When did Ageism begin in the US?

Why all the ageism? And when did it begin? According to a psychiatrist at Duke, Harold Koenig, MD., who wrote the excellent book "Purpose and Power: In Retirement" ageism in the US began in the late 1880's, after the first industrial revolution was winding down, when older workers did not work as fast as the younger workers. Around that time William Osler, the physician, gave a speech where he declared men over 40 as useless, and evangelical ministers began condemning older people as well, seeking to convert younger people with families, quantity not quality being their goal. By the mid nineteeth century, entrepreneuers began to court older people, now flush with money from pensions and social security, to move to segregated communities where they could play the rest of their lives away. Florida and Arizona were the pioneer areas where retirement 'communities' began to flourish. Until the 1880's older people continued to participate in their jobs and families like everybody else. They were revered as wise elders, and treasured for their experience and perspective.

But since that earlier time, even today,  when someone is supposedly being 'kind' to 'older women,' as a popular podcast host meant to be

when she interviewed Gloria Steinem, there is from my seat at least, a covert patronizing attitude towards people who are older.

It seems as if they have become the 'other,' and that with their advanced age, they no longer are considered part of the rest of us. This could have been my own projection, but I believed that I could hear it in her voice, Gloria's, the hurt, the awareness that the host was treating her as if she had entered a different time zone, now that she, Gloria, was 90.

The friendly and welcoming host was also idealizing and 'othering', and Gloria tried to respond as she always has, calmly, with humility; highly articulate. But it was obvious, at least to me, that the host was on the look out for Gloria'a older 'other' status, with questions like 'are you living alone?" "Is there someone there with you' Implying that Gloria was vulnerable, that this was just a given, and that like she was probably was with her own mother, that the host was protective and concerned. The host seemed to see herself as a champion of this now marginalized group of once successful but now invisible women (according to the host).And I thought it was bittersweet. Sweet because the host was truly trying to showcase just how great these older women really were and she had created a new podcast for them. Bitter because it seemed to be viewing these women as somehow separate from her, in a separate category, the very essence of an "ism", of prejudice, where an entire group of people is seen as set apart from the mainstream, and falling into another category entirely , rather than remaining individuals with as much variation as older people- as any other age group- rather than one size fits all. Gloria Steinem has stood out for decades as having a uniquely distinct voice. I don't think her turning 90 has changed that, so that, as kind as the host was interviewing her, i believe the interview was more about the hosts attempts to deal with her own ambivalence about the aging process, than about  Gloria, who has always known who she was, and when she said she didn't, in her book "Revolution from Within", was able to write about it.