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Kelsie Larbig Chapter 27 The Postwar Years at Home
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• Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics.
The first transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories. It later made possible the integrated circuit and microprocessor that are the basis of modern electronics. Although video was possible with vacuum tube equipment, as was the case with the Ampex VRX-1000, without the transistor video products would never have gotten very small. -
• Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House.
On this day in 1947, 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. (Five days earlier saw the first telecast of a World Series game, pitting the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers.) -
• President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
President Eisenhower had been baptized a Presbyterian very recently, just a year before. He responded enthusiastically to Docherty in a conversation following the service. Eisenhower acted on his suggestion the next day and on February 8, 1954, Rep. Charles Oakman (R-Mich.), introduced a bill to that effect. Congress passed the necessary legislation and Eisenhower signed the bill into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954 Eisenhower stated "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religion -
• Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
Fifty years ago, on April 12, 1955, the world heard one of the most eagerly anticipated announcements in medical history: Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine worked. The vaccine turned a disease that once horrified America into a memory. NPR's Joe Palca looks back at the science that created a successful vaccine — and the people behind the medical milestone. -
• The first nuclear power plant in the U.S. goes online at Shippingport, Pa.
The Shippingport Atomic Power Station, "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 established
Others feared a nuclear attack would soon follow. In 1958, the United States government responded by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as an independent agency for space exploration.
