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Period: to
The Postwar years at home
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Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House
Harry Truman delivered the first televised presidential address to a limited audience. There were only about 44,000 TV sets in the U.S. homes, compared with some 40 million radios. Five days earlier saw the first telecast of a World Series game. -
Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics
It was invented by scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories. It's a tiny circuit device that amplifies, controls, and generates electrical signals. It could do the work of a much larger vacuum tube, but took up less space and generated less heat. Because of the transistor, giant machines that once filled whole rooms could now fit on a desk and calculations that had taken hours could now be performed in fractions of a second. -
President Eisenhower and Congress add the words "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance
In response to the Communist threat of the time, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "Under God", creating the 31-word pledge we say today. Today it reads:
" I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all." -
Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis
Before this vaccine, the disease had killed or disabled more than 20,000 children in the United States every year. Franklin D. Roosevelt had suffered from the effects of polio. Salk wrote to FDR's widow Eleanor: "The scientific report, that may mark the beginning of the end of the scourge of polio, is to be made on the Tenth Anniversary of Mr. Roosevelt's untimely death....." -
The first nuclear power plant in the U.S. goes online at Shippingport, Pa.
The Navy produced the first nuclear-powered submarine, which had a small reactor in the hull. The submarine's technology is what provided a model for the first nuclear power plant on land. Disney soon had people write books about the atomic age. An example would be "The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom". -
NASA is established
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, many Ameicans grew concerned that the United States were losing its competitive edge. In responded the United States created NASA. Which stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
