Chapter 28: The Affluent Society

Transcription

1 Chapter 28: The Affluent Society

2 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.

3 3Jn_1:2 Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

4 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.

5 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.

6 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.

7 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.

8 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.

9 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.

10 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.

11 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.

12 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.

13 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.

14 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.

15 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.

16 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.

17 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.

18 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 o Since then a wide range of antibiotics were developed.

19 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.

20 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.

21 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.

22 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 during a typhus outbreak.

23 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.

24 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.

25 Postwar Electronic Research: o They also contributed to another major breakthrough in electronics, the development of integrated circuitry in the late 1950s.

26 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.

27 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.

28 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.

29 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.

30 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.

31 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 earthorbiting 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.

32 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.

33 The Space Program: o John Glenn would become the first American to orbit the globe. o This led to the American Apollo program whose primary goal was to land men on the moon which was accomplished on July 20, 1969.