The Technological Revolution and American Physical Education and Sport 1850-1930

1. The Technological Revolution and American Physical Education and Sport1850-1930 KPE 260 –Winter, 2001 Dr. D. Frankl

2. General Events An Ever Changing Landscape: • A move from agrarian to urban and industrialized sport • Organization, Journalistic Exploitation, Commercialization, intercommunity Competition, Decline of Puritan Orthodoxy, English Athletic Movement, New Immigrants, Frontier Traditions of Manliness and Strength…. Betts, J. R. (1953, September). The technological revolution And the rise of sport, 1850-1900. Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XL, 231-56.

3. The Early Nineteen Century • National Independence • New Technology in England • Industrialization & • Urbanization

4. A move from agrarian to urban and industrialized sport Percentage of labor force in agriculture 1990 1900 1800 Year

5. A move from agrarian to urban and industrialized sport 1800 1900 1990

6. James Bryce, a British observer, wrote in 1905: “[Sport] occupies the minds not only of the youth at the universities, but also of their parents and of the general public. Baseball matches and football matches excite an interest greater than any other public events except the presidential election, and that comes only once in four years...The American love of excitement and love of competition has seized upon these games.”

7. John R. Betts, American Sport Historian “The technological revolution is not the sole determining factor in the rise of sport, but to ignore its influence would result only in a more or less superficial understanding of the history of one of the prominent social institutions of modern America.” http://www.rrhistorical.com/

8. “Yankee Ingenuity” • The steamboat and railroad • The telegraph • The penny press • Light bulbs • Bicycle, streetcars and automobile • Camera, rubber, and mass production of sporting goods T. Edison Henry Ford

9. Organized Sport in America During the Pre-1800 Period As unbelievable as it may seem to us today, no organized spectator or participant sport activities existed in North America prior to the 1800s (Eitzen & Sage, 1993). Some of the reasons follow: • Long hours of work for mere survival • Puritanism the most powerful social institution placed restriction on sport and play

10. The Late Nineteen Century The Post-Civil War years saw a diffusion of leisurely sport activities from the upper to the middle and to the working classes. Of all the new activities baseball & football saw the greatest and most rapid growth. Which is the currently fastest growing sport in America?

11. Soccer in America • 1609--Soccer played at Jamestown • 1863 adoption of London Rules • 1880– 11 players • Immigrant Eras, 1875-1894 (soccer seen as the un-American game; Baseball is America’s pastime 1904—soccer included as an official Olympic sport in St Louis, the U.S. played 1914--The U.S. Football Association (USFA), now U.S. Soccer Federation, was granted full membership in FIFA

12. Contributions by Immigrants Immigrants settled in cities and were not as religious as the local puritans. • British Immigrants • German Immigrants • Irish Immigrants

13. Baseball Trivia: Name the Athlete • First player to hit 50 home runs (54) in one season (1920). • First player to hit 60 home runs (60) in one season (1927). • Most home runs in the American League (708). • Most home runs for a left-handed batter in the Major Leagues (714). • Most home runs on opening days (6)

14. Baseball Trivia: Name the Athlete • Most seasons as home run leader (12). • Most years with 50 or more home runs (4). • Most years with 40 or more home runs (11). • Most consecutive years with 40 or more home runs (7). • Most RBI's in the American League (2,192). • Most seasons as RBI leader (6). • Most games with two or more home runs in the Major Leagues (72).

15. Liberal and Humanitarian Reform • The Muscular Christianity Movement Members were health and physical education activists (Catharine Beecher and her family members) • Intellectuals Oliver Wendell Holms (1809-1894) Ralph Waldo Emerson

16. Oliver Wendell Holms (1809-1894) • American writer and physician, whose wit and intellectual vitality are representative of cultivated Boston society of the era. • Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holmes was educated at Harvard College.

17. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) American Author, Poet & Philosopher • Born in Boston, Massachusetts and widely regarded as one of America's most influential authors, philosophers and thinkers.. • Explained transcendentalism's main principle of the "mystical unity of nature" in his essay, "Nature".

18. Intercollegiate Athletics • 1852 first varsity contest between Harvard & Yale • by 1870-1880s intercollegiate athletics in the US became an established part of higher education

19. The Twentieth Century By the 1920s sports has reached a peak and a bridge to the modern era sports was established. Some sport historians look at the 1920s as the golden age of sport. Famous athletes of that era were:Babe Ruth, Knute Rockne and the four horses of Notre Dame, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden and Helen Willis Moody. Major developments in the last three decades: (A) Amateur & professional spectator sports (B) The Fitness revolution

20. How Technology Revolutionized Sport Transportation The Steam Engine Boats, Railroads, Trains Communications Gasoline Engine Roads, cars, planes

21. Transportation • Train ride to 1869 1st intercollegiate football game (Rutgers/Princeton) • Train ride to 1887 McGill-Harvard football match • Horse racing • America’s 1st heavyweight champion, John L. Sullivan, toured the US by train…

22. Communications: Mass Media • 1733 – Boston Gazette publishes first sport story • 1819 – The American Farmer a periodical about sports (fishing, hunting, shooting and bicycling…) • 1831 – The Spirit of Times, weekly on sport • 1862 – Chadwick covers baseball in NY • 1870 – Middie Morgan, 1st female reporter for the New York Times

23. Communications 1844first telegraph line built between Baltimore & Washington D.C. 1846The N.Y. Tribune & Herald used telegraphs for news Improvements in printing processes

24. Communication: The rise of sports journalism • 1866—Cyrus Field lays the Atlantic cable 1869Harvard-Oxford crew race in England reported by wire in the US.

25. Communication: The rise of sports journalism (Continued “B”) 1876 Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the first telephone. From 1 million + telephones in 1900 we have today hundreds of millions of phones in the US. & Canada (~8% of world population with 50% of phones)

26. Communication: The rise of sports journalism (Continued “C”) 1896 Marchese Guglielmo Marconi patented wireless telegraphy 8/8/1920 radio station “Detroit News” aired the results of the World Series Baseball Nov. 1920 a radio station in Pittsburgh began broadcasting 19201st football game broadcast from a radio station in Texas

27. Communication: The rise of sports journalism (Continued “D”) TV--A recent poll claims that college students spend more waking hours watching TV than any other single activity! By 1940TVs were marketable and by1957TV was no longer a novelty 1963 – instant replay on TV 1980s and 1990sare marked by cable TV, PCs, and the Internet.

28. Additional Technological Developments Eastman Kodak developed first mobile camera during the1860s 1872first motion camera effect 1879Thomas A. Edison invented the bulb light 1885electric lights in Madison Square Garden in N.Y. 1930sbaseball night games 1830sCharles Goodyear’s vulcanization of rubber influenced sport equipment

29. Sport & Values:The Dominant American Sport Creed • Character Building (positive deviance) • Discipline (other imposed…) • Competition (social comparison) • Physical Fitness • Mental Fitness • Religiosity (from Zeus to Jesus…) • Nationalism (Ethnocentrism—Persian Gulf War)