stories/the_industrial_town/06.ST.02/. 3http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/stories/the_second_industrial_revolution/05.ST.01/ Wireless Radio Access Network Hardware 12.9.6 The Age of Mass Production14 By 1914 Henry Ford's car lines in Detroit showed the world that production and machine rep- etition could transform the economics of personal transportation. Mass production generated mass employment, mass consumption and a World War in which technologically advanced mass-produced weapons enabled killing and wounding on an unprecedented scale, the age of mass destruction. Wireless telecommunications started to have a substantial social, political and economic impact. 12.9.7 Defiant Modernism 15 The atomic age had resulted in the age of mass destruction being taken to a new level of deadly efficiency, but as a small compensation, the Second World War provided the basis for inventions and innovations that could be potentially repurposed to realise social and economic progress. The V2 rocket provided the basis for the space programmes of the 1950s and 1960s, the atom bomb was supposed to result in nuclear power stations that would produce electricity 'too cheap to meter' and emissions 'too small to measure', aspirations that significantly failed to materialise. 12.9.8 Design Diversity 1950 to 196516 The availability of new materials and the dawn of the age of plastic provided opportunities to differentiate the design of everyday products in order to meet consumer expectations of choice, cost, quality and functionality. 12.9.9 Age of Ambivalence¹7 Organised environmental movements and environmental campaigns reflected a growing unease and failing confidence in the ability of technology to deliver social and economic progress at an acceptable environmental and social cost. This included concerns about genetic modification techniques. In parallel, there was a growing recognition that the gap between rich and poor countries and the gap between rich and poor within those countries was getting wider over time both in ter