Graphic Design and Architecture, A 20th Century History

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, change appeared every-

where. In civilized cultures throughout the world, traditional beliefs

were starting to be overshadowed by emerging new ideas. A flood

of groundbreaking innovations and inventions redefined the archi-

tecture and built environment and forever transformed the now-

industrialized modern world.

In the 1870s, the invention of electricity and the incandescent

lightbulb by Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) ultimately enhanced

the way in which people interacted with one another and with the

built environments they lived in. Communication was also dramati-

cally altered in the late nineteenth century by the introduction

of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) and his

assistant, ...