Similarities And Differences Between The 1920s And 1990s

Doménico Cieri Estrada once said, “Bring the past only if you are to going to build from it.” The 1920s and 1990s are largely spread apart, as are the cultural values of the people who grew up in that time period. The influences of growing up in different times can surely influence the way people act and respond to difficulties and debates outside of themselves. But the difference in time periods encourages growth and build upon each other, making similarities and differences easy to define. Technological advances in the 1920s and 1990s can be viewed as being similar by the useful inventions that were released that people continue to use in the present. The refrigerator was a convenient machine invented by Fred W. Wolf in 1913, but refrigerators
weren’t introduced on a large scale in the American family's home until 1923. They provided a way for Americans to have their food be unspoiled, therefore lessening disease and improving the probability that influential people could live and improve upon the future generation’s lifestyle. America’s first radio station, KDKA, was issued the first ever license to broadcast in 1920 and by 1922 there were over 500 radio stations. In 1926, the national broadcasting company was established, allowing communication to transverse across distances. This brought a new wave of fads the general population followed, because they were all listening to identical advertisements and hearing the same music and sports. The World Wide Web came out in the 1990s, containing three components that are also prevalent in the Web today; HTML, URI, and HTTP. The announcement that the Web would be free for everyone to use was proposed in 1993. Although the inventions themselves are quite different in terms of how technologically advanced they are, the Web also allowed new trends to develop and a universal way for people to transfer information to one another. The decades that followed the 1990s and 1920s were quite different. The 1920s were a decade of prosperity, sometimes called “The Golden Age”. Afterwards, America was plunged into the Great Depression, which was the most devastating and longest lasting depression in American history. The depression began with a severe drop in stock and the credit people used to sustain buying new products such as cars and modern refrigerators, when the money for it wasn’t actually there. It then became a global disaster with demand greatly reduced. In 2001 there was a stark increase in unemployment, but the differences between the two are vast. The Great Depression lasted for about ten years, while the recession after the 90s only lasted for two. The recession happened seven years after the decade, unlike the Great Depression. During the ‘30s, there were no social programs to give the lower class the help they needed, enabling the less fortunate to starve and live on the streets. In 2001 social programs had already been invented, so people who were hardest hit could rely on old age pensions, unemployment money, a set minimum wage, and secured bank deposits. In 2001 people continued to spend money on cars and houses, with the market for sales going up, unlike in the 1930s. When deciding the similarities between the ‘90s and the ‘20s generations of people in those time periods may readily disagree with the others points, considering the stark difference in other trends of those times, such as fashion and the way people conversed. However, some can also agree that both brought new things to the table, whether they were for the best or not.