Spectacle, Symbol, Strain, and Showpiece: Americans and Technology in the 1930s

In 1928, American voters elected Herbert Hoover to the presidency, giddy with his confident assertion that upcoming years would bring continued increases in national prosperity. Herbert Hoover, who trained as an engineer at Stanford University and made a fortune in the mining business, embodied the faith that many observers of the 1920s placed in America's new machine age. Indeed, as secretary of commerce in the early 1920s, Hoover had personally promoted the expansion of commercial aviation, development of radio, and even experiments with television.