End WWII Europe had lost over 30 million
people.
1939-1945, US GNP more
than doubled.
impressive new
industries - airplanes, synthetic rubber, aluminum.
Full employment, now
eager to spend on new consumer goods.
war destroyed old
political order.
vacuum of international
power – US & USSR.
military preparedness -
US largest navy, strongest air force, monopoly on atom bomb.
1947 military 33% entire
US budget,
Stalin, "You are
either with us or against us."
1946 Churchill, "From
Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has
descended
across the Continent."
Baltic states (Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania).
- 1947 "Truman
doctrine" - world now divided between two "alternate ways of
life".
1948 Communist coup in
Czechoslovakia;
"domino
theory";
1948 US Nat'l Security
Council: USSR & US in a “struggle for power, a 'cold war' in which our national security is at stake
- therefore, US needs to undertake a world-wide counteroffensive against
Soviet-directed
world communism."
Groves 1945 "oxcart
vs automobile situation."
1949 radioactivity above
Pacific.
"This is now a
different world."
June, 1950, Korean
War.
hydrogen bomb (H-bomb or
Super) force equal to 750 Hiroshima bombs - fusion.
Oppenheimer,
"Hiroshima
was a mistake and Nagasaki a crime". Oppie 1949 chair General Advisory
Committee (GAC) high-powered scientific experts advising Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC) - GAC concluded US should not develop h-bomb. Concluded h-bomb weapon of
genocide, "necessarily
an evil thing considered in any light." Wanted pledge,"a unique
opportunity of providing by example some limitations on the totality of war,
thus limiting the fears of mankind."
Edward Teller -
"the
Alarm Clock".
Truman, "moral
considerations are not germane”.
Klaus Fuchs.
McCarthyism,
"soft"
on Communism.
1954 strip Oppenheimer
of security clearance; FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
view of scientists as
security risk.
Over 150 faculty Univ of
Calif fired 1949 for refusing to sign loyalty oaths.
Edward Condon, director
Nat'l Bureau of Standards, accused of being "one of the weakest links in
our atomic security."
- Cold War changed
nature of science and engineering;
secret sponsored
research in university;
Blurs line btwn basic
& applied research.
Stanford's electronics
engineering program tripled in size with Navy funding;
end 1960s, MIT $200
million/year sponsored research contracts - harder "to tell whether MIT is
a university with many government research labs appended to it, or a cluster of
government research labs with a very good educational institution
attached."
guided missile
electronics,
aeronautical engineering, shock waves and blast patterns.
Westinghouse and General
Electric - first US nuclear submarine. Hyman Rickover,
1955 SSN Nautilus,
H-bomb 1954,
Soviets 1955.
Japanese fishing boat
"Lucky Dragon"
Eisenhower's foreign and
military policy "new Look" – fiscal conservative - "more
bang for the buck."
doctrine of
"massive retaliation" - "simply means the ability to blow hell
out of them in a hurry if they start anything".
Philosophy of
"deterrence",
1940s, 1950s & 1960s. Dept of Defense & Atomic Energy Commission tests
deliberately exposing to radioactivity.
atmospheric testing of
bomb,
cancer &
leukemia - "Downwinders".
1963 Cuban Missile
Crisis;
1956 movie "The Day
the World Ended"
1959 "On the
Beach";
backyard bomb
shelter, Popular
Mechanics
pamphlet "How to Survive an Atomic Bomb":
"After an explosion, things are probably going to look different when you
get outside. If the bomb hit
within a mile and half of where you are, things are going to look very
different."
Civil defense films -
"duck and cover" drills.
1953 "Atoms for
Peace" program;
1957 first civilian
nuclear power plant - Shippingport, Penn.
The Atomic Age
Opens
- "power too cheap to meter";
1954, American Chemical Society.
"artificial
suns", "No baseball game will be called off on account of rain in the
era of atomic energy, no city will experience a winter traffic jam because of
snow; summer resorts will be able to guarantee the weather, and artificial suns
will make it as easy to grow corn indoors as on the farm."
factories &
homes with
nuclear "power plant the size of a typewriter."
Ford Motor Company
Advanced
Design Studio: 1950s "Nucleon" car, "Each cylinder will contain
a complete atomic-power unit. By
recovering its own exhaust steam, such a nuclear car could travel without
stopping until the tires wore out."
Air Force
nuclear-powered
bomber - General Electric, Pratt & Whitney:
"limited in range
not by fuel, but only by sandwiches & coffee for crew".
"Project
Plowshare" 1957 & 1962, plans harbors in Alaska.
"It is the policy
of the US that the development & use of atomic energy shall be directed
toward improving the standard of living & cementing world peace".
Cold War military
spending.
1950s
prosperity;
US 6% world's
population; over 33% world's goods & services.
1940-1960 US GNP more
than doubled, as did income.
consumerism - credit
card.
"There never was a
country more fabulous than America.
She sits on top of the world.
Half of the world's wealth and almost two-thirds of the world's machines
are concentrated in American hands."
General Motors
– “what
was good for GM was good for the country."
1949 first all-new
postwar models.
1952 over 52 million
cars in US;
doubled by 1972.
"the swept-wing
look"
GM designer Harley
Earl -
tail fins.
GM's Styling Section
- clay
models; annual model change;
investment in
highways.
Eisenhower impressed by
Autobahns.
1956 National System of
Interstate & Defense Highways Act.
Disneyland 1955;
shopping malls.
suburbia.
Bill Levitt:
180 houses/week.
"No man who owns
his own house & lot can be a Communist, he has too much to do."
simple, mass-production
building;
27 teams of specialized
labor;
"This is
Levittown. All yours for $58
[down]. You're a lucky fellow, Mr
Veteran. Uncle Sam & the
world's largest builder have made it possible for you to live in a charming
house in a delightful commuinty without having to pay for them with your eye
teeth."
Levittown Long
Island 17,000
houses holding 82,000 people, eight swimmming pools & five schools.
"little boxes on a
hillside out of tickytacky & they all look the same".
1950, 83% of nat'l
growth
in suburbs.
1970, more people in
suburbs than cities.
Postwar baby boom.
New homes - bigger
household appliances.
Kitchen debate 1959 -
Nixon & Khrushchev exchange at world exhibition,
Advertising - Betty
Furness, Westinghouse.
Dick & Maurice
MacDonald - drive-in hot-dog stand 1937 - 80% of sales hamburgers,
standardizing
preparation;
expansion Ray Kroc.
"Give Mom a Night
off" - streamlining service.
Television:
1880s German patent.
"sight
radio".
1926 Scottish inventor
John Baird - first operational TV system;
BBC broadcasts 1929.
Philo T. Farnsworth
- 1928
first all-electronic TV system, patent 1930 - never commercially
successful.
RCA (Radio Corporation
of America) - Vladimir Zworykin - testing program 1930s, invest $13
million, president
David Sarnoff to make tv "as much a part of our life" as radio.
cathode ray tube,
invented
Germany 1897.
1939 baseball game
Princeton
& Columbia.
Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) 1941 agreed on tv standards - Nat'l Television System
Committee set transmission speed;
1946 8,000 homes had tv
sets - 1949 almost 1 million. 1952, 19 million sets in US.
1950 over 80
manufacturers
of tv sets.
color system on sale
1954 ($1000 for 21-inch set);
1972 over 50% US tv sets
color.
Programming - radio
performers jump to new medium - Jack Benny, "The Lone Ranger,"
"Dragnet," "Gunsmoke".
1963, majority get most
news from TV -Vietnam War,
politics: 1952
Eisenhower.
TV situation
comedies - Lucille
Ball.
Criticism –
advertising, violence, juvenile delinquency; Marshall McLuhan "the medium
is the message".
quiz show scandals. 1956
"21" - Herb Stempel vs. Charles Van Doren - Congressional
investigation 1959,