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Period: to
1 Jan 1945 - 1 Jan 1960 Austin Ch 27 Timeline
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• Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House.
On this day in 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised presidential address from the White House — to a limited audience. Television was still in its infancy: There were only about 44,000 TV sets in U.S. homes, concentrated in a few cities, compared with some 40 million radios. (Five days earlier saw the first telecast of a World Series game, pitting the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers.) Though Truman pioneered the now-familiar ritual of a White House telec -
• Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics.
The first transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories. It later made possible the integrated circuit and microprocessor that are the basis of modern electronics. Although video was possible with vacuum tube equipment, as was the case with the Ampex VRX-1000, without the transistor video products would never have gotten very small. -
President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is an expression of loyalty to the federal flag and the republic of the United States of America, originally composed by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy (1855-1931) in 1892 and formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942.[1] The Pledge has been modified four times since its composition, with the most recent change adding the words "under God" in 1954. Congressional sessions open with the recital of the Pledge, as do government meetings at -
• Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
With these words on April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine Evaluation Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, announced to the world that the Salk polio vaccine was up to 90% effective in preventing paralytic polio. Dr. Francis made the announcement to a crowd of scientists and reporters at the University of Michigan's Rackham Auditorium, concluding his two-year national field trials of the poliomyelitis vaccine developed by his form -
• The first nuclear power plant in the U.S. goes online at Shippingport, Pa
the world’s first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses," (though the British Magnox reactor at Calder Hall was first connected to the grid on 27 August 1956, it also produced plutonium for military uses)[1] was located near the present-day Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, USA, about 25 miles (40 km) from Pittsburgh. The reactor went online December 2, 1957, and was in operation until October, 1982. -
NASA is established
The United States Congress passes legislation formally inaugurating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The establishment of NASA was a sign that the United States was committed to winning the "space race" against the Soviets. In October 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world, and particularly the American public, by launching the first satellite into orbit around the earth. Called Sputnik, the small spacecraft was an embarrassment to the United States, which prided its
