The industry that will be "the feature of tomorrow." Be familiar with it!

I wonder if any of those engineering majors, or people studying architecture or business read this and then stormed into their professors' stuffy offices. "You've never told us about this!" Let's assume they were all at least passingly familiar with the concept, even if they had no idea of the ubiquity that was coming.

Unassuming advertisement aside, students of 1934 who got in early could probably do well for themselves.

Birmingham, by then, was easily the largest city in the state. (Strictly by a city's population, that's no longer the case.) The Birmingham Electric Company was organized in 1921. (Not to be confused with the 1890 Birmingham Railway Electrical Company, which would become Birmingham Electric Company in 1940.) Both had similar purposes, streetcars, with some electrical distribution on the side. The second one, the 1921 concern, was able to use that electricity side hustle to survive the Depression. Maybe that's one reason they saw great things in conditioned air. Both companies suffered similar fates.

The 1890 version saw their rider numbers decline after World War II. Cars and buses took the demand away, and the streetcars were sold to Toronto in 1952. Around that time they changed their name to the Birmingham Transit Company. Two decades later, the local transit authority took over. Today, they run 109 buses on 38 routes and see about 6,800 customers per day.

Economics got the 1921 company, too. Alabama Power bought them when it got lean. Their vehicles were sold for scrap.

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