662 Chapter 24 Postwar Society and Culture: Change and Adjustment
took more than thirty-three hours for Lindbergh’s
single-engineSpirit of St. Louisto cross the Atlantic, a
formidable physical achievement for the pilot as well
as an example of skill and courage. When the public
learned that the intrepid “Lucky Lindy” was hand-
some, modest, uninterested in converting his new
fame into cash, and a model of propriety (he neither
drank nor smoked), his role as American hero was
ensured. It was a role Lindbergh detested—one biog-
rapher has described him as “by nature solitary”—but
could not avoid.
Lindbergh’s flight enormously increased public
interest in flying, but it was a landmark in aviation
technology as well. The day of routine passenger
flights was at last about to dawn. In July 1927, a
mere two months after the Spirit of St. Louistouched
down at Le Bourget Field in France, William E.
Boeing of Boeing Air Transport began flying passen-
gers and mail between San Francisco and Chicago,
using the M–40, a plane of his own design and man-
ufacture. Early in 1928 he changed the company
name to United Aircraft and Transport. Two years
later Boeing produced the first all-metal low-wing
plane and, in 1933, the twin-engine 247, a prototype
for many others.
In retrospect the postwar era seems even more a
period of transition than it appeared to most people
at the time. Rarely had change come so swiftly, and
rarely had old and new existed side by side in such
profusion. Creativity and reaction, hope and despair,
freedom and repression—the modern world in all its
unfathomable complexity was emerging.Wilbur Wright glides at Kitty Hawk, 1903, ushering in a century where
airplanes would become the basis for military power as well as the
preferred means of long distance travel. Wilbur and his brother Orville
realized that any airborne vehicle would need to move on three axes:
to climb or descend, to steer to either side, and to bank in either
direction. This resulted in a bi-wing design with a steering rudder.
1903 Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, NC
1908 Henry Ford designs Model T automobile
1914 Ford establishes $5 day for autoworkers
1919 Eighteenth Amendment outlaws alcoholic
beverages (Prohibition)
Nineteenth Amendment gives women right to vote
1920 Sinclair Lewis publishesMain Street
First commercial radio station, KDKA, Pittsburgh,
begins broadcasting
1920s Black culture flourishes in Harlem Renaissance
1921 Margaret Sanger founds American Birth
Control League
1924 Ku Klux Klan membership peaks
1925 Scopes is convicted for teaching evolutionF.Scott Fitzgerald publishesThe Great Gatsby
1926 Gertrude Ederle swims English Channel
Ernest Hemingway publishesThe Sun Also Rises
1927 Charles Lindbergh flies solo across Atlantic
Sacco and Vanzetti are executed
The Jazz Singer, first motion picture with sound,
is released
Jack Dempsey loses heavyweight boxing title to
Gene Tunney
Babe Ruth hits sixty home runs
1928 John B. Watson publishesThe Psychological Care
of Infant and Child
1929 Capone’s gang kills Moran’s in Valentine’s Day
MassacreMilestones
Chapter Review