-speed transmission with the Model T. There were no automatic transmissions in 1925. For manual shifting, the synchromesh had been invented in 1918, but it wasn’t introduced until 1928.
A Model T touring car in 1925 was priced at $260–that’s about $4700 in 2025 money. It’s estimated that about 40-45% of American families owned cars. There were still at lot of working horses in the US–22 million in 1925, not that many below the 25 million in the peak year of 1920.
Trucking was primarily local, due in large part to the poor condition of intercity roads and the high state of development that had been reached by the railroads. If you were in a rural area and ordered something large and heavy from Sears or other mail order vendor (furniture, appliances), it would likely be delivered via rail to your local train station and you’d need to pick it up from there, or get somebody to do it for you.
Sea Transportation. Cargo ships were mostly powered by reciprocating steam engines, but there were still quite a few sailing vessels in use. Passenger liners were usually driven by steam turbines. The transatlantic speed record in 1925 was still held by the RMS Mauretania (sister ship of the Lusitania), with a service speed of 25-28 knots. She carried 2165 passengers and also had a government mail contract.
Conversion of shipping from coal to oil fuel had begun in the early 1900s, but there were still a lot of coal-powered ships operating in 1925. Some experiments with steam-electric propulsion had been conducted immediately prior to WWI, but this propulsion mode turned out to be inferior for most purposes to the steam turbine with reduction gears.
Container freight had not yet been invented, so the loading and unloading of cargo at ports was very labor-intensive.
In naval warfare, the battleship still ruled at sea, but was being challenged by air-delivered bombs and torpedoes. In 1921, airpower advocate Billy Mitchell demonstrated that he could sink warships with bombs–including the former German battleship Ostfriesland, a ship that had proven its robust qualities by surviving 18 hits from British battleship guns and then striking a mine.
Air Transportation. The aviation industry was advancing rapidly in 1925, but there was not much scheduled airline service yet in the US. Air mail had been introduced in 1919, with a route between New York City and Washington DC, soon expanded to encompass NYC–Cleveland–Chicago. Transcontinental service was introduced in 1920, using a combination of air and rail to avoid the need for night flying; 1924 marked the beginning of night airmail service. A major institutional change affecting aviation in 1925 was the Kelley Act, which provided that airmail would hence be carried by private contractors rather than government employees.
Aircraft were still mostly fabric-covered, and biplane construction was common. In 1925, the Ford Motor Company began production of the Ford Trimotor, an all-metal monoplane which carried 8-9 passengers, in addition to pilot, copilot, and stewardess. Almost 200 of them were ultimately built, and quite a few of them are still flying. Cruising speed was 92 knots (107 mph). However, they weren’t yet available for service in 1925.
Gyroscopic instruments had solved the problem of maintaining control of an airplane without outside visual references, but this did not solve the problem of navigation in low visibility or at night. The problem of navigation at night was partially solved by the construction of the lighted airways, with the major airways having been completed by 1925. Radio-range navigation would come later, although there may have been some limited use of radio direction finding to take bearings from commercial radio stations.
Dirigibles were viewed as an up-and-coming technology. Germany had been a pioneer in the lighter-than-air field, having operated both military aircraft and limited passenger services in the years before the First World War. Construction of large airships was not permitted by the terms of the Versailles Treaty; however, this provision was relaxed in 1925 and construction of the transatlantic airship Graf Zeppelin was begun. The US Navy was excited by the potential of dirigibles as adjuncts to the surface fleet. The Los Angeles (pictured above) was built in Germany and delivered to the US as war reparations in 1924. Among other things, it was intended as a flying aircraft carrier which would serve as a base for small fighter and observation planes. She served until 1939. The first helium-filled airship was another US Navy aircraft, the US-built Shenandoah, which first flew in 1923 and made the first crossing of North America by airship. She was destroyed in a squall line over Ohio in October 1925.
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