Media History Timeline: 1920s

20th Century: Third Decade

Gallery

Hand-cranked 35 mm
movie camera
192

Press camera
Germany
1925

James Chapin's
Ruby Green Singing,
1928

Twin-lens reflex
camera, Germany
1928

Georges Braque's
Still Life:
Le Jour,
1929

Cineprojector played
sound film or sync
sound, 1929

1920-1929


1920: 1920: First cross-country airmail flight in the U.S.; 1920: Charles Jenkins invents "prismatic rings," precursor to his mechanical TV.; 1920: H.G. Wells' The Outline of History.; 1920: Transcontinental airmail in the U.S.; 1920: German film expressionsim is established with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.; 1920: Agatha Christie writes first of Hercule Poirot detective novels.; 1920: KDKA begins regular schedule, starting the era of radio broadcasting.; 1920: German psychiatrist Karl Binding calls for killing those who are "dead weight."; 1920: After 21 years, Japanese movie makers start using actresses.; 1920: Japan has become the world's second largest book-publishing nation.; 1920: Hugh Lofting's charming Story of Dr. Doolittle talks to the animals.; 1920: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence depicts callous New York society.; 1920: Sound recording is done electrically. "Talkies" will follow.; 1920: In England, Marconi creates the first short wave radio connection.; 1920: Sinclair Lewis ridicules middle-class America in Main Street.; 1920: Start of Négritude, French language anti-colonial literary movement.; 1920: U.S. Post Office sets up metered postage.; 1920: XWA, Montreal, begins first regularly scheduled North American broadcasts.; 1920: The press release.; 1920: AT&T, GE, RCA patent agreement permits radio equipment manufacturing.; 1920: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Knut Hamsun, Norway.; 1920: Eugene O'Neill's play, The Emperor Jones, the tale of a black anti-hero..; 1920: Stanley and Helen Resor introduce psychological ad research.

1921: 1921: Baseball's World Series is reported by radio.; 1921: With Bessie Smith's first record, this decade will see the flowering of the blues.; 1921: Quartz crystals keep radio signals from wandering.; 1921: The word "robot" enters the language via Karel Capek's play R.U.R.; 1921: Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.; 1921: Cleveland Playhouse becomes first U.S. resident professional theater.; 1921: D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love examines sexual, psychological relationships.; 1921: Western Union begins wirephoto service.; 1921: Nobel Prize in Literature to French novelist Anatole France.; 1921: Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie opens; will win Pulitzer for drama.; 1921: Skywriting.; 1921: Dempsey-Carpenter fight widens awareness of broadcasting.; 1921: Photographs can be transmitted by wire across the Atlantic.; 1921: Arnold Schoenberg develops 12-tone music notation.; 1921: Radio becomes family fun as hobbyists turn in headphones for speakers.; 1921: Public address amplifiers and loudspeakers are used in military ceremony.; 1921: Sergei Prokofiev's opera, The Love for Three Oranges, is performed.; 1921: At the movies: Chaplin's The Kid and Valentino's The Sheik.; 1921: Many radio licenses are issued. Many radio "firsts," especially sports.; 1921: Hendrik Willem Van Loon's The Story of Mankind is widely read.

1922: 1922: The radio license floodgates open, but only three frequencies in U.S.; 1922: American introduces radio to the Philippines.; 1922: Nervous Hollywood censors itself with own film review board, the Hays Office.; 1922: Comic Monthly magazine reprint of comic strips foreshadows comic books.; 1922: RCA radio-faxes a photo across the Atlantic Ocean in six minutes.; 1922: 100,000 radio sets manufactured in U.S.; 1922: Paul Klee paints Twittering Machine.; 1922: A commercial is broadcast. U.S. radio will be built on "toll broadcasting."; 1922: Britain gets its first radio station.; 1922: Muzak, developed by George Squier.; 1922: Herbert Kalmus introduces two-color Technicolor process for movies.; 1922: Joyce's Ulysses develops stream-of-consciousness writing.; 1922: T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" considers the sterility of modern life.; 1922: Nobel Prize in Literature: dramatist Jacinto Benavente, Spain.; 1922: Eugene O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape, a comedy of ancient and modern life.; 1922: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus argues that much of philosophy is nonsense.; 1922: 15-year-old Philo Farnsworth designs a television "image dissector."; 1922: Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha searches for the meaning of life.; 1922: German historian Oswald Spengler completes seminal The Decline of the West.; 1922: The BBC goes on the air.; 1922: Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion examines opinion formation.; 1922: Movie tickets sold weekly in the U.S.: 40 million.; 1922: Emily Post publishes Etiquette.; 1922: The Reader's Digest begins its monthly run.; 1922: Germany's UFA produces a film with an optical sound track.; 1922: Singers desert phonograph horn mouths for acoustic studios.; 1922: Orphan Annie enters the comic pages.; 1922: The first portable radio. Experimental car radio.; 1922: On a Schenectady, NY, station, the first radio drama is presented.; 1922: Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt adds a name to the lexicon of insults.; 1922: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North is the first feature film documentary.

1923: 1923: Argentine poet, critic, short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges' first book.; 1923: Vladimir Zworykin patents the first electronic camera tube, the iconoscope.; 1923: Ribbon microphones become the studio standard.; 1923: Neon signs.; 1923: A picture, broken into dots, is sent by wire.; 1923: A book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, helps give stature to public relations.; 1923: Nobel Prize in Literature to Irish poet W.B. Yeats.; 1923: A.C. Nielsen Company begins to measure radio audiences for advertisers.; 1923: In the U.S., creation of the National Association of Broadcasters.; 1923: Shaw's St. Joan argues that she had to die; the world was not ready for her.; 1923: 16 mm nonflammable film makes its debut.; 1923: "Jelly Roll" Morton composes jazz.; 1923: A speech by President Warren Harding is broadcast.; 1923: Half a million radios are sold in U.S., a five-fold increase in one year.; 1923: Several radio stations hook up by phone to form a temporary network.; 1923: A half million radio sets are manufactured in the U.S.; 1923: Harlem's Cotton Club presents all-black entertainment to all-white audiences.; 1923: Time, the weekly newsmagazine.; 1923: Reversal film eliminates negatives, eases home movie photography.; 1923: Novelist Willa Cather and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay win Pulitzer Prizes.; 1923: Kodak introduces home movie equipment.; 1923: Darius Milhaud's ballet, Creation of the World.

1924: 1924: Edna Ferber's Pulitzer Prize novel, So Big.; 1924: King George V speech broadcast over BBC radio.; 1924: Sean O'Casey's play, Juno and the Paycock.; 1924: On Broadway, operettas Rose Marie and The Student Prince.; 1924: Low tech achievement: notebooks get spiral bindings.; 1924: E.M. Forster's novel about British colonial mentality, A Passage to India.; 1924: Herman Melville's 1891 Billy Budd finally published; will lead to opera, film.; 1924: Nobel Prize in Literature to Polish epic poet Wladyslaw Reymont.; 1924: Eugene O'Neill continues to dominate theater drama with Desire Under the Elms.; 1924: Ottorino Respighi composes The Pines of Rome.; 1924: Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.; 1924: Founding of Simon & Schuster, book publishers.; 1924: The Eveready Hour is the first sponsored radio program.; 1924: At KDKA, Conrad sets up a short-wave radio transmitter.; 1924: E. Howard Armstrong builds first portable radio, a gift to his bride.; 1924: The first Walt Disney cartoon, Alice's Wonderland.; 1924: Daily coast-to-coast air mail service.; 1924: In the U.S., 1,400 stations are broadcasting to 3 million radio sets.; 1924: Almost daily sports broadcasts.; 1924: Radio hook-ups broadcast Democratic, Republican conventions.; 1924: K. Jansky's radio astronomy reports of "star noise" published, ignored.; 1924: George Gershwin writes his symphonic jazz Rhapsody in Blue.; 1924: Pictures are transmitted between London and New York.; 1924: Two and a half million radio sets in the U.S.; 1924: All-electric recorder and phonograph are built.

1925: 1925: Commercial picture facsimile radio service across the U.S.; 1925: Der Prozess (tr. As The Trial) by Franz Kafka.; 1925: Alban Berg's Wozzek removes tonality from opera.; 1925: Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy.; 1925: Transcontinental radio hook-up carries Coolidge inaugural to 24 stations.; 1925: The Goodyear blimp floats ads through the sky.; 1925: Expatriate American poet Ezra Pound begins his Cantos.; 1925: John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer, a novel of life without meaning.; 1925: Random House begins book publication.; 1925: Western Electric creates Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc film system.; 1925: A British radio broadcast is heard in the United States.; 1925: From the new Soviet Union, Dmitri Shostakovich, 1st Symphony; 1925: Harold Ross starts The New Yorker.; 1925: Electrical recordings go on sale.; 1925: Virginia Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway.; 1925: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a novel of the tragedy of success.; 1925: The New Yorker.; 1925: Grand Ole Opry begins in Nashville as "WSM Barn Dance."; 1925: Thomas Mofolo's Chaka the Zulu is written in the Sotho language.; 1925: Arrowsmith, a novel by Sinclair Lewis of a life devoted to medicine.; 1925: Charlie Chaplin's film, The Gold Rush.; 1925: Romani (Gypsy) writers union is founded in Soviet Union, then is suppressed.; 1925: The first volume of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, written in prison.; 1925: Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin establishes film montage technique.; 1925: George Bernard Shaw wins Nobel Prize in Literature.; 1925: Earl Biggers introduces the fictional detective Charlie Chan.; 1925: In London, the demonstration of a televised image. The first image: $; 1925: A moving image, the blades of a model windmill, is telecast.; 1925: From France, a wide-screen film.; 1925: Ben-Hur costs nearly $4 million, an unheard-of price to make a movie.; 1925: The first broadcast soap opera: The Smith Family.; 1925: John Logie Baird demonstrates the first TV system, using mechanical scanning.; 1925: Warner Bros. starts experiments to make "talkies."

1926: 1926: The first featherweight phonograph stylus.; 1926: Kodak manufactures 16 mm film stock.; 1926: Commercial picture facsimile radio service across the Atlantic.; 1926: Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy will sell millions of copies.; 1926: Some radios get automatic volume control, a mixed blessing.; 1926: The Book-of-the-Month Club starts: cut-rate books by subscription.; 1926: A.A. Milne writes of Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and Piglet.; 1926: The Scholastic Aptitude Exam (SAT) is administered.; 1926: In U.S., first 16mm movie is shot.; 1926: Weather map is televised experimentally.; 1926: Burma Shave signs dot U.S. highways.; 1926: Playwright Sean O'Casey, The Plough and the Stars.; 1926: Kafka, The Castle.; 1926: Charles Jenkins transmits TV signal between cities.; 1926: The first radio jingle, for Wheaties.; 1926: Sigmund Romberg composes The Desert Song.; 1926: Ernest Hemingway's first novel The Sun Also Rises.; 1926: Ring Lardner, The Love Nest and Other Stories.; 1926: Robert Goddard launches the liquid-fuel rocket.; 1926: Paul Henry de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is surprising best seller.; 1926: Sinclair Lewis wins Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, refuses it.; 1926: Enough Rope, Dorothy Parker's first book of verse.; 1926: Rudolf Valentino's funeral hysteria, suicides, show emotional power of film.; 1926: Giacomo Puccini's Turandot is produced posthumously.; 1926: Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart bring The Girl Friend to Broadway.; 1926: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Grazia Deledda, Italy.; 1926: Martha Graham, barefoot, leads American modern dance movement.; 1926: NBC is formed and takes over AT&T Red Network.; 1926: Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat will become Broadway musical, hit film.; 1926: Don Juan, the first publicly shown "talkie", premieres in New York.; 1926: Bell Telephone Labs transmit film by television.; 1926: Coin-operated radios in public places, 5 minutes for 5 cents.; 1926: Unregulated radio stations drown each other out, beg for government controls.; 1926: Poet Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues."

1927: 1927: NBC begins a second radio networks, NBC Blue.; 1927: International airmail.; 1927: The Literary Guild book club.; 1927: BBC commissions a music composer, Gustavu Holst.; 1927: CBS is formed. Radio broadcasting is becoming a mass medium.; 1927: New U.S. Federal Radio Commission regulates radio transmission, not content.; 1927: Electric plugs and single knob tuning make radio more than a hobby.; 1927: Live test TV by mechanical scanning, 2" x 2.5", of Herbert Hoover's face.; 1927: Advertising locks in as the economic base of U.S. radio broadcasts.; 1927: Sinclair Lewis attacks religious hypocrisy in Elmer Gantry.; 1927: John Logie Baird sells first recorded TV images, 30-line Phonovisor.; 1927: Kafka's novel Amerika is published three years after his death.; 1927: The film Napoleon tries wide-screen and multi-screen effects.; 1927: Nobel Prize in Literature: philosopher and essayist Henri Bergson, France.; 1927: Martin Heidegger's Being and Time will help found modern existentialism.; 1927: Philo Farnsworth assembles a complete electronic TV system.; 1927: Jerome Kern's Showboat connects Broadway musical with opera.; 1927: Jolson's The Jazz Singer is the first popular "talkie."; 1927: Movietone offers newsreels in sound.; 1927: Hesse's novel Steppenwolf, a fable about the split in human nature.; 1927: U.S. Radio Act declares public ownership of the airwaves.; 1927: Negative feedback makes hi-fi possible.; 1927: Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.; 1927: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded.; 1927: In Paris, Marcel Proust completes his 16-volume Remembrance of Things Past.; 1927: Two-way AT&T radio phone service, U.S. to London, $75 for 5 minutes.

1928: 1928: The teletype machine makes its debut.; 1928: In Germany, Fritz Pfleumer creates audio tape: magnetic powder on paper, film.; 1928: Daven mechanical TV disc can scan 3 standards: 24, 36, and 48 lines/sec.; 1928: Charles Jenkins heralds future of television as "radio movies."; 1928: Television sets are put in three U.S. homes, programming begins.; 1928: General Electric builds a television set with a 3-inch x 4-inch screen.; 1928: Baird invents a video disc to record television.; 1928: Gershwin's tone poem, An American in Paris.; 1928: Maurice Ravel composes his best known work, Bolero.; 1928: Anthropologist Margaret Mead startles readers with Coming of Age in Samoa.; 1928: First Oscars: Wings, Emil Jannings, Janet Gaynor.; 1928: Also at the movies: 7th Heaven, Chaplin's The Circus.; 1928: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Sigrid Undset, Norway.; 1928: O'Neill's play, Strange Interlude.; 1928: Decline and Fall, first of Evelyn Waugh's satiric novel about British upper crust.; 1928: Stephen Vincent Benet writes the Pulitzer winning poem, "John Brown's Body".; 1928: Home radios use ordinary electric current instead of batteries.; 1928: Disney adds sound to cartoons; Steamboat Willie introduces Mickey Mouse.; 1928: In an experiment, television crosses the Atlantic.; 1928: The newest dance craze: the Charleston.; 1928: The Oxford English Dictionary, begun in 1858, is finished: 15,487 pages.; 1928: Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover will be banned for years over sex content.; 1928: In Schenectady, N.Y., the first scheduled television broadcasts.; 1928: Amos �n' Andy broadcasts to huge audiences. Even movies are interrupted.; 1928: Syndication of recorded shows begins with Amos �n' Andy.; 1928: Times Square gets moving headlines in electric lights.; 1928: IBM adopts the 80-column punched card.; 1928: Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht stage The Threepenny Opera.

1929: 1929: Erich Maria Remarque's pacifist novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.; 1929: Hollywood makes its first original musical, The Broadway Melody.; 1929: In London, the first TV station is built, experimental transmission only.; 1929: Sinclair Lewis' novel, Dodsworth explores the pain adultery can bring.; 1929: Founding of the Vienna Circle and its theory of logical positivism.; 1929: Experiments begin on electronic color television.; 1929: The Museum of Modern Art opens in New York.; 1929: Oscars: The Broadway Melody, Warner Baxter, Mary Pickford.; 1929: Telegraph ticker sends 500 characters per minute.; 1929: The first 4-color comic publication, The Funnies, but not quite a comic book.; 1929: Ship passengers can phone relatives ashore.; 1929: Brokers watch stock prices soar, crash on an automated electric board.; 1929: Something else new: the car radio. But you have to stop to mount an antenna.; 1929: Zworykin demonstrates the kinescope cathode ray tube for TV receivers.; 1929: Phonograph manufacturers phase out hand-cranked models.; 1929: German novelist Thomas Mann awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.; 1929: Popeye the Sailor and Tarzan swing into the comic strips.; 1929: Television studio is built in London.; 1929: Bell Labs produces color TV mechanically.; 1929: 24 frames/second established as sound motion picture camera standard.; 1929: The film Hallelujah introduces post-synchronization.; 1929: Thomas Wolfe's novel, Look Homeward, Angel, desperation to leave small town.; 1929: Les Paul, age 14, creates forerunner of the electric guitar.; 1929: William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury: a family falls apart.; 1929: Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms extends his reputation.; 1929: Winston Churchill completes 4-volume The World Crisis, about WW I.; 1929: Air mail is flown from Miami to South America.; 1929: The Vienna Circle publishes philosophical manifesto, A Scientific World-View.; 1929: Bertrand Russell shocks tradition with Marriage and Morals.