Skip to main content

1933 Fifty Years Ago

March 2023
1min read

No mere flick of a switch would do to open Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition on May 27: The Genius of Science and the Industry of Man were to be celebrated. A wondering public learned that the miles of neon tubing were set aglow by rays from the star Arcturus focused on photoelectric cells, transformed into electricity, and transmitted to Chicago. These rays, they were told, had left Arcturus at the moment the Columbian Exposition had opened forty years earlier.

But it was not all Science and Learning. The New York Times remarked that ”… to some extent the hiatus between what science knows and what the public knows will be bridged. At the same time the average sensual man will have his needs ministered to and will not be asked to strain his intellect.”

And where would this average sensual man turn for relief? To the midway, where, at the “Streets of Paris” review, an unknown entertainer called Sally Rand (nee Helen Gould Beck) danced slowly to the strains of Claire de Lune clad only in a coating of white powder and clutching two ostrich fans.

The battle thus joined between Sensation and Thought seems to have been won by Miss Rand: a local reporter noted that “the Adler Planetarium is playing to poor business; 40 men could toss a medicine ball around in the Hall of Science and never bother the customers.… But Sally Rand dancing nude on the Streets of Paris has been jamming the place nightly. ” Her salary at the start of the Exposition was $125 a week: by the end of the summer this was raised to $3,000. Progress indeed.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "April/May 1983"

Authored by: Nathan Miller

An Interview With Edward L. Beach
The captain who first took a submarine around the world underwater looks at the U.S. Navy past and present and tells us what we must learn from the Falklands war

Authored by: William Graebner

Twentieth-century answers to that question have much less to do with the health and happiness of the retiree than we have been led to believe

Authored by: Patricia Frantz Kery

was the first magazine in America to change its cover for every issue. And these covers may still be the best graphic art magazine has ever produced.

Authored by: Avery Kolb

The storm that wrecked the Virginia-bound ship Sea Venture in 1609 inspired a play by Shakespeare— and the survivors’ tribulations may well have sown the first seeds of democracy in the New World

Authored by: Daniel P. Mannix 3d

An extraordinary World War I naval operation is recounted by the commander of a decaying coastal steamer crammed with a terrifying new explosive

Authored by: Walter Karp

She was the first whaleship ever sunk by her prey. But that’s not why she’s remembered.

The fascinating contents of a newly discovered document of the War of 1812

Authored by: Robert Uhl

We built a merchant marine despite the opposition of the Royal Navy, went on to develop the most beautiful of all sailing ships, and held our supremacy for years. But how do we measure up today?

Authored by: Robert Uhl

Antonio Jacobsen, the most prolific of all American marine artists

Authored by: Walter Karp

How a shy millionaire’s peculiar genius transformed his “country place” into an unparalleled showcase of American furnishings
A HERITAGE PRESERVED

Featured Articles

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.