Getting Connected

In this Quick Read from Now and Then Reader, historian David E. Kyvig examines how the coming of electricity prepared the way for radio and the movies, new marvels of the age for millions of Americans.


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For new immigrant Americans and longtime resident alike, the United States in the early 20th century was undergoing the rapid change of industrialization, urbanization, and electrification. The latter process in particular, though far from complete, was affecting daily life for millions of ordinary people. Beginning in the 1880s, street lighting, industrial machinery, and urban transit systems had been electrified. Within a couple of decades, electricity had begun to enter upper- and middle-class homes and then the dwellings of urban workers. Electric lights, the first electric appliance for most, lengthened days and reshaped nights. As its use rapidly expanded, electricity prepared the way for other technological changes. Among them, radio and the cinema became marvels of the age. 


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David E. Kyvig is distinguished research professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University and winner of the Bancroft Prize for his book Explicit and Authentic Acts, about the amending of the Constitution. He has also written The Age of Impeachment, Repealing National Prohibition, Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (with Myron Marty), and Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940, from which this piece is drawn. He lives in Washington, D.C.