1) California embraced science and technology in the early 20th century, with many innovations in fields like aviation, electronics, and nuclear physics coming out of the state. 2) The arts also thrived in California, with the film industry centering in Hollywood and authors like Steinbeck and Chandler producing influential works. 3) California experienced large waves of immigration over its history from people of many ethnic and racial backgrounds, though tensions arose at various points due to issues like racial inequalities and illegal immigration.

1. California
Set 2 (1920-1990)
Michael Zin
Hist. 141

2. Chapter 10
• Vast land areas, entrepreneurial spirit, and unembarrassed from money motivation led CA
to be a leader in science and technology approach to utopia.
• Natural sciences also studied:
▫ Grayson creates pictorial of the birds of the Pacific Coast
• California Academy of Sciences founded
▫ Survey animals, flowers, tides, mountains etc for importance
▫ New environmentalism: John Muir and Sierra Club
• CA utilizes traditional waterwheel technology as they transfer to an industrial economy
▫ Pelton designs new waterwheel which is able to retain nearly all of its water
• John and James Montgomery experiment with “heavier than air” aviation technologies
▫ August 1883 one brother boards their gull-winged glider while the other
pulls him along with a kite.
▫ Demonstrated that innovation in aviation was compatible with
California
▫ January 1910 Los Angeles County Chamber of Commerce organizes their first show
▫ By 1920, over a third of California air traffic operated in Los Angeles

3. Ch.10 cont…
• Electronic innovations seen in CA:
▫ Television, radio, international phone calls
▫ Edward Armstrong and Lee de Forest compete as they both innovate
stereo amplification simultaneously
• Philio T. Farnsworth experiments with the electronic transmission
of images
▫ September 7th, 1927 Farnsworth’s “orthicon” transmitted the first image
by completely electronic means
▫ Picture of black glass with a line drawn through the middle
• August 19th, 1937 at Stanford University the first klystron tube was
produced
▫ Upon perfection, it became a vital component in radar machines
• Other Stanford graduates make innovations:
▫ David Packard and William Hewett design/build and audio oscillator
that generates electrical signals within frequencies of human hearing.

4. Ch.10 cont…
• UC Berkeley professor Ernest Orlando Lawrence invents and
develops by 1931 a cyclotron that generates high-energy
beams of nuclear particles.
▫ Allows for exploration of the atom nucleus
• Innovations continue throughout the second World War
• Mass markets of wartime broadened horizons of inventors.
▫ Through the tragedy of war, new electronics were brought to
existence
• Stanford University holds great authority in science and
technology innovations
▫ Owned over 8 acres of land for development, very modern
research institute
• Biological basis of all life was manipulated through cutting-
edge technology in California

5. Chapter 11
• Technologies developed in California opened the possibility
for new entertainment media:
▫ Radio, television and film
• Painting, printing, photography, architecture, and music
composition also art forms practiced in CA
• The Arts redefined California as an “Imagined Place”
• Movies/motion pictures seen in CA as early as 1872
▫ Hollywood industrializes movie production by the 1920s with
corporately owned directors, actors and technicians
▫ Smaller film studios bought out by larger presences
• Movie industry never wavered during harsh times
• Dark events in history inspire dark movie scripts
• The arts functioned as an imaginative means of interpreting
life in the California style.

6. Ch.11 cont…
• Late 1940s brings hard-hitting detective stories
• Darker poetry and novels appear
• John Steinbeck transcends nature into literature.
▫ Saw nature as the “everything” in which all living organisms
were
• Contained and held the common goal of survival.
• Nature annoys critic Edmund Wilson
▫ Sees no metaphors for nature in life
• Classic writers including Horace McCoy, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, James M. Cain migrate to Southern CA in
hopes of having screenplays adapted.
▫ The Grapes of Wrath was the first novel written to be
adapted into a screenplay.

7. Ch.11 cont…
• Writers and filmmakers seek to fill a void in California with
their work.
• Raymond Chandler’s existentialism:
▫ Bleak and emotional disconnect from society
▫ Some believe they create their best works during such a period
• William Saroyan fills his void through bohemian art and
“hanging out”.
▫ Explores questions of love, life, death and the universe
• Additional artists take on bohemianism
▫ John Fante claims that everything in American society “will never
deliver”
• Many painters depict CA landscapes and boardwalks;
photographers captures beaches and seashells.
• The arts served as a method of interpreting life in California.

8. Chapter 12
• Ethnic diversity has always been prevalent in CA
▫ Native Americans had between seventy and eighty different
language groups
• First settlers in 1781 were Europeans and Africans that
encountered Native Americans.
▫ Some possible Spaniards or Mexicans
• Gold Rush sends people from every corner of the globe to CA
• None of these groups treated the others respectfully
▫ Spanish intrude upon Native Americans
• California was essentially founded on racial distinctions and
repressions:
▫ Aggression from Mexican land titles, disenfranchisement of
Africans and Asians

9. Ch.12 cont…
• San Francisco holds a heavily Jewish community
▫ Influx of immigrants continues during the 1930s by refugees of
fascism
▫ Jewish people found countless major enterprises and clubs
• In the early 1900s, Koreans, Mexicans and south east Asians
immigrate to California for better opportunities in labor.
• United States begins to regulate immigration in 1965 with the
Immigration and Nationality Acts
▫ Reforms laws that previously did not allow certain ethnic groups
to migrate to CA
▫ California expected a dramatic rise in immigrants for the next
thirty years from troubled parts of the world
▫ Immigrant children flood LAUSD; by 1999 over eighty languages
besides English are spoken in LA schools.

10. Ch.12 cont…
• Racial, ethnic and religious tensions grow stronger in CA
• Watt Riots in Los Angeles, 1965 were racially motivated..
▫ Black man arrested for drunk driving, angry crowd gathers in his support.
▫ Mainly white police officers draw larger crowd and make more arrests; five days of
rioting ensues.
• Rodney King beaten so severely by police, he was to be hospitalized while
his police attackers were acquitted, which resulted in more riots.
• Los Angeles riots in 1992 positioned African-Americans and Mexicans
against Whites and Asians.
• Previous riots had mainly been African-Americans versus Whites.
• Illegal immigration anxiety surfaces to these issues:
▫ Public aid to illegal immigrants
▫ Affirmative action
▫ Bilingual school system
• Modern-day Californians cohabitate in a widely diverse state.