Saturday, April 19, 2014

The last century

Downton Abbey was a tv show that helped me to see and feel the difference between the world of our founding fathers and mothers and today's world.  At the beginning of the 1900's, gasoline engines were well understood and electricity was available in some places.  But a good network of places to buy fuel for cars and a widespread arrangement of getting electricity to private homes was not yet in place in this country, let alone other countries.


In one of the episodes of Downton Abbey, the lord of the manor has decided to have a telephone installed.  Not a cordless phone of course, so users would be limited to using the telephone at the place in the building where the phone sat.   Using the phone required getting used to the procedure to use it and the protocol of language one used with the operator.  People were not used to hearing someone they didn't know talk to them while not being able to see the speaker.


As much as the new technology of gasoline combustion engines and electrical mixers and sewing machines, new social situations emerged.  This was in England, where social class and social barriers were probably stronger than in the US, where things more often proceeded  with more relaxed rules and maybe more nearly equal social strata.


Downton Abbey mentions, in places, the difficulty of nursing WW I wounded soldiers in a way that preserved the usual social ranks and separations.  Even though the middle ages had ended centuries before, the first world war and other forces and changes were making social mobility more possible.  I might become a wealthier and more important man than my father or grandfather were.  Much like today's computer nerds who start a new kind of business, I might get involved in occupations and projects unknown ever before in the history of the earth.


Better, purer water and sanitation still had a way to go (and still do over much of the earth).  Antibiotics were still just a dream so that any infection might mean death.  What we call 'mass media' were just getting started.  In much of the world, education for most children was non-existent or very limited.  Movies and radio broadcasting were on their way but slowly.


Downton Abbey was a tv show that helped me to see and feel the difference between the world of our founding fathers and mothers and today's world.  At the beginning of the 1900's, gasoline engines were well understood and electricity was available in some places.  But a good network of places to buy fuel for cars and a widespread arrangement of getting electricity to private homes was not yet in place in this country, let alone other countries.


In one of the episodes of Downton Abbey, the lord of the manor has decided to have a telephone installed.  Not a cordless phone of course, so users would be limited to using the telephone at the place in the building where the phone sat.   Using the phone required getting used to the procedure to use it and the protocol of language one used with the operator.  People were not used to hearing someone they didn't know talk to them while not being able to see the speaker.


As much as the new technology of gasoline combustion engines and electrical mixers and sewing machines, new social situations emerged.  This was in England, where social class and social barriers were probably stronger than in the US, where things more often proceeded  with more relaxed rules and maybe more nearly equal social strata.


Downton Abbey mentions, in places, the difficulty of nursing wounded soldiers in a way that preserved the usual social ranks and distinctions.  Even though the middle ages had ended centuries before, the first world war and other forces and changes were making social mobility more possible.  I might become a wealthier and more important man than my father or grandfather were.  Much like today's computer nerds who start a new kind of business, I might get involved in occupations and projects unknown ever before in the history of the earth.  


Better, purer water and sanitation still had a way to go (and still do over much of the earth).  Antibiotics were still just a dream so that any infection might mean death.  What we call 'mass media' were just getting started.  In much of the world, education for most children was non-existent or very limited.  Movies and radio broadcasting were on their way but slowly. 



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety


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