The Wright brothers gave the world the airplane, but North Carolinians’ lives were changed more dramatically by other inventions in the early twentieth century — the telephone, electric power to homes and businesses, and the automobile. By the 1920s, these new means of communication and transportation had changed not only the way people lived and worked, but the way they thought about time and space. In 1870, ten miles was, for many people, a long way to travel, and you’d have been lucky to get an occasional letter from a relative out of state. Sixty years later, people in different states could keep in constant touch, and travel across the continent was almost routine. In this chapter, you’ll explore both the process of invention and the changes that inventions wrought.

Section Contents

• Primary Source: New Bern Daily Journal on Municipal Electric Services
• Electric Streetcars
• Idol’s Dam and Power Plant
• Primary Source: Max Bennet Thrasher on Rural Free Delivery
• Primary Source: Consequences of the Telephone
• The Road to the First Flight
• Announcing the First Flight
• Primary Source: Newspaper Coverage of the First Flight
• Henry Ford and the Model T
• Primary Source: Women and the Automobile
• Primary Source: Letter Promoting the Good Roads Movement
• WBT Charlotte in the Golden Age of Radio
• Sour Stomachs and Galloping Headaches