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noteworthy events
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• Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House.
The speech was shared with the public only through newspapers until 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge's annual message was broadcast on radio. Franklin D. Roosevelt first used the phrase "State of the Union" in 1935, and in 1947, Roosevelt's successor Harry S. Truman became the first president to deliver a televised address. -
• Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics
In 1947, scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the first transistor, a tiny circuit device that amplifies, controls, and generates electrical signals. The transistor could do the work of a much larger vacuum tube, but took up less space and generated less heat. The transistor could be used in radios, computers, and other electronic devices, and greatly changed the electronics industry. Because of the transistor, giant machines that once filled whole rooms could now fit on a desk. -
• President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge we say today. Bellamy's daughter objected to this alteration. 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.
The Salk vaccine, or the Pitt vaccine as he called it, is made by growing three strains of the virus separately in monkey tissue. The virus is separated from the tissue, stored for a week, and killed with formaldehyde; tests are then conducted to make certain that it is dead (thus the term “killed-virus”). However, it was kept intact enough to stimulate the required immune response. A series of three or four injections with the killed virus vaccine was required to complete the immunity process. -
First Nuclear Power Plant
In 1957, Shippingport, along the Ohio River in far western Pennsylvania, became home to America's first commercial nuclear power plant under President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. Just two decades later, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) converted the Beaver County plant to a light water breeder reactor that successfully demonstrated the feasibility of using thorium and uranium 233 fuel to "breed" more fuel than it consumed in generating electricity. -
• NASA is established
The driving force, of course, was the launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, followed by its even weightier successors. In the midst of the Cold War, a country that aspired to global preeminence could not let that challenge pass. Although the United States already had its own satellite plans in place as part of the International Geophysical Year, the Russian events spurred the Space Age, and in particular gave urgency to the founding of an American national space agency.
