20th century
1901–2000: factories, world wars, the space race and punk
No century changed ordinary life faster than the 20th. People born around 1900 grew up with horses and gas lamps; their grandchildren watched humans walk on the Moon in 1969 and, by the 1990s, used personal computers and mobile phones.
It was also a century of mass violence. Two world wars, revolutions and dictatorships uprooted tens of millions of people, and roles like soldier, partisan, nurse and refugee were not choices for most of those who filled them. The second half of the century brought the Cold War, decolonisation, the rapid growth of cities and, in much of Europe, life in large housing estates and state-run workplaces.
The lives in this section range from the factory floor and the coal mine to the cockpit and the space capsule.
