The Economist article compares young adults now from those of two generations previous to the young adults of now. I'm using 1970s - 25 years per generation. T

The Economist article compares young adults now from those of two generations previous to the young adults of now. I'm using 1970s - 25 years per generation. The 1890s were a tumultuous time. You now had cities with a nightlife, because the arc light and other new technologies meant you no longer depended on candles. Photography and telegraphy was now decades old - by the 1880s news could travel around the world within hours. This fueled the presses, powered by Linotype machines that could churn out pages with ease. Telephony was now available in homes. The first X-ray was 1895. Hollerith's tabulating machine completed the 1890 census in only six years - two years less than the 1880 census - and transformed information processing. Astronomy was making exciting new discovery, polar explorers were getting closer to the poles. Steam engines were getting ever more powerful. The Turbinia - the first turbine-powered steamship, 1894 - upset old ideas on ship power. The chemical industry, with Germans in the lead, created amazing new products. Bayer produced Aspirin in the late 1890, and the new synthetic colors transformed the Victorian era. The 1890's/1900s were not a lot simpler.