According to Robert J. Gordon, author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War, there were five Great Inventions that powered U.S. economic growth between 1870 and 1970.
Are you ready? They were electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine, and modern communication. (I would have missed urban sanitation completely.)
Gordon argues that the advances in info technology in the last few decades did not change our lives in significant ways as did the Five. He notes that we could walk into a 1940s apartment with its indoor plumbing, gas stove, electric lights, refrigerator, and telephone and not be disgusted, although we’d miss the television and the Internet.
On the other hand, if a 1940s person walked into an 1870s apartment, with its outdoor toilet, lanterns, water carried in from the pump, no phone, and an ice box in the corner, she would be horrified.
Gordon’s book is available from Princeton University Press.
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