Chapter 28 Objectives
• We will study the economic
prosperity experienced by
Americans in the 1950s.
• We will study the explosive
innovation in the 1950s in both
science and technology.
3Jn_1:2 Beloved, I wish above all
things that thou mayest prosper
and be in health, even as thy soul
prospereth.
Introduction:
o During the 1950s, the general economic conditions included low employment ,hovering around 5 percent or lower.
o Government continued to spend to stimulate growth through funding of public schools, housing, benefits, welfare, and the $100 billion interstate highway program.
o Military spending also helped the economy.
Introduction:
o When military spending declined after the Korean War, growth declined somewhat.
o The national birth rate reversed a long pattern of decline with the so-called baby boom.
o The boom had begun during the war and peaked in 1957, the nation’s population rose almost 20 percent in the decade from 150 million in 1950 to 170 million in 1960.
Introduction:
o The baby boom contributed to
increased consumer demand and
expanded economic growth.
o Following World War II the American
economy grew between 1945 and
1975, nearly ten times faster than
the population.
The Rise of the Modern West:
o No region of the country profited
more from the economic growth
than the American West.
o Its population expanded drastically,
its cities boomed, its industrial
economy flourished.
The Rise of the Modern West:
o The growth of the West was a result
of federal spending and investment.
o Spending included dams, power
stations, highways, and other
infrastructure projects that made
economic development possible on
the military contracts that
continued to flow disproportionately
to factories in California and Texas.
The Rise of the Modern West:
o Also the enormous increase of automobile use, the suburbanization and improved highway systems, gave a large stimulus to the petroleum industry and contributed to the rapid growth of oil fields in Texas and Colorado.
o Texas and CA invested heavily in Universities and became the nation’s largest and best at centers of research and attracted technology-intensive industries.
The Rise of the Modern West:
o Climate contributed to the
Southwest because of the warm dry
climate.
o Los Angeles population rose by over
50 percent between 1940 and
1960 with ten percent of all new
businesses in the U.S. coming from
the city.
The New Economics:
o There was great confidence in the
American economic system.
o First was the belief that Keynesian
economics made it possible for
government to regulate and stabilize
the economy without intruding directly
into the private sector.
The New Economics:
o The British economist John
Maynard Keynes argued that
varying the flow of government
spending and taxation and
managing the supply of currency;
o the government could stimulate the
economy to cure recession and
dampen growth to prevent inflation.
The New Economics:
o This was widely accepted with the
experience of the last years of the
depression and the first years of the war
and seemed to confirm this argument.
o During the 1950s, the American
Federation of Labor merged with the
Congress of Industrial Organizations
ending a rivalry and with the Unions
receiving larger acceptance.
The New Economics:
o Although subject to government
corruption probes, the labor movement
enjoyed significant success in winning
better wages and benefits for workers
already organized in strong unions.
o The majority of laborers who were as yet
unorganized made fewer advances.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o Medical Breakthroughs:
Particularly important advance in
medical science was the
development of new antibacterial
drugs capable of fighting infections
that in the past had been all but
untreatable.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o The development of antibiotics had
its origins in the discoveries of Louis
Pasteur in the 1870s.
o In 1928, Alexander Fleming an
English medical researcher
accidently discovered the
antibacterial properties of an
organism that he named penicillin.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o English physician John Lister revealed the value of antiseptic solution in preventing infection during surgery.
o Later Oxford University directed by Howard Florey and Ernest Chain learned how to produce stable, potent penicillin in sizable enough quantities to make it a practical weapon against bacterial disease.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o American laboratories took the next
crucial steps in developing methods
for mass production and
commercial distribution of penicillin,
which became widely available to
doctors and hospitals around the
world by 1948.
o Since then a wide range of
antibiotics were developed.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o In the early Twentieth Century, the
Vaccine that raised the most safety
concerns in the United States was for
the prevention of tuberculosis.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o A particularly postwar triumph was the development of a vaccine against polio.
o In 1954, the American scientist Jonas Salk, introduced an effective vaccine against the virus that had killed and crippled thousands of children and adults.
o It was provided free to the public by the federal government beginning in 1955.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o After 1960, an oral vaccine
developed by Albert Sabin usually
administered in a sugar cube made
widespread vaccination easier.
o By the early 1960s, these vaccines
had virtually eliminated polio from
American life and much of the rest
of the world.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o Pesticides such as DDT was thought
to kill only insects and were
harmless to humans.
o It likely saved the lives of thousands
of troops in WWII from insect-borne
tropical diseases.
o It was used first on a large scale in
Italy in 1943-1944 during a typhus
outbreak.
EXPLOSION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
o DDT was recognized to be extremely
toxic to insects.
o It quickly gained a positive
reputation for its effectiveness.
o But later was discovered to have
long term harm to humans and
animals.
Postwar Electronic Research:
o The 1940s and 1950s saw dramatic new development in electronic technology.
o The vacuum tube that powered most equipment in the past gave way to transistors that made possible for the miniaturization of many devices (Radios, television, audio equipment, hearing aids) were also important in aviation, weaponry, and satellites.
Postwar Electronic Research:
o They also contributed to another
major breakthrough in electronics,
the development of integrated
circuitry in the late 1950s.
Postwar Computer Technology:
o Prior to the 1950s, computers had
been constructed mainly to perform
complicated mathematical tasks,
such as those required to break
military codes.
o In the 1950s, they began to
perform commercial functions.
Postwar Computer Technology:
o The first significant computer of the 1950s was the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) which was developed initially for the U.S. Bureau of the Census by the Remington Rand Company.
o UNIVAC predicted the results of the 1952 election in CBS television news giving the first significant public awareness of the computer.
Bombs, Rockets, and Missiles:
o In 1952, the United States
successfully detonated the first
hydrogen bomb which was of
significantly more power than the
plutonium and uranium bombs of
WWII.
Bombs, Rockets, and Missiles:
o The development of the hydrogen bomb
gave considerable impetus to a stalled
scientific project in the U.S. to develop
unmanned rockets and missiles capable
of carrying new weapons, which were not
suitable for delivery by airplanes to their
targets.
Bombs, Rockets, and Missiles:
o This led to the development of
(Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) or
ICBMs a capable of travelling space
to distant targets.
o By 1960, the United States
successfully launched a missile from
a submarine with the Polaris.
The Space Program:
o The Origins of the American space program can be traced most directly to the dramatic event in 1957, when the Soviet Union announced that it launched an earth-orbiting satellite Sputnik into outer space.
o This led to the Federal Government pouring money into research and in improving in scientific education in the schools to speed the development of America’s own exploration of outer space.
The Space Program:
o This led to the development of the
National Aeronautical and Space
Administration (NASA) and through
the selection of the first American
space pilots or astronauts.
o Under the Mercury program, the
first American to be launched into
space in 1961 was Alan Shepherd
who was on a short suborbital flight.