Social

1. The Technological Advance

1. Computer technology

1. In 1950s, they began to perform commercial functions for the first time, as data-processing devices used by business and other organizations other than military code breakdown or complicated mathematical tasks.
2. UNIVAC, 1950s, the first significant computer was developed initially for the U.S. Bureau of the Census by the Remington Rand Company, even though limited success in marketing, IBM in the mid-1950s introduced its first major data-processing computers and began to find a wide market for them among businesses in the US and abroad.
3. Very expensive, used only in few occasions, UNIVAC was used to predict 1952 election for CBS television news.

2. Electronic Research

1. In late 1950s, scientists at RCA’s David Sarnoff Laboratories in NJ developed the technology for color television, which first became widely available in the early 1960s.
2. In 1948 Bell Labs, the research branch of AT&T produced the first transistor, a solid-state device capable of amplifying electrical signals, which was much smaller and more efficient than the cumbersome vacuum tubes that had powered most electronic equipment in the past.
3. Integrated circuits combined a number of once-separate electronic elements and embedded them into a single, microscopically small device.

3. Military artilleries

1. 1952, successful denoting of the first hydrogen bomb.
2. The efforts to develop new weapons became hyped- both Soviet Union and US become competitive to each other to develop newer artilleries.
3. 1958, had created a solid fuel to replace the volatile liquid fuels of the early missiles; had also produced miniaturized guidance system capable of ensuring that missiles could travel to reasonably precise destinations.

4. The Space program

1. 1957, Soviet Sputnik, earth-orbiting satellite.
2. US got competed, had its own first satellite, Explorer I, in January 1958.

1. Created NASA 1958, initial project, “the Mercury Project” was designed to launch manned vehicles into space to orbit the earth.
2. May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American launched into space, short, suborbital flight followed by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
3. February 2, 1962, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the globe.
4. July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins successfully traveled around the moon.

2. Medical Breakthrough

1. The development of vaccine and antibiotics

1. The progress of immunization: starting in 1930s, after the profound discovery of how viruses grow. After long years of medical research, Americans continued on that journey to improve health care.
2. In 1954, Jonathan Salk introduced an effective vaccine against polio.

1. Government provide free vaccination for polio in 1955s. Government involve in supervising in the health care for people.
2. 1960, Oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin- administered in a sugar cube virtually eliminated polio from American society.
3. Pesticides: protect crops from destruction by insects and protect humans from such insect carried diseases as typhus and malaria.

1. Use pesticide DDT developed  by Paul Muller in pacific war for the American soldiers.
2. Pesticides were developed to prevent diseases in both battlefields of the war and domestic care.

3. The Consumer Culture

1. Growth of consumer credit, increased by 800 percent between 1945 and 1957 through the development of credit cards, revolving charge accounts and easy-payment plans.
2. Increased prosperity, of the increasing variety and availability of products, and of advertisers’ adeptness in creating a demand for those products.
3. 1950s were notable for the rapid spread of great national consumer crazes. Technique of turning entertainment into marketing tool.

1. Entertainment shows, outdoor recreations, travels, restless culture of youth, rock ‘n’ roll, the birth of television.

4. Suburban Culture

1. Urban dwellers move out of cities to suburbs with less pollution, better environments but not completely rural, wish to dwell with natural world.
2. Important innovation in home-building, which made single-family houses affordable to millions of new people.
3. Postwar Americans valued family life very important due to separations caused by the war. Provided families with larger homes, easier to raise larger numbers of children (babyboomers), provided security from bad noises, supported by new consumer goods and appliances.
4. People lived in suburbs for similar backgrounds and living style.

1. Contrasting rural poverty, black urban migration in inner cities, the affluent society. Opposite lives compare to the major social flow of affluent  society.

5. The Rise of Civil Rights Movement

1. May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, providing same facilities to blacks, very different than Plessy decision in 1896 which decided to provide separate facilities for blacks.
2. Rosa Parks December 1, 1955 in the famous bus Montgomery to fight against Jim Crow Laws. Martin Luther King Jr. active, in 1957, Eisenhower used federal troops to assist black students to attend the schools.

1. Reason: Many blacks served for the WWII and wanted to receiver better or equal treatments to those of white people.
2. Televisions excluded blacks from being featured and those cultures were mostly about whites.
3. The Cold War served to be the radical injustice that US was trying to serve to be the world model while they had bad situations dealing with minority groups in the world= irony contrasted. Political blacks wanted to improve situations with their voting powers.

Political

• The Eisenhower Republicanism) He employed a lot of corporate and wealthy lawyers and officers to the cabinet. His inclination was to limit federal activities and encourage private enterprise. Supported the further development of the private rather than public development of natural resources. He lowered federal support for farm prices, limited wage and price controls. Opposed the creation of new social service programs and strove to reduce federal expenditures.

• The survival of the Welfare State

• The administration urged to continue the New Deal policies, extend Social Security system to an additional 10 million people and unemployment compensation to an additional 4 million, increase the minimum hourly wage from 75 cents to 1 dollar.

• Though reluctant to take many new initiatives in domestic policies.

• Major initiative: Federal Highway Act of 1956, authorized $25 billion for a ten-year project that built over 40,000 miles of interstate highways- the largest public works project in American history.

• The Decline of McCarthyism

• Did little to deal with McCarthyism in first years of office, 1954, rising anti-communist passion forced his office to take action.
• When McCarthy attacked the Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens in January 1954, the administration organized a special investigation of the charges, Army-McCarthy hearing.
• In December 1954, the congress voted on to condemn him for “conduct of unbecoming a senator”.

• “Dulles” and “Massive Retaliation”

• John Foster Dulles, an aristocratic corporate lawyer with a stern moral revulsion to communism argued that America should take “liberation” which would lead to a “rollback” of communist expansion. He defer to the more moderate views of the president himself once in office.
• “Massive retaliation”, most prominent innovation of Dulles: Respond to communist threats to its allies not by using conventional forces in local conflicts (frustration in Korean War) but by relying on “the deterrent of massive retaliatory power” (nuclear power).
• “Brinksmanship”: pushing the Soviet Union to the brink of war in order to exact concessions.
• Increasing reliance on atomic weapons and military expenditures “more bang for the buck”.

• International stand of US during the crises and relationships with other nations:

• Supported Ngo Dinh Diem for the South Vietnam govt positive towards capitalism and US, temporarily divide in 17th parallel.
• Cold War crisis: US support for Israel brought issues of Suez Crisis and hardship to deal with oil-rich Arab nations. Relied on Israel for oil resource. Israel vs. Egypt. Fidel Castro take control over Cuba in 1959.
• Relation between US and Soviet Union soured in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution= Soviet is harsh on controlling its satellite states. (Hungarian Communist regime + Soviet vs. Hungarian Democratic revolutionaries= communist won)
• The U-2 Crisis: US U-2 spy plane was shot down over the airspace of the Soviet Union. Soviet got angry and Eisenhower had hard time dealing to soften the relations to Soviet Union.

• Nikita Krushchev, leader of Soviet Union, got very angry, cancelling Paris Summit and withdrawing invitation to Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union.

Economic

• The Economic Boom of 1950s and early 1960s: 1945-1960, the gross national product grew by 250 %, from $200 billion to over $500 billion. Unemployment rate was 5% or lower during this time period. Inflation was 3% a year or less.

• Capital and Labor: Relatively low number of large-scale organizations are in control of an enormous proportion of the nation’s economic activity.

the wartime, the federal govt favored defense and military contracts more than large-scale corporations therefore by the end of the decade, there was less than 50% of large economic corporations in power.

• The corporations changed their forms into diversified conglomerates of the same old, big and powerful organizations.
• The companies were strongly opposed to strikes and labor union troubles: the big boss company has the absolute power -> the small conglomerates have troubles from workers -> the big boss allows to make policies to stop -> control the economy in favor of their flow (wage control etc).
• The postwar “contracts” workers refrained from the union movements, since during the wartime, many industries related to the war- time products received more generous treatments, they were generally smooth over the labor union movements.
• But some resented that they deserve more control over the workplace, forming dissident groups and the organization became powerful, yet disorganized at some points. Even though they won higher wages, their union labor force dropped from 36 to 31 percent due to the fact that the some jobs were disappearing due to technological advancement.

• But poorer organization and failed leadership of AFL-CIO and division of agreements failed.

• The Rise of the Modern West:

• During the WWII and Korean War, the West provided raw materials and agricultural goods= flourishing agricultural and resource market.
• Population expanded dramatically, cities boomed, industrial economy grew as an appendage to great economic market in the East.
• Much of growth caused by federal spending and investment- on the dams, power stations, highways, and other infrastructure projects that made economic development possible.
• Many factories and industrial compartments built during the war mostly in Texas and California promoted growth.
• Climate attracted migrants from the East: warm, dry climates once sustainment of water and basic living was achieved. Tourist sites etc, many businesses flourish.

• The New Economics: confident, even arrogant tone of American political life affected the major economic theories at the time.

• Keynesian Economics) made it possible for govt to regulate and stabilize the economy without intruding directly into the private sector.

• Varying the flow of govt spending and taxation (fiscal policy) and managing the supply of currency (monetary policy), the govt could stimulate the economy to cure recession, and dampen growth to prevent inflation. By British economist, John Maynard Keynes.
• Considered almost like a faith, government could possibly maintain a permanent prosperity.
• Aiming for permanent growth if to keep this theory realistic.
• Slow recovery and growth during Eisenhower administration for ignoring the policy boosted even more support for this policy.
• Ending poverty through economic growth.

• The Causes of such boom)

• Scientific and Technological advancements
• The Government spending continued to stimulate growth through public funding of schools, housing, veterans’ benefits, welfare and $100 billion interstate highway program started in 1956.
• The baby boom beginning after the war, peaked in 1957. Nation’s population rose almost 20% in the decade. Annual population increase average 2.5.
• Increasing military spending for the Cold War causes.
• The rapid expansion of suburban communities intrigued many constructions and flow of money to occur.

Changes

• Govt involve in medical and healthcare of citizens: providing free vaccine.
• Keynesian economic theory changes the viewpoint of the federal govt in the role of regulating or involving in the market world.
• Suburban cultures and many social changes regarding prosperity occur.
• Many technological and scientific advancement create different cultures.
• The post war factors influence the society in many aspects, the war has brought many changes.