ADVANCES IN SCIENCE

The period between 1930-1945, proved to be a period of many inventions, new scientific theories, and medicinal advances. While there is much to be written about when it comes to the specific area of Science and Medicine, here are some notable events that occurred during this period in history that have forever changed our way of thinking (and living):

*Pluto, the smallest planet in this galaxy, was discovered in 1930.
*The first clinical use of Penicillin was in 1931.
*In 1932, Scientists split the atom.
*Also in 1932, the Zippo Lighter, and Air Conditioning are invented.
*Insulin was used for the 1st time in 1937, to control diabetes.
*In 1935, Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg develop the Richter magnitude scale for quantifying earthquakes.
*In 1941, Plutonium is first developed in the U.S. for atomic bombs, but kept secret until after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
*Abraham Maslow proposes the Hierarchy of Needs theory of Psychology in his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation".
*In 1944, IBM develops the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, best known as the Harvard Mark I.
*In 1945, Salvador Edward Luria and Alfred Day Hershey independently recognize that viruses undergo mutations.
*In 1930, new and safer methods for blood transfusions were developed.
*British Botanist Roy Clapham coins the term "ecosystem" in 1930.
*The first Helicopter is invented in 1939.
*In 1939, the first Commercial Flight Over the Atlantic is flown.
*The world first becomes aware of the power of nuclear weapons, when in 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with an Atomic weapon by the United States.
*High-altitude west-to-east winds across the Pacific, discovered by the Japanese in 1942 and by Americans in 1944, are dubbed "jet stream".
*In 1945, the first computer is built.
*The first microwave oven is invented in 1945.

SOURCES:
Years in Science(n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 25, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Years_in_science

Rosenberg, J.(n.d.). Timeline of the Twentieth Century: 1930-1939. About.com: 20th Century History. http://history1900s.about.com/library/time/bltime1930.htm

Rosenberg, J.(n.d.). Timeline of the Twentieth Century: 1940-1949. About.com: 20th Century History. http://history1900s.about.com/library/time/bltime1940.htm

Music

During the 1930's, Jazz was a music favorite with names like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Clubs were filled for these love performance and records were sold across the U.S.
Also popular in the 1930's was Gospel music. Some of the most influential songs came from this period like Thomas A. Dorsey's Precious Lord. The 1940's brought great artists like Bing Crosby, Billy Holiday and Frank Sinatra continuing to evolve the Jazz sounds.

Historical Events

The 1930's has tremendous events that helped shape the United States and the world. The decade began with the Great Depression. Money was tight and families struggled in the East and Midwest which led many to migrate to California. During this period the “New Deal” helped spur economic growth again.

The World War II was creating immense pressure in the U.S. in the late 1930's. President Roosevelt felt the U.S. needed to enter the war to help save Europe. President Roosevelt did not believe that Germany would stop with just Europe. Most Americans at that time did not want to enter the war, but the the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the U.S. was now involved. During the war, many inventions that have changed the world occurred including nuclear energy and the basis for the modern computer.

The Golden Age of Hollywood

The Golden Age of Hollywood

SOURCE: Vogue: A Tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood

THE MOVIES...
Mata Hari (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Cleopatra (1934), Dracula (1931), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 & again in 1941), Grand Hotel (1932), Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932), King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), 42nd Street (1933), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Of Mice and Men (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Alice in Wonderland (1933), Babes in Toyland (1934), Gone with the Wind (1939), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), Gulliver's Travels (1939), Gunga Din (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Bambi (1942), Casablanca (1942), Citizen Kane (1941), Dumbo (1941), Fantasia (1940), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Our Town (1940), Phantom of the Opera (1943), and Pinocchio (1940).

THE EARLY DAYS...

The classic movies listed above were created during the "Golden Age of Hollywood". During the period of 1930 - 1945, the movie industry experienced a whirlwind of significant changes, despite the lingering effects of the stock market crash of 1929 and the great depression. Recently formed movie studios began to take advantage of their growing dominance in Hollywood and
transitioned Hollywood towards a new generation of film-making. Soon thereafter, silent films which were very popular in the previous decades, began to fade from the silver screen while new lively films produced by the studios were much more lavish with loads of sex appeal. With the introduction of new movie genre's like gangster films, musicals, westerns, and horror films, came packed movie theatre's and very powerful movie executives. By the mid-1930s, movie studios with celebrity-like studio heads, production chiefs, producers, and other assistants were totally in control over the studios choices over the choice of films, budgets, and the selection of personnel and scripts, actors, writers, and directors, editing, scoring, and publicity. These Hollywood studios even owned the movie theatre's across the country! These movie studios included Twentieth Century Fox, formed in 1935, MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, led by the infamous Louis B. Mayer), Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO Radio, Columbia, Universal, and United Artists (UA).

CENSORSHIP...

With the rise in popularity of "talkies" and major motion pictures, it seemed inevitable that censorship would become a hot-button issue. Just as our generation has been introduced to a very vocal "religious right wing" of American society, so too was the Golden Age of Hollywood beginning in the last 1920s and right into the 1930s. Religious organizations, led by the very wealthy William Randolph Hearst, put pressure on the movie industry to remove what they considered to be racy and sexually suggestive scenes from movies. At the time, even American Senator Smith W. Brookhart (R-IA) introduced a bill to put the movie industry under the jurisdiction of the FTC. Actresses like Clara Bow and Greta Garbo, were often cited by religious organizations as contributing to the glamorization of drug abuse and sexual indecencies. Hollywood executives and movie producers succumbed to the pressures, and agreed to adhere to the newly created Production Code of 1930 spearheaded by Will H. Hays, former Postmaster and Campaign Manager for President Harding. The Production Code was meant to dictate what was and what was not considered morally acceptable for a public audience by listing out 36 "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" of film-making. Instead of caving to the pressures placed on the movie studios by the restrictions of the Production Code, movie studios found a way to keep box office sales up while creating fresh new materials. Popular books and biographies were made into movies, and a new genre of film was introduced to the public in light of the moral constraints - screwball comedies. Movies like Mutiny on the Bounty(1935) and Bringing Up Baby (1938) became huge successes despite the morality clauses that stifled Hollywood's creativity. The Code was virtually unenforceable though, and eventually would be replaced by our current movie-ratings system in the late 60s.

STARS OF THE GOLDEN AGE...

The movies created during this time period were pure classics. There was BIG emotion, and lots of drama, and beautifully dressed actors and actresses who always seemed to say the right thing and the right time! These actors and actresses changed motion pictures forever! Some of the talented legends from this era include: Clark Gable, Mae West, Hollywood "IT GIRL" Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Maurice Chevalier, James Cagney, Bing Crosby, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn , Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Veronica Lake, Katharine Hepburn, Shirley Temple, John & Lionel Barrymore, the Marx Brothers, Judy Garland, Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Norma Shearer, Elizabeth Taylor, Ronald Reagan, Angela Lansbury, Mickey Rooney, and my personal favorite Joan Crawford.

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END...

WW II began in 1939 and changed the lives of millions of Americans across the country. Box Office sales numbers began to slump and movie studios were starting to lose money. To complicate matters, the advent of Television and new Anti-Trust laws, movie studios struggled to survive. These movie studios that once owned movie theatre's across the country, were now being forced to relinquish ownership and function and separate entities from the theatre's they once controlled. Another side-effect of the new Anti-Trust laws mandated that the movie studios gradually release contractual obligations placed on employees including Directors, Producers, Actors, and Production staff members. Many of these employees were at one point synonymous with the studio releasing the pictures. As a result, there was a sharp decline in the number of movies released per year as individual movie budgets soared. The movie industry focused on producing films that were spectacular and larger-than-life. This was something that television programming could not offer at the time. By the late 1940s, most studios gave up their rights to movie theatre's around the country. While movie studios continue to create films that draw major box office sales figures, new genre's of films were beginning to spark interest in movie-goers and studio executives alike and with these changes came an end of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

SOURCES:

Adomono Productions (Producer). (n.d.). Vogue: A tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood. (Added: September 28, 2007). YouTube. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMdcUKxluE

Dirks, Tim. Greatest Films: Film History of the 1930s. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.filmsite.org/30sintro.html

Cinema of the United States: Golden Age of Hollywood (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States#Golden_Age_of_Hollywood

Television

The first regularly scheduled television service in the United States began on July 2, 1928. The Federal Radio Commission authorized C.F. Jenkins to broadcast from experimental station W3XK in a suburb of Washington, D.C. But for at least the first eighteen months, only silhouette images from motion picture film were broadcast due to the narrow 10kHz bandwidth allotted by the FRC.
General Electric's experimental station in Schenectady, New York, on the air sporadically since January 13, 1928, was able to broadcast reflected-light, 48-line images via shortwave as far as Los Angeles, and by September was making four television broadcasts weekly.
CBS's New York City station W2XAB began broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the United States on July 21, 1931, with a 60-line electromechanical system. The first broadcast included Mayor Jimmy Walker, the Boswell Sisters, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. The service ended in February 1933.
By 1935, electromechanical television broadcasting had ceased in the United States except for a handful of stations run by public universities that continued to 1939. The Federal Communications Commission saw television in the continual flux of development with no consistent technical standards, hence all such stations in the U.S. were granted only experimental and not commercial licenses, hampering television's economic development. Just as importantly, Philo Farnsworth's 1934 demonstration of an all-electronic system pointed the direction of television's future.
On June 15, 1936, Don Lee Broadcasting began a month-long demonstration of all-electronic television in Los Angeles on W6XAO (later KTSL) with a 300-line image from motion picture film. RCA demonstrated in New York City a 343-line electronic television broadcast, with live and film segments, to its licensees on July 7, 1936, and made its first public demonstration to the press on November 6. By April 1939, regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts were available in New York City and Los Angeles, and by November on General Electric's station in Schenectady. With the adoption of NTSC television engineering standards in 1941, the FCC saw television ready for commercial licensing, with the first such licenses issued to NBC and CBS owned stations in New York on July 1, 1941, followed by Philco's station in Philadelphia.
Electromechanical broadcasts began in Germany in 1929, but were without sound until 1934. Network electronic service started on March 22, 1935, on 180 lines using only telecine transmission of film or an intermediate film system. Live transmissions began on January 15, 1936. The Berlin Summer Olympic Games were televised, using both direct television and intermediate film cameras, to 28 public television rooms in Berlin and Hamburg in August 1936. The Germans had a 441-line system on the air in February 1937, and during World War II brought it to France, where they broadcast off the Eiffel Tower.
The first British television broadcast was made by Baird Television's electromechanical system over the BBC radio transmitter in September 1929. Baird provided a limited amount of programming five days a week by 1930. On August 22, 1932, BBC launched its own regular service using Baird's 30-line electromechanical system, continuing until September 11, 1935. On November 2, 1936 the BBC began broadcasting a dual-system service, alternating on a weekly basis between Marconi-EMI's 405-line standard and Baird's improved 240-line standard, from Alexandra Palace in London, making the BBC Television Service (now BBC One) the world's first regular high-definition television service. The corporation decided that Marconi-EMI's electronic picture gave the superior picture, and the Baird system was dropped in February 1937. The outbreak of the Second World War caused the BBC service to be suspended on September 1, 1939, resuming from Alexandra Palace on June 7, 1946

http://fixedreference.org/2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection/wp/t/Television.htm

Art

The American Regionalism movement, also known as the American Scene Painters, began during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. The movement is divided into two groups of artists with different approaches. The Social Realists were devoted to depicting the social troubles of the suffering urban lower class. The Regionalists painted more positive subjects, hoping to lead the nation out of the depression by providing hope for a better future. This group often painted midwestern rural scenes with themes of hard work and self-preservation.

Artist: Reginald Marsh (1898 - 1954) Nationality: AmericanMovement: Social RealismMedia: PaintingInfluences: Biography:Reginald Marsh began his career as a newspaper illustrator. After studying in Paris from 1925 to 1926, he devoted himself to painting. His subject matter was life New York city, particularly the lower class life around Coney Island and the Bowery District. His work was not as much of a social protest as it was a display of Marsh’s desire to paint colorful but ugly subjects. Marsh himself hailed from a wealthy family and his work can be seen as a rejection of his affluent upbringing.

TEAM 4 BLOG - THE GREAT ERA

Welcome to the blogspot for Team 4!

We will be covering the era that includes the years between 1930 - 1945. Throughout this blog you will learn about the following topics as interpreted through the people of this era:

*Historical events in the U.S. - assigned to John Dyce.
*Music - assigned to John Dyce.
*Literature in the U.S. - Assigned to Melissa Fuller.
*Magazines - assigned to Melissa Fuller.
*Art - assigned to Julie Galloway.
*Television - assigned to Julie Galloway.
*Science - assigned to Stephanie Gustave.
*Movies - assigned to Stephanie Gustave.

The Contributors to this blog are: John Dyce, Melissa Fuller, Julie Galloway, and Stephanie Gustave.

We hope you enjoy this journey back into time!