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The Postwar Years at Home
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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. -
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.
The words "under God" were added by Congress in 1954, at the direction of President Eisenhower, who stated at the time, "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war." -
Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
The field trial was coordinated by Thomas Francis at the University of Michigan, who reached the conclusion that the vaccine was “safe, effective, and potent”. Francis presented his report in Ann Arbor on April 12, 1955, coincidentally the tenth anniversary of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who himself had been a victim of polio. -
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. -
The first nuclear power plant in the U.S. goes online at Shippingport, Pa.
The first US Nuclear Power plant came online in Shippingport, PA in 1958. Since that time (according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) 103 commercial nuclear reactors have been built and are operating in the US. Almost 1/3 of those units are operating in the Southeast. Using both boiling water reactor and pressurized water reactor designs, the plants provide over 100,000 megawatts of power to the country.
