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Carly's Timeline
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• Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House.
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.
Though Truman pioneered the now-familiar ritual of a White House telecast to the nation, he was not the first president to appear on television. -
• Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics.
Another computer development spurred by the war was the Electronic in 1948, the invention of the transistor greatly changed the computer's development. -
• 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 in 1892 and formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942.Proponents of including "under God” in the Pledge argue that the US is a Christian nation, at least 80% of Americans support the phrase. The language reflects America’s civic culture and is not a religious statement, and federal law. -
• Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to parents from Ashkenazi Jewish Russian immigrant families. Although they themselves did not have much formal education, they were determined to see their children succeed. While attending New York University School of Medicine, he stood out from his peers, -
• 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 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. -
NASA is establised
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 itself on its leadership in the field of technology. Sputnik also provided the Soviets with an important propaganda advantage in terms of reaching out to underdeveloped Third World nations that were looking for scientific and technological assistance.
