Chp 28 Items

Polaris Missiles

American nuclear missile capable of being carried and fired by submarines, launched from below the surface of the ocean

Federal Highway Act of 1956

Authorized $25 billion for a 10 year project that built over 40,000 miles of interstate highways; largest public works project in American history

The Organization Man

Book by William H. Whyte Jr.; attempted to describe the special mentaity of the worker in a large bureaucratic setting; self reliance was losing place to conformity and the ability to get along or work as a team

"The Lonely Crowd"

Book written by sociologist David Riesman in 1950, argued that the traditional man who judged himself on the basis of his own values was giving away to another man only concerned with winning approval from his community

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Boycott of busses because of Rosa Parks, was almost completely effective, ended segregation on busses

Sputnik

The Soviet Union's first earth-orbiting satellite in 1957

Brinkmanship

The attempt to gain a negotiating advantage by pushing a situation to the edge of war or other disaster; pushed the Soviet union to the brink of war

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

The court rejected it's own Plessy versus Ferguson decision; segregating public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional; must do it with deliberate speed

The most significant & largest public works under the federal government under Dwight Eisenhower was

The federal highway system

Exploerer I

US' satellite launched in 1958

Rock n' Roll

Music genre that came about in the 50s, exeplified by Elvis Presley

Baby Boom

National birthrate reversal after a long pattern of decline; began in WWII; peaked in 1957; population rose 20% in the decade; 150 mil to 179 mil; increased consumer demand and expanding economic growth

Juvenile Delinquency

Phenomenon during the 1950s, liked beats, growing criminality of American youth

Apollo Program

Purpose was to land astronauts on the moon; Jul. 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins successfully traveled in a space capsule to orbit the moon

U-2 Crisis

Soviet Union said they shot down an American and U2; a high altitude spy plane, over Russian territory

Challenger

Spacecraft that exploded in 1986 killed 7 astronauts

Army-McCarthy Hearings

Special investigation of influential members of Congress because McCarthy demanded that communists had entered the military; led to the decline of the red scare

In his farewell address to the nation, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the dangers of

The "military industrial complex"

The significant public awareness of computers in the US came from

1952 election tabulations

Suez Crisis

1956; Israeli forces attacked Egypt; British and French landed in Suez to drive Egyptians from the canal; US feared new world war; US helped pressure French and British to withdraw

During the 1950s, the American environmental preservation movement was mobilized by

A proposed dam on Green River in echo park in Utah

DDT

Chemical pesticide discovered in 1939; its first use was to stop the spread of typhus among American soldiers fighting Japan in the Pacific Islands

Transistor

Created by Bell Labs in 1948, solid-state device capable of amplifying electrical signals, made miniaturization of devices possible

Levittowns

Created by William Levitt; low-cost, mass-produced houses in large suburban developments; popped up throughout the country

Integrated Circuit

Created in the late 1950s, combined a number of separate electronic elements (transistors, resistors, diodes, etc.) and combined them into a single microscopic device, made it possible to create complex electronic devices

Reminton Rand Company

Created the first computer to be used by the Bureau of the Census

Beats

Defensive critics of bureaucracy and middle-class society; group of young poets, writers, and artists; known as this term by disapproving critics; wrote harsh critiques of what they considered the sterility and conformity of American life, the meaninglessness of American politics, and the banality of popular culture

Little Rock 9

Desegregation of a school led president Eisenhower to respond by sending federal groups to ensure the court orders were obeyed

Penicillin

Discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, actual drug created by Howard Florey & Ernest Chain, cured bacterial infections

Echo Park

Early 1950s fight to preserve this park; wanted to build a dam along the Green River to create a lake for recreation and a source of hydroelectric power; ended up preserving this park

ICBMs

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles; long-range missiles that were capable of traveling through space and across oceans and continents to reach distant targets

UNIVAC

First significant computer of the 1950s was the Universal Automatic Computer; developed for the census by the Remington Rand Company; analyzed voting results; performed calculations; etc.

The Other America

In 1962, the socialist writer Michael Harrington published this celebrated book; chronicled the continuing existence of poverty in the United States

AFL-CIO

In Dec. 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations; ended 22 year rivalry and combined and merged; under the leadership of George Meany