Almost half of all households (46 percent) had a radio in 1925 compared with only 10 percent five years earlier. Many Americans living today remember sitting around the radio to hear FDR's fireside chats. The President during 1933 to 1945 addressed the nation by radio. There was no TV. But by 1973 virtually every home had television (Table 1-3). The electronic boom alone opened channels of communication from coast to coast and became a primary educator and advertiser.

Advertisers in the twenties used the wireless to sell proliferating electrical appliances and kitchen aids. A radio sales training feature of 1922, urging dealers to promote electrical appliances as gifts, used the slogan "many a June bride-elect hopes to become a wife electrical this year." Small appliances were the only ones reaching many homes then—irons and vacuum cleaners, for instance. Very few households had a refrigerator, an appliance that is in virtually every home now. Fewer than 8 percent had clothes washers in 1922, whereas almost 80 percent do today (Table 1-4).

By now, Americans know that the energy boom that revolutionized ways of living in a single generation has not been an unmixed blessing. It has caused blemishes on the land and shore, unhealthy air and water, paved the countryside and cities alike with highways, streets, and parking lots—all clogged with cars—and introduced us to brownouts and blackouts. Planning to avert these conditions has been delinquent and disjointed. But regardless of where the