From Marginal Revolution

The most technologically progressive decade of the 20th century

Can you guess? According to economic historian Alexander Field, it is (controversially) the 1930s. Opening paragraph:

Because of the Depression’s place in both the popular and academic imagination, and the repeated and justifiable emphasis on output that was not produced, income that was not earned, and expenditure that did not take place, it will seem startling to propose the following hypothesis: the years 1929–1941 were, in the aggregate, the most technologically progressive of any comparable period in U.S. economic history