Media History Timeline: 1940s

20th Century: Fifth Decade

John Rogers Cox's
Gray and Gold,
1942

Gallery

Fantasia
1940

Lascaux Caves
discovered, 1940

Wonder Woman,
1941

Konrad Zuse's Z3
1941

Pogo
1941

Recruiting poster
1942

Edward Hoppers's
Nighthawks,
1942

Casablanca
1943

Howdy Doody
1947

Jukebox
1948

Matta's
Wound Interrogation,
1948

45 rpm record player
1949

Phototypesetter
for offset printing
1949

1940-1949

1940: 1940: Nobel Prizes will not be awarded during most of World War II.; 1940: 24% of American adults completed high school.; 1940: Burma-Shave roadside ads.; 1940: William Saroyan's prize-winnng drama, The Time of Your Life.; 1940: Big bands dominate popular music.; 1940: On Broadway, Cole Porter's Panama Hattie.; 1940: 5.5% of U.S. adult males, 3.8% of females have college diplomas.; 1940: Zenith experiments with mechanical color wheel television.; 1940: W.B. Yeats' Last Poems published a year after his death.; 1940: Teletypewriter, calculator tied by phone line to demonstrate remote computing.; 1940: For phonograph recording, a single-groove stereo system is developed.; 1940: Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel of the Spanish Civil War.; 1940: Faulkner's first novel of the Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet.; 1940: Churchill's radio speeches encourage battered Britons, others.; 1940: Carson McCullers' first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.; 1940: Fantasia introduces a kind of stereo sound to American movie goers; 1940: On Broadway, Rodgers and Hart, Pal Joey.; 1940: Richard Wright's novel, Native Son, touches national nerve about race.; 1940: Chaplin's The Great Dictator parodies Hitler and Mussolini.; 1940: Fibber McGee opens his closet door, and begins a national tradition.; 1940: Oscars: Rebecca, James Stewart, Ginger Rogers.; 1940: At the movies: The Great Dictator, The Philadelphia Story, The Grapes of Wrath.; 1940: Also at the movies: the first of the six Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "Road" films.; 1940: U.S. gets first regular TV station, WNBT, New York; estimated 10,000 viewers.; 1940: Bugs Bunny cartoons.; 1940: Regular FM radio broadcasting begins in a small way.; 1940: Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, the 7th, honors WW II resistance.; 1940: First of Upton Sinclair's 11 Lanny Budd novels looking at 20th century's events.; 1940: In France, discovery of Lascaux caves reveals fine paleolithic animal drawings.; 1940: Start of Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence.; 1940: Peter Goldmark at CBS demonstrates electronic color TV.

1941: 1941: Eugene O'Neill's play, A Long Day's Journey into Night.; 1941: FCC sets U.S. TV standards.; 1941: In "Mayflower" decision, FCC rules that broadcasters cannot editorialize.; 1941: FDR war declaration has largest audience in radio history: 90 million.; 1941: Noel Coward's play, Blithe Spirit.; 1941: Lillian Hellman's play, Watch on the Rhine.; 1941: Touch-tone dialing tried in Baltimore.; 1941: Citizen Kane experiments with flashback, camera movement, sound techniques.; 1941: A Moscow cinema gets stereo speaker system.; 1941: Bertolt Brecht's play, Mother Courage and Her Children.; 1941: Microwave transmission.; 1941: The push button telephone.; 1941: Mohandas Gandhi explains passive resistance in "Constructive Programme."; 1941: Radar placed on U.S. Navy warship.; 1941: In U.S., 13 million radios manufactured. War will shut down production.; 1941: Motorola manufactures a two-way AM police radio.; 1941: In New York the first television commercial is broadcast.; 1941: Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye; Southern heat, will be major film.; 1941: FCC's chain broadcasting report weakens network domination of the air.; 1941: Pocket Books begins first mass distribution system for books.; 1941: Walter Winchell is the most popular radio newscaster.; 1941: Oscars: How Green Was My Valley, Gary Cooper, Joan Fontaine.; 1941: Also at the movies: Sergeant York, The Maltese Falcon, Dumbo.; 1941: Wonder Woman follows Superman and Batman into the comic books.; 1941: Konrad Zuse's Z3 in Germany is the first computer controlled by software.; 1941: CBS and NBC start commercial TV transmission; WW II intervenes.; 1941: Comic strip characters Pogo and Sad Sack cheer American readers.; 1941: Americans hear never-to-be forgotten radio broadcast of Pearl Harbor attack.; 1941: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, a dispirited novel of the Soviet world.

1942: 1942: Warring nations use radio as propaganda tool.; 1942: U.S. war censorship code outlaws man-in-the-street, other ad-lib interviews.; 1942: U.S. Office of Censorship bans any mention of weather in baseball broadcasts.; 1942: Dorothy Parker's witty, Collected Stories.
1942: In the midst of war, V-mail, a slimmed-down letter on blue paper, arrives.: 1942: Thornton Wilder wins third Pulitzer with play, The Skin of Our Teeth.; 1942: Atanasoff and Berry in Iowa build the first electronic digital computer.; 1942: Poet Robert Frost wins fourth Pulitzer Prize.; 1942: Kodacolor Film for prints is the first true color negative film.; 1942: Oscars: Mrs. Miniver, James Cagney, Greer Garson.; 1942: Also at the movies: Yankee Doodle Dandy, Pride of the Yankees, Prelude to War.; 1942: Albert Camus's novel, The Stranger, touches on absurdities in man's habits.; 1942: "Chattanooga Choo Choo" becomes the first "gold" record.; 1942: C.S. Lewis' satire on salvation, The Screwtape Letters.; 1942: Artist Edward Hopper, Nighthawks.

1943: 1943: Oklahoma! advances theatrical musicals by dealing with serious subjects.; 1943: Being and Nothingness expounds Sartre's philosophy of existentialism.; 1943: Repeaters on phone lines quiet long distance call noise.; 1943: Béla Bartók explores musical harmonies with Concerto for Orchestra.; 1943: NBC Blue becomes ABC.; 1943: Armed Services Editions of books published for American troops.; 1943: In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus expands on the meaninglessness of life.; 1943: Norman Rockwell draws The Four Freedoms cover of The Saturday Evening Post.; 1943: French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince.; 1943: Betty Smith's novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.; 1943: Artist "Grandma" Moses, Sugaring Off.; 1943: British code breaking machine Colossus cracks Germany's Enigma code.; 1943: Ayn Rand's novel of libertarian thought, The Fountainhead.; 1943: Wire recorders help Allied radio journalists cover WW II.; 1943: Comic book publishers are selling 25,000,000 copies a month.; 1943: The "walkie-talkie" backpack FM radio.; 1943: The newest dance craze: the jitterbug.; 1943: William Saroyan's film and novel, The Human Comedy, a family in wartime.; 1943: Broadway musical One Touch of Venus; music: Kurt Weill; book: Ogden Nash.; 1943: Oscars: Casablanca, Paul Lukas, Jennifer Jones.; 1943: Also at the movies: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Ox-Bow Incident, Desert Victory.

1944: 1944: Harvard's Mark I, first digital computer to be put in service.; 1944: Smokey the Bear starts fighting forest fires.; 1944: IBM offers a typewriter with proportional spacing.; 1944: On Broadway, Leonard Bernstein's musical, On the Town.; 1944: Anne Frank dies in Bergen-Belsen Her diary will survive.; 1944: After 16 years, Thomas Mann completes Joseph and His Brothers.; 1944: Somerset Maugham's novel, The Razor's Edge.; 1944: Colette continues sensitive novels about women with Gigi.; 1944: John Hersey's novel, A Bell for Adano finds humanity in midst of war.; 1944: Oscars: Going My Way, Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman.; 1944: Also at the movies: Gaslight, Lifeboat, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Fighting Lady.; 1944: First U.S. radio network censorship: sound cut on Eddie Cantor show song.; 1944: NBC presents first U.S. televised network newscast, a curiosity.; 1944: Aaron Copland composes Appalachian Spring; will win Pulitizer Prize.; 1944: With Norway free, the Nobel Prize in Literature to Johannes Jensen, Denmark.

1945: 1945: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Gabriela Mistral, Chile, first Latin American.; 1945: Richard Wright's searing coming-of-age novel, Black Boy.; 1945: Benjamin Britten composes A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.; 1945: Capt. John Mullin "liberates" two German tape recorders; starts U.S. industry.; 1945: Perhaps radio's most eloquent moment: Murrow's report on Buchenwald.; 1945: In Sweden, Pippi Longstocking, the tale of a free-spirited girl, is published.; 1945: Gallup Poll asks, "Do you know what television is?" Many don't.; 1945: Arthur Clarke envisions geosynchronous communication satellites.; 1945: It is estimated that 14,000 products are made from paper.; 1945: Millions tune in daily to hear news as World War II comes to an end.; 1945: U.S. has 2,000 miles of co-axial cable.; 1945: The entire United States sits by the radio to attend FDR's funeral.; 1945: Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, arguably his best non-satiric novel.; 1945: Tennessee Williams' play of shattered hope, The Glass Menagerie.; 1945: In Russia, Dmitri Shostakovich's 9th Symphony is performed.; 1945: Another Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway smash, Carousel.; 1945: Oscars: The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland, Joan Crawford.; 1945: Also at the movies: Mildred Pierce, Spellbound, The True Glory, Henry V.; 1945: Arthur Godfrey joins CBS radio network, stays 27 years.; 1945: FCC creates VHF spectrum of channels 2 � 13.; 1945: The Klipschorn folded horn speaker.; 1945: Vannevar Bush conceives idea of hyperlinks, hypermedia..; 1945: George Orwell's Animal Farm lampoons totalitarianism, communism.

1946: 1946: Jukeboxes go into mass production.; 1946: Founding of Bantam Books.; 1946: U.S. Army Signal Corps reports bouncing radar signal off moon, getting echo.; 1946: Westinghouse "Stratovision" on airplane bounces TV signal 250 miles.; 1946: RCA, NBC demonstrate rival color television systems.; 1946: Louis-Conn heavyweight title fight is telecast to 100,000 viewers.; 1946: U.S. has 1,000 licensed AM radio stations.; 1946: After WW II freeze, U.S. radio manufacturers turn out 15 million sets this year.; 1946: The Photon, the first practical phototypesetting machine.; 1946: University of Pennsylvania's ENIAC heralds the modern electronic computer.; 1946: Dr.Benjamin Spock writes a best-seller on Baby and Child Care.; 1946: In St. Louis, automobile radio telephones connect to telephone network.; 1946: U.S. nationwide telephone numbering plan.; 1946: Soap operas enter television with Faraway Hill.; 1946: On Broadway, Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun.; 1946: Carson McCullers' novel, The Member of the Wedding, a girl's coming of age.; 1946: Oscars: The Best Years of Our Lives, Frederic March, Olivia De Haviland.; 1946: Also at the movies: It's a Wonderful Life, The Yearling, The Razor's Edge.; 1946: In France, the debut of the Cannes Film Festival.; 1946: The New York City Ballet starts to dance.; 1946: John Hersey's Hiroshima, records accounts by survivors.; 1946: Italian cinema counters Hollywood glitz with neo-realism in Open City.; 1946: Nobel Prize in Literature: Swiss German novelist Herman Hesse.; 1946: Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.; 1946: Robert Penn Warren's novel about Huey Long, All the King's Men.

1947: 1947: James Michener's writing career starts with Tales of the South Pacific.; 1947: Charles Ives wins Pulitizer for Symphony No. 3.; 1947: Dialectic of Enlightenment introduces public to Frankfurt School of thought.; 1947: 3M introduces plastic-base magnetic audio tape, improving German technology.; 1947: A State of the Union address, by President Harry Truman, is televised.; 1947: A record 97% of all AM stations in U.S. are affiliated with a network.; 1947: Television network service expands with line from New York to Boston.; 1947: Seven U.S. East Coast TV stations begin regular programming.; 1947: World Series is telecast. Yankees win.; 1947: Poet W.H. Auden wins Pulitzer Prize for Nones.; 1947: The Diary of Anne Frank is published.; 1947: Jean-Paul Sarte's play, No Exit, sees hell as other people.; 1947: American television viewers watch commercials.; 1947: On Broadway, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's musical, Brigadoon.; 1947: The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered in a cave.; 1947: The start of television's longest running program, Meet the Press.; 1947: André Gide wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.; 1947: Dennis Gabor, Hungarian engineer in England, invents holography.; 1947: The transistor, invented at Bell Labs, will replace vacuum tubes.; 1947: On Broadway, Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire.; 1947: The zoom lens covers baseball's world series for TV.; 1947: U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee attacks entertainment industry.; 1947: Oscars: Gentleman's Agreement, Ronald Colman, Loretta Young.; 1947: Also at the movies: Miracle on 34th Street, The Farmer's Daughter, The Egg and I.; 1947: FCC decrees national standard for television receivers.; 1947: Howdy Doody starts a 13-year run on television.

1948: 1948: On TV, The Ed Sullivan Show.; 1948: CBS and NBC begin nightly 15-minute television newscasts.; 1948: Truman Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.; 1948: B.F. Skinner's Walden Two discusses behaviorism.; 1948: Evelyn Waugh's novel, The Loved One, savages the funeral industry.; 1948: Norman Mailer's novel of World War II, The Naked and the Dead.; 1948: Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior of the Human Male delivers some shocks.; 1948: LP ("long playing") record runs 25 minutes per side; old record: 4 minutes.; 1948: Poet W.H. Auden's Pulitzer Prize winning The Age of Anxiety.; 1948: The Tony Awards begin, with awards for the best in 1947 theater.; 1948: Leo Fender invents the electric guitar.; 1948: Western Union manufactures 50,000 Deskfax machines for fax transmission.; 1948: Founding of the Public Relations Society of America.; 1948: Wilbur Schramm's Source-Message-Channel-Receiver commmunication model.; 1948: From the United Nations, a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.; 1948: Shannon and Weaver of Bell Labs propound information theory.; 1948: Edwin Land's Polaroid camera prints pictures in a minute.; 1948: The Bic ballpoint pen.; 1948: Hollywood switches to nonflammable film.; 1948: Public clamor for television begins; FCC freezes new licenses.; 1948: CBS raids NBC for radio, TV top talent.; 1948: 35 mm professional movie film stock is now also made of safety film.; 1948: Community Antenna Television, CATV, forerunner to cable TV.; 1948: Airplane re-broadcasts TV signal across nine states.; 1948: Alan Paton's novel of South Africa, Cry, the Beloved Country.; 1948: Oscars: Hamlet, Laurence Olivier, Jane Wyman.; 1948: Also at the movies: Johnny Belinda, The Snake Pit, Red River.; 1948: Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the other Peanuts begin as Li'l Folks.; 1948: Cole Porter's Shakespearan musical, Kiss Me Kate, on Broadway.; 1948: European nations begin to set import quotas on foreign films.; 1948: Artist Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World.; 1948: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet T.S. Eliot.; 1948: WFIL-FM, owned by Philadelphia newspaper, transmits fax editions twice a day.; 1948: From RCA, a 16-inch television tube.; 1948: From RCA, the Ultrafax system can transmit one million words per minute.; 1948: Theory developed for check-bits to detect errors in phone switching.; 1948: Intruder in the Dust continues Faulkner's examination of Southern prejudices.

1949: 1949: Nobel Prize in Literature: American novelist William Faulkner.; 1949: British EDSAC computer stores programs in memory, switches programs.; 1949: Network TV established in U.S.; 1949: Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize play, Death of a Salesman.; 1949: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex discusses male oppression.; 1949: Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific on Broadway; wins Pulitzer.; 1949: Edward Murphy's "law" is a guide to communication and everything else.; 1949: The Emmy Awards for television begin, with 1948 programs.; 1949: RCA offers the 45 rpm record and player.; 1949: James Michener writes semi-autobiographical The Fires of Spring.; 1949: Milton Berle hosts the first telethon.; 1949: Supreme Court decision splits movie studios from theater chains.; 1949: Hollywood studios begin to produce television programs.; 1949: The McIntosh amplifier improves home listening.; 1949: George Orwell's dystopian novel of a bleak, fascist future, 1984.; 1949: Nelson Algren's novel, The Man with the Golden Arm.; 1949: Oscars: All the King's Men, Broderick Crawford, Olivia De Haviland.; 1949: Also at the movies: Twelve O'Clock High, Battleground, Champion.; 1949: Hollywood nervously tackles racel issue with Pinky, uses a white actress.; 1949: Italian neo-realism continues with The Bicycle Thief.; 1949: Mao Zedong takes full power. Millions read quotations in Little Red Book.; 1949: Whirlwind at MIT is the first real time computer.; 1949: Library of Congress awards annual Bollingen Prize to living poets.; 1949: Magnetic core computer memory is invented.; 1949: The acoustic suspension loudspeaker.; 1949: Shirley Jackson's story of sheeplike behavior, "The Lottery."; 1949: The United States has 98 television stations.; 1949: Poet Stephen Spender's essays on communism, The God That Failed.; 1949: New York - Chicago co-ax lines: three channels westbound, two east.