This Fleeting World

82 This Fleeting World
Key Events in Modern
Media History
1870 More than 5,000 newspapers are published in the U.S.
1876 “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” Bell invents the
telephone.
1897 World’s first cinema is built in Paris.
1900 Estimated 1,800 magazines are being published in the
United States.
1900 Total newspaper circulation in U.S. passes 15 million daily.
1920 In England, Marconi creates the first short wave radio
connection.
1928 Television sets are put in three U.S. homes, programming
begins.
Source: University of Minnesota Media History Project. (2007). Retrieved May 22,
2007. From http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/timeline
psychological drives, challenged faith in the role of reason in human affairs.
New art forms, such as cinema, brought artistic realism into mass
culture, but also challenged artists and writers to experiment with new,
less realistic forms of expressionism, from the cubism of painters such as
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) to the dream language of Finnegans Wake by
James Joyce (1882–1941).
The new technologies of mass culture, including radio, newspapers,
and particularly the cinema, offered new ways of influencing the ideas,
attitudes, and fantasies of people throughout the world, and governments
as well as advertisers came to appreciate their power.
The Soviet government was particularly creative in using the mass
media to spread its ideas. The new mass media also helped create a mass
culture that could challenge the hegemony of traditional high culture.
Outside of the industrial heartland, the revival of traditional religious and
artistic traditions, such as those of Hinduism and Buddhism, began to play
an important role in creating new national cultures that could challenge
the cultural hegemony of the North Atlantic region.