Clank, clank, clank. 
     "Lets go! One, two, three, ....ten. Yeah, it's up. You got it. Twenty- five seconds."
     I sat there in my backyard listening. All of a sudden, I saw a shaky object with four flat wings flying through the air. My two best friends, who owned a little bicycle shop beside their house, were in the front of the wobbly object, piloting the flight. 
     "Wow, Mom and Dad come here. Look at Orville and Wilbur!" 
      As the twentieth century began, many Americans felt very optimistic. Many figured that the automobile was trapped in someone's mind, ready to be shown to the world. Also, people had been trying to accomplish building and piloting a "flying machine". The country seemed to be on the verge of a new era of peace, prosperity, and progress.  The nineteen hundreds showed many about the real meaning of the world. Many were striving to succeed. Boy, oh boy, what a decade it was!! 
     Many interesting events happened in this first decade.  This timeline shows the most important things that happened in 1900's. 

• George Eastman makes first portable camera that's affordable and open to the public

• President Mckinley is shot dead by Leon Czolgsz
• Electric typewriter is invented 
• Teddy Roosevelt is elected President

• The U.S. Navy installs the first radio telephone aboard ships

• Henry Ford founds Ford Motor Co.
• Orville and Wilbur Wright take the first test flight in their plane at Kitty Hawk, NC
• The first World Series is held, Boston vs. Pittsburgh 

• The first comic book is invented
• George M. Cohan, the creator of many patriotic songs and musicals creates his first musical, Little Johnny Jones
• The answering machine is invented

• The first Yellow Pages is invented
• The Jukebox is invented with 24 songs.

• 2,500 people die from an earthquake in San Francisco
• An animated cartoon is created
• Teddy Roosevelt becomes the first president to leave the country

• The Lamiere brothers create still color photography
• Pablo Picasso unveils his cubism art, Les Demoiselles d' Avignon

• Henry Ford makes his first Model T for $850

• A radio S.O.S. saves 1,700 lives after ships collide
• First subject on radio talk is about woman's suffrage
• William Taft is elected President
  

     Daily life back then was very different from the daily life we have today.  Did you know that today's supermarket food selection was considered luxurious even for rich families back then?  Pretty weird.  Inside the house has improved too, with the indoor toilet and bathtub.  Also, if you were a woman you had to make clothes for your family!  I would say that daily life has improved, wouldn't you?

     One thing that was almost daily was food.  Even though a lot of the food was different from now I have made a chart with some prices of meats, and I have a menu from a fancy restaurant.  You'll be surprised from some of the foods they have on a nice menu back then. 

Appetizers
Half of a 
Cantaloupe 10¢ 
Sliced Orange   10¢ 
Young Onions 5¢ 
Sliced Tomatoes 10¢ 
New Radishes  5¢
Sliced Cucumbers 10¢

Soup
Old Fashion Navy Bean  10¢

Main Course
Channel Catfish 
20¢ 
Pork Tenderloins 
20¢ 
Omelet with Jelly 
15¢ 
Roast Pork with Applesauce 
20¢ 
Chicken Fricassee 
20¢ 
Roast Beef 
15¢ 
Pork and Beans 
15¢ 

Vegetables
Corn on the
Cob 10¢ 
Buttered Beets 
5¢ 
Mashed Potatoes 
5¢ 
Pickled Beets 5¢ 
Cole Slaw 5¢ 
Salad  10¢

Dessert
Lemon Layer Cake 5¢ 
Ice Cream 10¢ 
Ice Cream and Cake 15¢ 
Raspberries and Cream 10¢ 
Rhubarb Pie 5¢ 
Green Apple Pie  5¢

Drinks
Coffee 5¢ 
Milk 5¢ 
Tea  5¢ 
Buttermilk 5¢ 

      Back then most of the clothes for families were made by the family mom.  Soon they were fitted and made by tailors, though.  By the end of this decade almost everyone was buying already made clothes.  The kinds of clothes that a woman would wear were usually skirts that came down to the ground.  Even if she was doing "unladylike" things, such as farming or bicycling.  Another thing that they wore were high, buttoned shoes.  Another popular type of clothes for a woman was whale bone corsets, and hats with festive plumage and decorations.  The men's suits were almost always dark and heavy.  In the summer, out in the country a man might wear white flannel, but back then there was no such thing as a "summer weight suit".  The shirts had high collars and detachable cuffs for easier washing.  Almost every man wore a hat.  Farmers wore straw hats, rich people wore silk hats, and middle-class men wore derbies.  So, as you can see the dress code back then was strict.

Entertainment

     Back in 1900 their entertainment wasn't very graphic or entertaining.  They mostly had books and the radio for entertainment.  Here are some of the most popular books and music from 1900-1910.  Here are some popluar songs: 

     All of these songs back then were on sheets of paper, so if you had the certain instruments you could play it.  Now, here are books with some descriptions from 1900-1910. 

Theodore Roosevelt is considered by many, one of the greatest presidents ever.  Teddy Roosevelt was first a rough riding cowboy, but he soon turned into the nature loving president that everyone liked. 
      When Teddy was born, in 1858, to a wealthy family he was a frail boy that had asthma.  Teddy started to work out his body, and before long he was an excellent athlete. 
      When Theodore graduated from Harvard he married the woman he loved, Alice Lee, in 1880.  While he thought his life was great, unfortunately, both his mom and wife died on Valentine's Day in 1884.  With a broken heart, Teddy joined a gang of cowboys out in the Dakota territories.  All of the men gave respect to the glasses wearing rough-rider. 
 In 1898 T.R. helped organize a group of young, wealthy Easterners, cowboys from the West, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans to fight in the Spanish-American War.  He led the group and came back to the U.S. a hero in July.  By the time fall rolled around Teddy was elected Republican Governor of New York. 
      Since T.R. angered many of New York's political bosses they nominated him to Vice President.  When President McKinley was assassinated Theodore became the 26th president in 1901. 
      While he was president T.R. turned thousands of acres of land into national forests.  In 1908 he was re-elected because he was so popular.  He then helped dig the Panama Canal and received a Nobel Piece Prize for stopping a war between Russia and Japan. 
      When Theodore left his presidency, he left the U.S. a much different place.  He tried running again in 1912, but he didn't make it.  When Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919 he had already been confirmed as one of the greatest presidents.  That was confirmed again when his face was put in Mt.Rushmore with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. 

     In the 1900's football was popular at only a few Ivy League colleges, and basketball had yet to catch on. The  upper class preferred expensive, show time sports like tennis, golf, horse racing, sailing, and polo. Baseball, however, was already America's most talked about sport and was fast on its way to becoming a national obsession. Amateur baseball teams had existed for decades. By the 1900's, every small town had a fiercely competitive league. Professional teams, meanwhile, had been around since 1880's began to really get popular. In 1902, professional teams had an over all fan ratio of 3.5 million people. And by 1911, that number had nearly doubled to 6.5 million. The American league was established in 1900, to rival the National League to organize teams. The rival leagues played the first World Series in 1903, with Boston defeating Pittsburgh. Also, the first baseball stadium was constructed in Pittsburgh, followed soon by similar stadiums in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and New York. The famous baseball anthem, "Take Me Out To The Ball Game", was first heard in 1909. 

Inventions

      People had been dreaming about flying for years, and there were countless failing efforts. Not until the 1900's however, would anyone succeed in piloting a heavier than air craft. Many believed that such a feat was impossible. In 1903, the distinguished astronomer Simon Newcomb stated, "Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man can never cope."

Later, that same year, two brothers proved his theory extremely wrong. Orville and Wilbur Wright owned a modest bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. For years, they were tinkering with what they called "whooper flying machine". In December 1903, using the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as a testing ground, they succeeded in flying their flimsy craft on a series of wobbly flights, the longest lasting 59 seconds and covering 852 feet. It was the world's first successful flight of a heavier than air craft. Orville and Wilbur Wright's historic flight drew almost no attention from the nation's press in 1903. 
     One editor, Keville Glennan of Norfolk, Virginia, Virginian pilot, grasped its significance. Despite the Wrights efforts to keep their triumph secret, Glennan learned about it through a leak in the local telegraph office when the Wright's cabled home. He tried to get the news out, just no one was interested. For many years, people thought that "flying machines" were just a childish fad. As late as 1907, according to Walter Lord in The Good Years, a speaker at the International Aeronautical Congress stated that airplanes had no commercial or military future and that, at best, they might someday prove "useful" in explorations of otherwise inaccessible places, such as mountain tops, swamps, or densely wooded regions. As of 1911, critics were still saying that the invention would probably remain "a racing machine for glided youth." 
     Without a doubt, the most important development in transportation during the 1900's was the rise of the gas powered automobile. Americans could escape from the stultifying details of details of daily life to a realm of speed and fantasy, with cars .... The automobile changed radically the relationship of human beings to the physical world, to nature, to one another. It became a courtship machine, a mobile love nest. The engine its self became a god of youth. It represented perhaps above all, the conquest of the vast space of America. 

The Golden Interlude, 1900-1910  by the editors of Time LIfe Books
Published by Ezra Bowen, copyright 1969