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20th Century: Sixth Decade

Gallery
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Vidicon camera tube
(next to battery), 1950


Dennis the Menace
1950


First computer "bug,"
a real moth, 1951


Polaroid camera
Model 95, 1952


TV Guide publishes
1953


Playboy starts publishing
1953


Blue Poles
Jackson Pollock, 1953


Sputnik I
1957


Princess phone
1959


Barbie
1959

1950-1959
 
1950
1950: Radio program My Favorite Husband moves to TV as I Love Lucy.
1950: Flow-Matic, the first English language data-processing compiler.
1950: CBS broadcasts in color to 25 television sets.
1950: The FCC adopts the CBS color TV standard, changes its mind three years later.
1950: Vidicon camera tube improves television picture.
1950: More than 3 billion tickets sold at U.S. movie theaters.
1950: Nobel Prize in Literature: mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell.
1950: Dennis the Menace in the comics.
1950: In U.S., residential postal deliveries cut from twice to once a day.
1950: From Earl Hilton, the credit card.
1950: Party lines make up 75 percent of all U.S. telephone lines.
1950: FCC Fairness Doctrine reverses 1941 Mayflower; stations must carry opinions.
1950: John Hersey's The Wall documents persecution, courage in the Warsaw ghetto.
1950: Playright William Inge, Come Back, Little Sheba; film followed in 1953.
1950: Ray Bradbury's, The Martian Chronicles expands science fiction themes.
1950: John von Neumann influences design of computer logic.
1950: Eugène Ionesco's play, The Bald Soprano, a classic of the theater of the absurd.
1950: Changeable typewriter typefaces in use.
1950: Gian Carlo Menotti wins Pulitzer for opera, The Consul.
1950: Kodak Colorama exhibited at Grand Central station, 18 feet wide x 60 feet high.
1950: Oscars: All About Eve, José Ferrer, Judy Holliday.
1950: Also at the movies: Born Yesterday, Sunset Boulevard, Harvey.
1950: Nielsen's Audimeter tracks television audiences.
1950: English translation from Swedish of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking.
1950: Xerox photocopiers roll off the assembly line.
1950: Average U.S. home has two radios.
1950: McCullers' The Member of the Wedding goes to Broadway; film will follow.
1950: Irving Berlin's Broadway musical, Call Me Madam.
 
1951
1951: Paint Your Wagon opens on Broadway.
1951: Color television sets go on sale.
1951: A new beauty competition: Miss World.
1951: In Cleveland, disc jockey Alan Freed introduces the term rock Ôn' roll.
1951: The Nagra tape recorder adds precision, quality sound to silent cameras.
1951: Edward R. Murrow's See It Now debuts on television.
1951: J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye will become a symbol of adolescent angst.
1951: FCC approves test in Chicago of Phonevision subscription TV, $1 for a movie.
1951: Todd Storz and Bill Stewart create "Top 40" radio music format.
1951: Herman Wouk's novel, The Caine Mutiny, brings us Captain Queeg.
1951: Marine biologist Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us.
1951: Truman Capote's novel, The Grass Harp.
1951: Americans can dial long distance calls directly instead of needing operator.
1951: Marianne Moore's Collected Poems.
1951: Isaac Asimov's sci-fi novel, Foundation.
1951: Roger and Hammerstein's The King and I on Broadway.
1951: Grace Hopper discovers the first computer bug, a real moth.
1951: William Buckley's God and Man at Yale argues conservative philosopy.
1951: Hannah Arendt's influential book, The Origins of Totalitarianism
1951: The Ballad of the Sad Café, a collection of Carson McCullers' short stories.
1951: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet P�r Fabian Lagerkvist, Sweden.
1951: One and a half million TV sets in U.S., a tenfold jump in one year.
1951: Cinerama will briefly dazzle with a wide, curved screen and three projectors.
1951: Still cameras get built-in flash units.
1951: First transcontinental telecast.
1951: Oscars: An American in Paris, Humphrey Bogart, Vivien Leigh.
1951: Also at the movies: A Streetcar Named Desire, Quo Vadis, The African Queen.
1951: From Japan, a classic film: Rashomon.
1951: Bing Crosby's company tests videotape recording.
1951: CBS presents 4 hours of color TV, but only CBS execs, engineers have sets.
1951: Univac I is the first mass-produced computer.
1951: Nicholas Monsarrat's novel of the North Atlantic in WW II, The Cruel Sea.
1951: Clifford Odets' play, The Country Girl.
 
 
1952
1952: "Checker's speech" saves Richard Nixon's career.
1952: 3-D movies offer thrills to the audience.
1952: Sony sells a miniature transistor radio.
1952: Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap, will run for years.
1952: Lucille Ball, pregnant, plays pregnant on TV, but can't say "pregnancy."
1952: The word "anchorman" is used at CBS Television News.
1952: EDVAC takes computer technology a giant leap forward.
1952: FCC ends freeze, sets VHF band, opens UHF band, reserves education channels.
1952: Univac projects the winner of the presidential election on CBS.
1952: Telephone area codes.
1952: Acoustic suspension loudspeaker invented by Henry Kloss.
1952: In The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich applies existentialism to theology.
1952: The Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
1952: French playwright Jean Anouilh, The Waltz of the Toreadors.
1952: American Bandstand broadcasts get kids dancing.
1952: RCA’s Bizmac has first computer database.
1952: Studio control of stars erodes as James Stewart signs independent contract.
1952: The Supreme Court gives movies First Amendment free speech protection.
1952: Claude Shannon uses electric mouse and maze to prove computers can learn.
1952: Oscars: The Greatest Show on Earth, Gary Cooper, Shirley Booth/
1952: Also at the movies: High Noon, Ivanhoe, Viva Zapata!
1952: British postwar comedy: The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit.
1952: MAD magazine starts a nonsense trend.
1952: John Cage makes Water Music with non-traditional instruments.
1952: Edna Ferber's novel of Texas, Giant; will later become popular film.
1952: National Association of Broadcasters draws up Television Code of ethics.
1952: Nobel Prize in Literature: French novelist Fran�ois Mauriac.
1952: Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the lonely struggle of an old fisherman.
1952: John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden, a Biblical tale set in California.
1952: Charlotte's Web, a tale for children, by E. B. White.
1952: Samuel Beckett presents his absurdist play, Waiting for Godot.
1952: Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe, sardonic view of faculty politics.
1952: Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's novel of bizarre Southern life.
1952: First Off-Broadway hit, a revival of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke.
1952: The first magazine-format TV program, The Today Show, with Dave Garroway.
1952: Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners starts a two-decade TV run.
1952: Ralph Ellison's novel of African-American despair, Invisible Man.
1952: Grace Hopper develops the first computer compiler.
 
 
1953
1953: TV Guide; initial press run is 1.5 million copies.
1953: Playboy arrives, with Marilyn Monroe stretched out on the cover.
1953: James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain.
1953: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
1953: The pre-recorded reel-to-reel tape at 7 1/2 ips goes on sale.
1953: A book, The Wonderful World of Insects, is phototypeset.
1953: Magnetic core memory is installed in a computer, the Whirlwind.
1953: Hollywood hopes wide-screen CinemaScope will counteract TV.
1953: Nobel Prize in Literature: Winston Churchill.
1953: Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, a parable of the McCarthy witch hunts.
1953: Broadway musical, Cole Porter's Can-Can.
1953: FCC adopts NTSC color standard developed by RCA; drops CBS standard.
1953: Conelrad emergency radio system tested across U.S.
1953: Blue Poles, abstract expressionism by Jackson Pollock.
1953: With the 701, IBM starts building commercial computers.
1953: Paddy Chayesfky's play, Marty.
1953: William Inge's play, Picnic, drama in a small Kansas town.
1953: Ray Bradbury's novel of censorship, fascism, Fahrenheit 451.
1953: Voice of America increases broadcasts to Soviet Union, Eastern Europe.
1953: Oscars: From Here to Eternity, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn.
1953: Also at the movies: Shane, Stalag 17, Roman Holiday.
1953: Walt Disney's True Life Adventures: Bear Country, The Living Desert.
1953: Jacques Cousteau writes about the sea, The Silent World.
1953: Saul Bellow's early novel, The Adventures of Augie March, a search for identity.
1953: A film, The Moon Is Blue, uses the word "virgin"; that leads to picket lines.
1953: Bill Haley records first rock hit, "Crazy Man Crazy".
1953: One American, two Russians figure out how to harness what will be the laser.
1953: Novelist Kingsley Amis' satire on English academia, Lucky Jim.
1953: CATV system uses microwave to bring in distant signals.
1953: Kinsey's Sexual Behavior of the Human Female delivers more shocks.
 
 
1954
1954: Regular color TV broadcasts begin in U.S. using NTSC standard.
1954: Sporting events are broadcast live in color.
1954: Stereo music tapes go on sale.
1954: William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies looks at childhood "innocence."
1954: Radio sets in the world now outnumber daily newspapers.
1954: Texas Instruments produces transistors commercially.
1954: Supreme Court rules against separate education for blacks and whites.
1954: Transistor radios are sold.
1954: U.S. shaken by Edward R. Murrow TV documentary on Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
1954: Kodak introduces Tri-X, high speed black-and-white film.
1954: Oscars: On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly.
1954: Also at the movies: The Caine Mutiny, Sabrina, The Country Girl, Rear Window.
1954: IBM writes a computer operating system for the 704.
1954: James Michener's novel Sayonara, World War II Japanese-American love story.
1954: Agatha Christie's play, Witness for the Prosecution.
1954: U.S. Senate committee holds hearings on societal effects of televised violence.
1954: Disney ends freeze, leads Hollywood studios in producing television programs.
1954: Pre-recorded open-reel stereo tapes go on sale, $12.95, from RCA Victor.
1954: 54% of American homes have television sets.
1954: Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent attacks comic books.
1954: Nobel Prize in Literature: Ernest Hemingway.
1954: Churchill completes 6-volume history of World War II.
1954: Army vs. McCarthy hearings televised to captivated American viewers.
1954: In U.S., television revenue surpasses radio revenue.
1954: Tolkien continues his fantasy with The Fellowship of the Ring.
 
 
1955
1955: William Buckley starts The National Review.
1955: From Esterbrook in England, the felt-tip pen.
1955: William Inge's play, Bus Stop, followed a year later by Marilyn Monroe film.
1955: From Chicago, a TV program for children: Kukla, Fran and Ollie.
1955: Frankfurt School founder Herbert Marcuse writes Eros and Civilization.
1955: Comic book code censors horror, hurts sales, hits industry hard.
1955: Hobbit characters return in Tolkien's The Lord of the Ring.
1955: Network affiliation of AM radio stations in U.S. drops to 50%.
1955: Dumont television network gives up.
1955: Teletypesetting, using paper tape, diffuses among American newspapers.
1955: Gunsmoke starts along the trail to be longest running TV western.
1955: Archaeologists set carbon dating base year; other years: BP (before present).
1955: In the U.S., certified mail.
1955: Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous novel of middle-age lust for "nymphet" Lolita.
1955: Flannery O'Connor's short story collection, A Good Man Is Hard To Find.
1955: Todd-AO process for musicals continues Hollywood's wide-screen efforts.
1955: Movie studios open their vaults for television rentals, sales.
1955: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Halldór Laxness, Iceland.
1955: Tests begin to provide massive digital communication via fiber optics.
1955: Guinness Book of Records is published.
1955: First rock �n' roll song to top the chart: Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock."
1955: A View from the Bridge, another Pulitzer Prize play by Arthur Miller.
1955: African film-making starts in Paris with Afrique sur le Seine.
1955: Oscars: Marty, Ernest Borgnine, Anna Magnani.
1955: Also at the movies: East of Eden, Mister Roberts, The Rose Tattoo.
1955: On Broadway: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
1955: Research shows TV viewing correlates inversely with education, income.
 
1956
1956: Chet Huntley, David Brinkley bring star system to U.S. TV newsscasting.
1956: Ampex builds a practical videotape recorder for TV networks, stations.
1956: CBS evening news videotaped on West Coast for 3-hour delay rebroadcast.
1956: The first hard disk drive is created at IBM.
1956: Milton Friedman's study of quantity theory begins modern monetarism.
1956: Bell's test Picturephone sends one image every two seconds; it will fail.
1956: Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's world fame starts with The Seventh Seal.
1956: My Fair Lady begins six-year run on Broadway.
1956: In Japan, Yukio Mishima's novel, Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
1956: First transatlantic telephone calls by submarine cable.
1956: Hush-a-Phone court ruling forces AT&T to allow outside equipment in network.
1956: M.I.T. builds a transistorized computer, the TX-O.
1956: Oscars: Around the World in 80 Days, Yul Brynner, Ingrid Bergman.
1956: Also at the movies: Anastasia, The King and I, Bus Stop.
1956: John Osborne's play, Look Back in Anger.
1956: Foreign language films get an Oscar category. This year: Italy's La Strada.
1956: Nobel Prize in Literature: Spanish exile poet Juan Jiménez.
1956: Elvis Presley spreads rock to a world audience with first film, Love Me Tender.
1956: Allen Ginsburg's poem of beatnik angst, Howl.
1956: Liquid Paper is created on the kitchen table of a Dallas secretary, Bette Graham.
1956: Peyton Place steams up the bestseller list.
1956: Transistors go into car radios.
1956: The pager. Hospitals are quick to buy.
1956: On Broadway from Voltaire, Leonard Bernstein's musical, Candide.
1956: John F. Kennedy's short biographies, Profiles in Courage.
 
1957
1957: Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story opens on Broadway.
1957: Lawrence Durrell begins Alexandria Quartet, point�of-view novels, with Justine.
1957: Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures pioneers transformational grammar.
1957: John Cheever's novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, skewers wealthy suburbia.
1957: Nabokov's witty, erudite novel, Pnin.
1957: Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road expresses the beat generation.
1957: Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel, Gimpel the Fool, translated from Yiddish.
1957: Supreme Court's Roth decision sets community standards for obscenity.
1957: Nobel Prize in Literature: Albert Camus.
1957: James Agee's posthumous novel, A Death in the Family, wins Pulitzer.
1957: Samuel Beckett's existential play Endgame mingles anguish with humor.
1957: Sputnik launch sets off alarm about U.S. math and science education.
1957: Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 beep-beeps from space.
1957: Sputnik 2 carries a dog, Laika, on a one-way space journey.
1957: FORTRAN becomes the first high-level computer programming language.
1957: A surgical operation is televised.
1957: Oscars: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Alec Guinness, Joanne Woodward.
1957: Also at the movies: Peyton Place, Sayonara, 12 Angry Men.
1957: Italians again win foreign language film Oscar: The Nights of Cabiria.
1957: Quiz show fraud rocks U.S. television.
1957: First book to be entirely phototypeset is offset printed.
1957: A computer is part of a movie plot: Desk Set, with Tracy and Hepburn.
1957: In Ghana, effort begins to recover and record African oral tradition.
 
1958
1958: Videotape delivers color.
1958: Stereo LP records go on sale.
1958: Data moves speedily over regular phone circuits.
1958: Broadcast is bounced off a rocket; it is pre-satellite communication.
1958: First successful U.S. satellite, Explorer I, sends signals about Van Allen Belt.
1958: Number of drive-in theaters in U.S. peaks near 5,000.
1958: Oscars: Gigi, David Niven, Susan Hayward.
1958: Also at the movies: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Old Man and the Sea, South Pacific.
1958: The Smurfs, created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo.
1958: Seymour Cray at Control Data builds a transistorized computer.
1958: Noam Chomsky and George Miller co-author Finite State Languages.
1958: Foreign language film Oscar: French comedy Mon Oncle.
1958: Arthur L. Schawlow publishes theory that starts laser research.
1958: Federal funds voted to improve science, math teaching.
1958: Cable carries FM radio stations.
1958: Cinéma verit� (also called "direct cinema") documentary technique.
1958: Live television drama is replaced by videotaped programs.
1958: Playwright Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party.
1958: Experiments begin to create the modem.
1958: Joan M�ro completes ceramic murals for the UNESCO building, Paris.
1958: Defense Department creates ARPA, forerunner of the Internet.
1958: Churchill finishes 4-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
1958: Russian poet, novelist Boris Pasternak; forced to refuse Nobel Literature Prize.
1958: Truman Capote's novel Breakfast at Tiffany's; it will become a hit film.
1958: Billboard's "Hot 100" chart lists the hits.
1958: Physicist Werner Heisenberg explains his uncertainty principle.
1958: From Europe, ALGOL, a programming language for math, science.
1958: Leon Uris' novel Exodus looks at the birth of Israel.
1958: Durrell continues with Balthazar and Mountolive. Clea will arrive in 1960.
 
1959
1959: Magnetic ink character recognition developed to process checks.
1959: Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments builds an integrated circuit.
1959: The Grammy Awards, starting with 1958 music.
1959: Grace Hopper's COBOL programming language uses plain English.
1959: James Michener, Hawaii, fictional account across the centuries.
1959: U.S. rules D.H. Lawrence novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, not obscene.
1959: Playwright Jean Genet, The Blacks.
1959: Barbie dolls.
1959: Post Office tries, abandons effort to move mail by submarine-fired missiles.
1959: From Ampex, a mobile videotape recorder.
1959: Boris Pasternak's Dr.Zhivago; published in Italy despite Soviet pressure.
1959: William Burroughs' novel about drug addiction, Naked Lunch.
1959: Mordecai Richler's novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
1959: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Salvatore Quasimodo, Italy.
1959: Local announcements, weather data, and local ads go on cable.
1959: Saul Bellow's, Henderson, the Rain King, a study in alienation.
1959: The microchip; it will enable the computer revolution.
1959: E.B. White's The Elements of Style , to be best-selling writing guide for decades.
1959: Princess telephones in 5 colors go on sale.
1959: An all-transistor radio can fit into a shirt pocket.
1959: Xerox manufactures a plain paper copier.
1959: Bell Labs experiments with artificial intelligence.
1959: High speed Ektachrome film.
1959: Ionesco's absurdist play, The Rhinoceros.
1959: On Broadway, Stephen Sondheim's musical, Gypsy.
1959: Lorraine Hansbury's A Raisin in the Sun, first Broadway play by black woman.
1959: Oscars: Ben-Hur, Charlton Heston, Simone Signoret.
1959: Also at the movies: The Diary of Anne Frank, Some Like It Hot, Pillow Talk.
1959: Foreign language film Oscar: Black Orpheus, France.
1959: French SECAM and German PAL introduced as competing TV systems.
1959: G�nter Grass' novel The Tin Drum is regarded as an immediate classic.
1959: Satirists Bob and Ray are top radio attractions.
1959: Philip Roth's first novel, Goodbye, Columbus, wins National Book Award.
 


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