The Technological Revolution and The Technological Revolution and American Physical Education and American Physical Education and

SportSport1850-1930 1850-1930

KPE 260 –Winter, 2001Dr. D. Frankl

General EventsGeneral Events

An Ever Changing Landscape: 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.

The Early Nineteen CenturyThe Early Nineteen Century

National Independence New Technology in England Industrialization & Urbanization

A move from agrarian to urban and A move from agrarian to urban and industrialized sportindustrialized sport

1800 19901900

Year

Percentage of labor force in agriculture

A move from agrarian to urban and A move from agrarian to urban and industrialized sportindustrialized sport

Percentage of U.S. Population in Urban Areas

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60

80

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1800 19901900

James Bryce, a British observer, wrote in 1905: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.”

John R. Betts, American Sport HistorianJohn 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/

““Yankee Ingenuity”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

Organized Sport in America During the Organized Sport in America During the Pre-1800 PeriodPre-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

The Late Nineteen CenturyThe Late Nineteen CenturyThe 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?

Soccer in AmericaSoccer 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. played1914--The U.S. Football Association (USFA), now U.S. Soccer Federation, was granted full membership in FIFA

Contributions by ImmigrantsContributions by Immigrants

Immigrants settled in cities and were not as religious as the local puritans.

British Immigrants German ImmigrantsIrish Immigrants

Baseball Trivia: Name the AthleteBaseball 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)

Baseball Trivia: Name the AthleteBaseball 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).

Liberal and Humanitarian ReformLiberal and Humanitarian Reform

The Muscular Christianity MovementThe Muscular Christianity MovementMembers were health and physical education activists (Catharine Beecher and her family members)

IntellectualsIntellectualsOliver Wendell Holms (1809-1894)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oliver Wendell Holms (1809-1894)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.

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".

Intercollegiate AthleticsIntercollegiate Athletics

1852 first varsity contest between Harvard & Yale

by 1870-1880s intercollegiate athletics in the US became an established part of higher education

The Twentieth CenturyThe 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

How Technology Revolutionized SportHow Technology Revolutionized Sport

TransportationTransportationThe Steam EngineBoats, Railroads, Trains

Communications

Gasoline EngineRoads, cars, planes

TransportationTransportation• 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…

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

Communications

1844 first telegraph line built between Baltimore & Washington D.C.

1846 The N.Y. Tribune & Herald used telegraphs for news

Improvements in printing processes

Communication: The rise of sports Communication: The rise of sports journalismjournalism

• 1866—Cyrus Field lays the Atlantic cable

1869 Harvard-Oxford crew race in England reported by wire in the US.

Communication: The rise of sports Communication: The rise of sports journalism (Continued “B”)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)

Communication: The rise of sports Communication: The rise of sports journalismjournalism (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

1920 1st football game broadcast from a radio station in Texas

Communication: The rise of sports Communication: The rise of sports journalism (Continued “D”)journalism (Continued “D”)

TV--A recent poll claims that college students spend more waking hours watching TV than any other single activity!

By 1940 TVs were marketable

and by 1957 TV was no longer a novelty

1963 – instant replay on TV

1980s and 1990s are marked by cable TV, PCs, and the Internet.

Additional Technological Additional Technological DevelopmentsDevelopments

Eastman Kodak developed first mobile camera during the 1860s

1872 first motion camera effect

1879 Thomas A. Edison invented the bulb light

1885 electric lights in Madison Square Garden in N.Y.

1930s baseball night games

1830s Charles Goodyear’s vulcanization of rubber influenced sport equipment

Sport & Values:Sport & Values:The Dominant American Sport CreedThe 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)