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Politics and Culture of Abundance: 1943–1960
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U.S. History Textbooks Boundless U.S. History Politics and Culture of Abundance: 1943–1960
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Concept Version 14
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Technological Advancement

After 1945, new technologies resulted in revolutionary changes in agriculture, space industry, and medical sciences.

Learning Objective

  • Evaluate the advances in technology following World War II, and how these influenced the industries of farming, space, and medicine.


Key Points

    • In the aftermath of World War II, technological developments greatly influenced changes in agriculture. Agriculture began to move from family-owned, small farms to large, corporate-owned farms.
    • In the 1950s, 77% of households purchased their first TV set and television industry noted dramatic growth, with many classic TV shows and formats developed by legendary TV personalities. Although the Space Race can trace its origins to Germany in the 1930s, it was a critical component of the Cold War. The Soviet launch of Sputnik I led to a huge spike in American technological and industrial productivity.
    • In medical sciences, the invention of polio vaccine and mass production of penicillin revolutionized the notion of public health.
    • The first successful open heart procedure on a human utilizing a heart lung machine and the world's first successful renal transplant took place less than 10 years after the end of World War II. 

Terms

  • Sputnik I

    The first artificial earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. The surprise success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis, began the Space Age and triggered the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments.

  • Apollo Program

    A United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon in 1969 through 1972. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, it began in earnest after President John F. Kennedy proposed the national goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the 1960s in a May 25, 1961 address to Congress.

  • NASA

    The agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

  • Space Race

    A 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, enabled by captured German rocket technology and personnel. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. It spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon.

  • Green revolution

    A set of research and development of technology transfer initiatives occurring between the 1930s and the late 1960s (with prequels in the work of the agrarian geneticist Nazareno Strampelli in the 1920s and 1930s), that increased agricultural production worldwide.


Full Text

ADVANCEMENT IN AGRICULTURE

In the aftermath of World War II, technological developments greatly influenced changes in agriculture. Ammonia from plants built during World War II to make explosives became available for making fertilizers, leading to a permanent decline in real fertilizer prices. The early 1950s was the peak period for tractor sales in the U.S. as the few remaining horses and mules were phased out. The horsepower of farm machinery underwent a large expansion. A successful cotton picking machine was introduced in 1949. Research on plant breeding produced varieties of grain crops that could produce high yields with heavy fertilizer input. This resulted in the Green revolution, beginning in the 1940s.

A continued increase in productivity led to further increases in farm size and corresponding reductions in the number of farms. Many farmers sold their land and moved to nearby towns and cities. Others moved to a part-time operation, supported by off-farm employment.

TELEVISION

By 1947, when there were 40 million radios in the U.S., there were about 44,000 television sets (with probably 30,000 in the New York area). Regular network television broadcasts began on NBC on a three-station network linking New York with the Capital District and Philadelphia in 1944; on the DuMont Television Network in 1946, and on CBS and ABC in 1948. Following the rapid rise of television after the war, the Federal Communications Commission was flooded with applications for television station licenses. With more applications than available television channels, the FCC ordered a freeze on processing station applications in 1948 that remained in effect until April 1952.

By 1949, the networks stretched from New York to the Mississippi River, and by 1951 to the West Coast. Commercial color television broadcasts began on CBS in 1951 with afield-sequential color system that was suspended four months later for technical and economic reasons. The television industry's National Television System Committee(NTSC) developed a color television system based on RCA technology that was compatible with existing black and white receivers, and commercial color broadcasts reappeared in 1953.

77% of households purchased their first TV set during the 1950s. The use of TV was fueled by the drop in television prices caused by mass production, increased leisure time, and additional disposable income. Sitcoms offered a romanticized view of middle class American life. Emmy-winning comedy (1951–1960) I Love Lucy starred husband and wife Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball and enjoyed such popularity that some businesses closed early on Monday nights in order to allow employees to hurry home for the show. Musical programs, comedy and variety shows, and westerns quickly became a staple of 1950s TV entertainment. Popular quiz and panel shows resulted in quiz show scandals that rocked the nation after it was revealed that contestants were secretly given assistance by the producers to arrange the outcome of a supposedly fair competition. Talk shows also had their genesis in the 1950s with NBC's Today hosted by Dave Garroway creating the much-copied genre format. The Tonight Show debuted in 1954 with Steve Allen as host. In 1953 CBS anchor Walter Cronkite was the host of an historical news show entitled You Are There. 

American family watching TV, 1958, Evert F. Baumgardner, National Archives and Records Administration.

77% of households purchased their first TV set during the 1950s. The use of TV was fueled by the drop in television prices caused by mass production, increased leisure time, and additional disposable income.

SPACE RACE

The Space Race can trace its origins to Germany, beginning in the 1930s and continuing during World War II when Nazi Germany researched and built operational ballistic missiles. At the close of World War II, both the American and Russian forces recruited or smuggled top German scientists like Wernher von Braun to their respective countries to continue defense-related work. Von Braun and his team were sent to the United States Army's White Sands Proving Ground, located in New Mexico, in 1945. They set about assembling the captured V2s and began a program of launching them and instructing American engineers in their operation. These tests led to the first rocket to take photos from outer space, and the first two-stage rocket, the WAC Corporal-V2 combination, in 1949. The German rocket team was moved from Fort Bliss to the Army's new Redstone Arsenal, located in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1950. From here, von Braun and his team developed the Army's first operational medium-range ballistic missile, the Redstone rocket, that in slightly modified versions, launched both America's first satellite, and the first piloted Mercury space missions. It became the basis for both the Jupiter and Saturn family of rockets.

The competition began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future." The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. The race peaked with the July 20, 1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. The USSR tried but failed manned lunar missions, and eventually cancelled them and concentrated on Earth orbital space stations. 

MEDICAL SCIENCES 

In 1948, Jonas Salk undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial. When news of the vaccine's success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker" and the day almost became a national holiday. Around the world, an immediate rush to vaccinate began.

Penicillin was viewed as a miracle drug that brought enormous profits and shaped public expectations. Photo by author unknown, probably South Carolina in the 1940s. 

While penicillin was discovered in England, it was produced industrially in the U.S. using a deep fermentation process originally developed in Peoria, Illinois. The enormous profits and the public expectations penicillin engendered caused a radical shift in the standing of the pharmaceutical industry.

New technologies also revolutionized surgery procedures. The first successful mechanical support of left ventricular function was performed on July 3, 1952 by Forest Dewey Dodrill using a machine, the Dodrill-GMR co-developed with General Motors. The machine was later used to support right ventricular function. The first successful open heart procedure on a human utilizing the heart lung machine was performed by John Gibbon on May 6, 1953 at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He repaired an atrial septal defect in an 18-year-old woman. Gibbon's machine was further developed into a reliable instrument by a surgical team led by John W. Kirklin at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in the mid-1950s. 

On December 23, 1954, Joseph Murray performed the world's first successful renal transplant between the identical Herrick twins at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, an operation that lasted five and a half hours. He was assisted by Dr. J. Hartwell Harrison and other noted physicians. Murray transplanted a healthy kidney donated by Ronald Herrick into his twin brother Richard, who was dying of chronic nephritis. Richard lived for eight more years, following the operation.

Biotechnology also recorded rapid development. The belief that the needs of an industrial society could be met by fermenting agricultural waste was an important ingredient of the "chemurgic movement." Fermentation-based processes generated products of ever-growing utility. In the 1940s, penicillin was the most dramatic. While it was discovered in England, it was produced industrially in the U.S. using a deep fermentation process originally developed in Peoria, Illinois. The enormous profits and the public expectations penicillin engendered caused a radical shift in the standing of the pharmaceutical industry. Beginning in the 1950s, fermentation technology also became advanced enough to produce steroids on industrially significant scales. Of particular importance was the improved semisynthesis of cortisone which simplified the old 31 step synthesis to 11 steps. This advance was estimated to reduce the cost of the drug by 70%, making the medicine inexpensive and available.

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