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Dani DeMaria's Chapter 27 Timeline
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• Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House
On Oct. 5, 1947, in the first televised White House address, President Harry S. Truman and several cabinet members, including Secretary of State George C. Marshall, asked Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays, and poultry and eggs on Thursdays, to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe. -
• 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.
Between 1924 and 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance was worded: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." In 1954, during the McCarthy era and communism scare, Congress passed a bill, which was signed into law, to add the words "under God." The current Pledge reads: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands; o -
• 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 light-water breeder reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania — the first in the United States — goes to full power on the anniversary of Chicago Pile-1.
An experimental breeder reactor devised by Chicago Pile-1 veteran Walter Zinn had created the first nuclear-generated electricity in 1951. President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke ground for the first commercial plant, to be operated by Pittsburgh's Duquesne Light Company, in 1954. -
NASA is established.
On this day in 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. When the fledgling agency began operations on Oct. 1, 1958, it had some 80 employees working in four laboratories that had been transferred from the government’s National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a 46-year-old research unit.
