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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.
GUY RAZ, host: On this day back in 1947, President Truman urged people to eat less, not for health reasons, but because our allies across the Atlantic were hungry. The nations of Western Europe will soon be scraping the bottom of the food barrel. They cannot get through the coming winter and spring without help, generous help from the United States and from other countries which have food to spare. -
• Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics.
The transistor is a three terminal, solid state electronic device. In a three terminal device we can control electric current or voltage between two of the terminals by applying an electric current or voltage to the third terminal. This three terminal character of the transistor is what allows us to make an amplifier for electrical signals, like the one in our radio. With the three-terminal transistor we can also make an electric switch, which can be controlled by another electrical switch. -
• President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer. Bellamy's granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there. -
• Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin using attenuated poliovirus. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957 and it was licensed in 1962.[1] Because there is no long term carrier state for poliovirus in immunocompetent individuals, polioviruses have no non-primate reservoir in nature, and survival of the virus in the environment for an extended period of time appears to -
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," at Calder Hall was first connected to the grid on 27 August 1956, it also produced plutonium for military uses. The reactor went online December 2, 1957, and was in operation until October, 1982. It was an experimental, light water moderated, -
• NASA is established
October 1, 1958, the official start of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was the beginning of a rich history of unique scientific and technological achievements in human space flight, aeronautics, space science, and space applications. Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space fligh
