The 1950s

By Uberbrat

  • Worst Texas drought

    Worst Texas drought
    Such droughts accured in the Southwestern United States, New Mexico and Texas during 1950 and 1951; the drought was widespread through the Central Plains, Midwest and certain Rocky Mountain States, particularly between the years 1953 and 1957, and by 1956 parts of central Nebraska reached a drought index of -7, three points below the extreme drought index.[21] From 1950 to 1957, Texas experienced the most severe drought in recorded history.
  • Period: to

    The 1950's

  • 3 worst tornadoes in 1951

    3 worst tornadoes in 1951
    1950 had an early and violent start to the year with the first tornadoes touching down on January 3. Two F3's and one F1 touched down. The first tornado, and most damaging, was an F3 which struck St. Louis, Missouri causing almost $3 million in damages. The second F3 struck Fillmore, Illinois causing $250,000 in damages. The last tornado was a brief F1 in northeastern Ohio.

  • Outbreak of hurricanes in the 1950s

    Outbreak of hurricanes in the 1950s
    The tropical cyclones of the season produced a total of 88 fatalities and $38.5 million in property damage (1950 USD). The first officially named Atlantic hurricane was Hurricane Able, which formed on August 12, brushed the North Carolina coastline, and later moved across Atlantic Canada. The strongest hurricane of the season, Hurricane Dog, reached the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale, and caused extensive damage to the Leeward Islands.

  • First Credit Card

    First Credit Card
    In a crowded resturant in New York City, Frank McNamara came up with the idea of a credit card because he forgot his money at home and needed his wife to bring it to him. From his embarrasement the idea was formed.

  • U.S. performs 1st Nuclear Test in Nevada

    U.S. performs 1st Nuclear Test in Nevada
    65 miles North West of Las Vegas the first nuclear bomb test was conducted. The flash of the nuke could be seen as far away as San Fransisco. The government continued tests for 6 more six more years and even tested the effects on people. The testers would put people as close as 2,500 yards away. After that, people thought the government was waging a war against them (not literally) and eventually got nuclear testing stopped.

  • Great flood of 1951's

    Great flood of 1951's
    In mid-July 1951, heavy rains led to a great rise of water in the Kansas River and other surrounding areas of the central United States. Flooding resulted in the Kansas, Neosho, Marais Des Cygnes, and Verdigris river basins. The damage in June and July 1951 exceeded $935 million in an area covering eastern Kansas and Missouri, which, adjusting for inflation, is nearly $7 billion in 2005.[1] The flood resulted in the loss of 17 lives and displaced 518,000 people.

  • First video recorder

    First video recorder
    In 1951, Charles Ginsburg led the research at Ampex Corporation to make a live video recorder that captured live images. It was to convert images into electrical impulses and saved the information on a magnetic tape. The first "VTR" sold for $50,000.

  • Remington Rand introduced UNIVAC computer

    Remington Rand introduced UNIVAC computer
    Even though this computer was one tenth of the size of earlier computers, it was still has big as a small bedroom. Buisnesses and institutions could now afford them. There were many more software programs. FORTRAN software for math and science. COBOL software for Common Buisness Oriented Language.

  • First Electric Power from atomic energy

    First Electric Power from atomic energy
    In Arco, Idaho in 1951, EBR-1, an atomic energy power plant, produced enough energy to light four 200-W light bulbs on the first day. On the second day, the plant produced enough energy to light an entire building. It produced a total of 200 kW of electricity from 1.4 kW of heat the reactor generated. This was designed by Walter Zinn and was intended to produce electricity.

  • Polypropylene

    Polypropylene
    Propylene was first polymerized to a crystalline isotactic polymer by Giulio Natta as well as by the German chemist Karl Rehn in March 1954.[4] This pioneering discovery led to large-scale commercial production of isotactic polypropylene by the Italian firm Montecatini from 1957 onwards.[5] Syndiotactic polypropylene was also first synthesized by Natta and his coworkers. Polypropylene is the second most important plastic with revenues expected to exceed US$145 billion by 2019. The demand for th

  • First Solar Cell

    First Solar Cell
    The first practical photovoltaic cell was publicly demonstrated on April 25, 1954 at Bell Laboratories.[5] The inventors were Daryl Chapin, Calvin Souther Fuller and Gerald Pearson.[6] They used a diffused silicon p–n junction that reached 6% efficiency, compared to the earlier selenium cells that found it difficult to reach 0.5%.[7] Les Hoffman CEO of Hoffman Electronics Corporation had his Semiconductor Division pioneer the fabrication and mass production of solar cells.

  • First heart pacemakers.

    First heart pacemakers.
    An external pacemaker was designed and built by the Canadian electrical engineer John Hopps in 1950 based upon observations by cardio-thoracic surgeon Wilfred Gordon Bigelow at Toronto General Hospital . A substantial external device using vacuum tube technology to provide transcutaneous pacing, it was somewhat crude and painful to the patient in use. Later inventors in 1958 found a more stable one and stabilized a 70 year-old lady.