I ask this because I know that in our culture (I’m American) we tend to reference certain zeitgeists of specific decades, e.g. the 90s, 80s, 70s, etc. prior to 1900, did people have such drastic difference in pop culture from decade to decade? Or was it somewhat stable and pop culture per decade had became an emergent outcome due to the industrial revolution? (conjecture I know, but it sounded interesting) Corollary, if not defined by decade, was it more in the century sense?
To copy from a previous answer of mine ...
There is always more to be said, but you may be interested in my recent answers:
These discuss changes in skirt shape and hair/wig-style in the Early Modern period, which were occurring on an ongoing basis to create the effect you're describing. I also have this thread on the quick rate of change in women's dress in the later 18th and early 19th centuries:
Why were some women's dresses from the 1800s actually really simple?
And this one on changes in fashion and decorative arts in the 19th century:
As I argued in this thread on the use of decade terminology, twentieth-century decade stereotypes are, on the other hand, not accurate. The 1910s stereotype is based on the clothing of the early 1910s, with a high waistline and long, narrow skirt; the 1920s stereotype is based on the clothing of about 1925 through 1927, with a dropped or nonexistent waistline and a knee-length skirt. This structure leaves no room for fashions from the late 1910s, which generally feature a raised waistline, a loose silhouette, and a calf-length skirt, or the very long skirts of 1922-24. The decision to take 1912-1914 fashion as emblematic of 1910-1919 is essentially arbitrary, and even deciding that the dividing line for an era should be between the 9 of one decade and the 0 of the next is arbitrary.
As with most parts of Western culture, the speed of change increased over time as connectivity increased. One aspect of culture that can serve as sort of a ‘ruler’ in this way is music. For example, in Europe in the 17th and 18th century professional composers and musicians would have to travel to different areas of their own country or the continent to hear differing styles of music. Even then, just hearing a piece of music did not allow someone to analyze a musical style in depth.
As recording technology became cheaper it was much easier for one song or group to achieve fame that swept across geographical barriers in a quick period of time. Additionally, if someone was interested in emulating a specific sound they could play back the song/album hundreds of times and pick apart the style. As such, when one style or group became popular it was able to rise, become emulated, and die out in popularity within a decade. Previously, there were still these stylistic shifts, however, they were often constrained by geographical factors (in addition to time) and took more than a decade to rise and fall in popularity.
So I would not be able to argue that the division of time went from (for example) century, to 50 years, to decade but rather that the division decreased over time