Science

- Development of the Hydrogen bomb

 * 1) =====Enormously complex mathematical calculations were required in order to properly design the device. The problem was too vast for mechanical calculators, so atomic scientists turned to a new machine based on vacuum tubes. Efforts to improve these machines pushed forward the development of what came to be called "computers." =====
 * 2) =====On November 1, 1952, researchers tested the Hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll, in a remote location in the South Pacific. The fireball let loose was five miles high, and four miles wide. Eniwetok Atoll was simply gone, leaving only a deep crater in the seabed. =====
 * 3) =====On August 12, 1953, the Soviets set off a Hydrogen bomb of their own in Siberia. =====

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- Nuclear Energy =====
 * 1) In 1954, President Eisenhower himself broke ground for the country's first full-scale nuclear power plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. The plant began supplying power to the Pittsburgh area two years later. Optimists saw an era when electricity would be "too cheap to meter." Pessimists saw the possibility of a catastrophic accident. What happened was a little of both.
 * 2) Nuclear power showed promise in the 1960s, and numerous plants went into operation. But in 1979, at the Three Mile Island plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a serious accident led to the emergency evacuation of surrounding communities and fear of a devastating release of radiation. Further development of nuclear power in the United States virtually ended.

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- Rocket Science =====
 * 1) Research into rockets during the 1950s had a military purpose. The Germans had experimented with ballistic missiles during World War II and both the Americans and Soviets wanted a rocket that could carry bombs into enemy territory without requiring human pilots to fly them on airplanes.
 * 2) On October 4, 1957, scientists heard a high-pitched radio beep being broadcast from overhead. It was Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, and it was passing over the United States every 92 minutes as it whizzed around the planet at 18,000 miles an hour. And it was a Russian creation.
 * 3) Sputnik (the word meant "fellow traveler") was the size of a beach ball and weighed 184 pounds. It was followed less than a month later by a bigger satellite that carried a live dog into space. Americans were stunned. The nation had lost its lead in technology to its mortal enemy, the Soviet Union. Many feared that if the Soviets had rockets that were capable of launching a satellite into space, the same rockets could be used to rain death down upon the Untied States from the air.
 * 4) Public concern only mounted when, in December 1957, the US tried to launch a tiny 3-pound satellite. But the Navy Vanguard rocket disintegrated on the launch pad, and newspaper headlines labeled the failed test "kaputnik," "flopnik," and "stayputnik."
 * 5) Eisenhower had secret U-2 spy plane intelligence that the Soviets were not developing a dangerous lead in ballistic missiles. In the years ahead, American scientists caught up to and quickly surpassed their Soviet rivals.
 * 6) In 1958, Eisenhower centralized all space efforts in a civilian agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

- Medicine

 * 1) On April 12, 1955, researchers announced that the Salk vaccine had proven effective in preventing polio. Science had conquered a dreaded disease that had, time and time again, swept through the country with devastating effects. (Many Americans thought of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, crippled by polio, who had died exactly ten years earlier.)
 * 2) Scientists invented antihistamines to remedy the effects of allergies.
 * 3) Meprobamate, the first tranquilizer, began to be marketed in 1955 under the names Miltown and Equinil, kicking off a deluge of mind-altering pharmaceuticals.
 * 4) One of the most notable new drugs of the period was the birth control pill. Approved for use in 1960, the Pill would change the lives of millions of women and contribute to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
 * 5) The fight against heart disease moved forward with new techniques for open-heart surgery. Doctors could implant artificial valves and pacemakers to keep heart patients alive. Vaccines for whooping cough and diphtheria helped restrict those diseases, which had killed many children during earlier decades. The average life expectancy reached nearly 70 years by 1960, up from only 63 in 1940. Because of improved nutrition, children in the Fifties grew up taller and stronger than their parents.