Before the 1800s, most people didn’t really have free time, as the majority of the population was required to farm all their live just to stay alive. But as technology advanced, this was no longer necessary for all people, particularly in America, and many people suddenly had free time. This led to many people taking to being cowboys, or bandits, or miners during the gold rush. But as time went on and people realized these weren’t sustainable pastimes, several other options were invented and popularized at the end of the 19th century.
Football, also known as American Football in Europe, is an American version of a sport known as Rugby in other parts of the world, particularly those colonized by England. As Americans put there own spin on it near 1869, it became a fairly popular sport, though nowhere near the other sports at the time. It became a professional sport in 1920, though still lacked much popularity, and was not considered a major sport until 1959, when it managed to rise to be the most popular American sport, which it still is too this day. Part of the reason for the lack of interest is probably the extreme injuries that players would often suffer, causing rules and penalties to constantly change until 1959, when sustainable rules were written.
The first version of basketball was incredibly similar to modern basketball, and was invented in 1891. James Naismith invented it to help stop people, and kids especially, from playing football, due to it’s accident-prone nature. It first started with throwing a ball into a peach basket on a fence post, but it quickly became quite popular, and due to it’s rather unique ability to be played indoors, it became a wintertime sport. It isn’t the most popular American sport, but is a rather close second, and has been for the duration of it’s existence, as well as being an international sport, unlike American football and baseball.
Baseball is the oldest of these games, starting near the beginning of the 1800s, and official rules being set 1845. The major writer of these rules was Alexander Cartwright, who took off to California to help dig in the Gold Rush, spreading baseball throughout America. It was easily the most popular sport for quite a while, even being nicknamed “America’s Pastime” though it has fallen back quite a bit to be less popular than either basketball or football in the modern day.
The earliest movies where also made in the early 20th century. Thomas Edison made the kinetograph in the 1890’s, which moved reel of pictures fast enough to make them look like a video, and this technology became very popular very quickly. One of the first successes in the early movie industry was the ten-minute “Great Train Robbery” made in 1903 which introduced filming techniques still used in modern movies. Speaking of modern movies, they have become far and away more popular than any sport,
Edward Stratemeyer popularized “dime novels” especially for children, in the late 1800s. He many, many stories, all fairly short stories for children to enjoy. He had so many series of these books that he hired numerous freelance writers to write series whose premise he came up with. This organization is known as the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and worked quite well. Dime novels weren’t just for children, however, and many short stories about the wild west became popular for all ages, and in the late 1900s romantic dime novels became popular among women.
School Essays 