1940-1949 C.E.
Gallery
Fantasia, 1940.
Lascaux Caves discovered, 1940.
Wonder Woman, 1941.
Konrad Zuse's Z3, 1941.
Pogo, 1941.
Recruiting poster, 1942.
John Rogers Cox's Gray and Gold, 1942.
Edward Hopper'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: 5.5% of U.S. adult males, 3.8% of females have college diplomas.
- 1940: Nobel Prizes will not be awarded during most of World War II.
- 1940: Zenith experiments with mechanical color wheel television.
- 1940: Burma-Shave roadside ads.
- 1940: Radio hit shows include Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Burns and Allen, Major Bowes.
- 1940: 24% of American adults completed high school.
- 1940: William Saroyan’s prize-winnng drama, The Time of Your Life.
- 1940: On Broadway, Cole Porter’s Panama Hattie.
- 1940: W.B. Yeats’ Last Poems published a year after his death.
- 1940: Richard Wright’s Native Son describes growing up with racism.
- 1940: Teletypewriter, calculator tied by phone line to demonstrate remote computing.
- 1940: First broadband carrier for multiple phone calls.
- 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: Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, a “whiskey priest” in Mexico.
- 1940: Peter Goldmark at CBS demonstrates electronic color TV.
- 1940: Fantasia introduces a kind of stereo sound to American movie goers
- 1940: On Broadway, Rodgers and Hart, Pal Joey.
- 1940: Two radio quiz shows debut: Truth Or Consequences and Take It Or Leave It.
- 1940: “Downhill skier” starts Charles Addams’ career at The New Yorker.
- 1940: Start of Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence.
- 1940: Chaplin’s The Great Dictator parodies Hitler and Mussolini.
- 1940: Fibber McGee opens his closet door, and begins a national tradition.
- 1940: Oscars (given 1941): Rebecca, James Stewart, Ginger Rogers.
- 1940: More than 28 million U.S> homes have radios.
- 1940: At the movies: Gaslight, 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: Radio adventure program for kids: Captain Midnight.
- 1940: Big bands dominate popular music.
- 1940: Democratic, Republican national conventions are on radio.
- 1940: Regular FM radio broadcasting begins in a small way.
- 1940: Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, the Seventh, 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.
- 1941: Eugene O’Neill’s play, A Long Day’s Journey into Night.
- 1941: FCC sets U.S. TV standards.
- 1941: William Shirer, Berlin Diary, chronicles rise of Nazis.
- 1941: Noel Coward’s play, Blithe Spirit.
- 1941: Lillian Hellman’s play, Watch on the Rhine.
- 1941: Touch-tone dialing tried in Baltimore.
- 1941: FCC decision to shift FM bandwidth makes existing sets obsolete.
- 1941: Citizen Kane experiments with flashback, camera movement, sound techniques.
- 1941: A Moscow cinema gets stereo speaker system.
- 1941: Bertolt Brecht’s anti-fascist play, Mother Courage and Her Children.
- 1941: Microwave transmission.
- 1941: NTSC 525-line standard approved by FCC for television.
- 1941: In “Mayflower” decision, FCC rules that broadcasters cannot editorialize.
- 1941: The push button telephone.
- 1941: Mohandas Gandhi explains passive resistance in “Constructive Programme.”
- 1941: IBM offers a typewriter with proportional spacing.
- 1941: Pocket Books begins first mass distribution system for books.
- 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: An illustrated copy of the Iliad starts trend to classics with art.
- 1941: In New York, the first television commercials.
- 1941: 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: Walter Winchell is the most popular radio newscaster.
- 1941: Oscars (given 1942): 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: FDR war declaration has largest audience in radio history: 90 million.
- 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.
- 1941: Record 90 million hear F.D.R. broadcast to nation after Pearl Harbor.
- 1941: War needs freeze commercial TV development.
- 1941: Radio networks on 24/7; heavy on news.
- 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: Magnetic recording tape.
- 1942: Dorothy Parker’s witty Collected Stories.
- 1942: Supreme Court reverses, offers movies some First Amendment protection.
- 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: Voice of America, Office of War Information, Armed Forces Radio.
- 1942: Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army puts real soldiers in Broadway revue.
- 1942: Congress votes F.D.R.’s cheap book rate order into postal law.
- 1942: Oscars (given 1943): 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: After more than 4,000 episodes, radio’s Amos ‘n’ Andy is canceled.
- 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: Armed Services Editions of books published for American troops.
- 1943: Belá Bartók explores musical harmonies with Concerto for Orchestra.
- 1943: NBC separates from Blue Network.
- 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: In Havana night club, swing meets Cuban music: the mambo.
- 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 novel and film, The Human Comedy, a family in wartime.
- 1943: Broadway musical One Touch of Venus; music: Kurt Weill; book: Ogden Nash.
- 1943: Oscars (given 1944): Casablanca, Paul Lukas, Jennifer Jones.
- 1943: Also at the movies: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Ox-Bow Incident, Desert Victory.
- 1944: Harvard’s Mark I, first digital computer to be put in service.
- 1944: Two new radio shows: Ozzie & Harriet and Roy Rogers.
- 1944: Hooper replaces Crossley as dominant radio ratings company.
- 1944: Economist Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, rips communist planning.
- 1944: Smokey the Bear starts fighting forest fires.
- 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: Sartre’s play, No Exit: “Hell is other people.”
- 1944:One-fifth of network radio time is given to news.
- 1944: Radio network censors cut sound on Eddie Cantor song.
- 1944: Networks cancel commercial programs during presidential conventions.
- 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 (given 1945): 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: 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: Gallup Poll asks, “Do you know what television is?” Many don’t.
- 1945: Arthur Clarke envisions geosynchronous communication satellites.
- 1945: In Sweden, Pippi Longstocking, the tale of a free-spirited girl, is published.
- 1945: U.S. has 2,000 miles of co-axial cable.
- 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: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Gabriela Mistral, Chile, first Latin American.
- 1945: The entire nation 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 Ninth Symphony is performed.
- 1945: Another Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway smash, Carousel.
- 1945: Oscars (given 1946): 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: Much improved television camera, the image-orthicon.
- 1945: Art Linkletter on CBS radio.
- 1945: FCC assigns VHF spectrum of channels 2 – 13.
- 1945: The Klipschorn folded horn speaker.
- 1945: Starting its long life on NBC radio: Meet the Press.
- 1945: American Broadcasting Co. emerges from sale of NBC Blue in 1943.
- 1945: Vannevar Bush conceives idea of hyperlinks, hypermedia.
- 1945: George Orwell’s Animal Farm lampoons totalitarianism, communism.
- 1946: Jukeboxes go into mass production.
- 1946: Founding of Bantam Books.
- 1946: Seven thousand television sets are sold in the U.S.
- 1946: John Hersey, Hiroshima, effects of atom bomb on six lives.
- 1946: The Photon, the first practical phototypesetting machine.
- 1946: University of Pennsylvania’s ENIAC heralds the modern electronic computer.
- 1946: Dr.Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.
- 1946: In St. Louis, automobile radio telephones connect to telephone network.
- 1946: Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts starts 12-year run on CBS radio.
- 1946: Soap operas enter television with Faraway Hill.
- 1946: On Broadway, Brigadoon, Annie Get Your Gun, Carmen Jones.
- 1946: Louis-Conn heavyweight title fight is telecast to 100,000 viewers.
- 1946: U.S. Army Signal Corps reports bouncing radar signal off moon, getting echo.
- 1946: Carson McCullers’ novel, The Member of the Wedding, a girl’s coming of age.
- 1946: Oscars (given 1947): 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: U.S. nationwide telephone numbering plan.
- 1946: The New York City Ballet starts to dance.
- 1946: RCA, NBC demonstrate rival color television systems.
- 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: U.S. has 1,000 licensed AM radio stations.
- 1946: U.S. population: 141 million; movie tickets sold weekly: 100 million.
- 1946: After WW II freeze, U.S. radio manufacturers turn out 15 million sets this year.
- 1946: Westinghouse “Stratovision” on airplane bounces TV signal 250 miles.
- 1946: CBS experiment sends color TV program 450 miles over coaxial cable.
- 1946: Robert Penn Warren’s novel about Huey Long, All the King’s Men.
- 1946: A television network soap opera: Faraway Hill.
- 1946: Television Arts and Science Academy is formed.
- 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: Seven U.S. East Coast TV stations begin regular programming.
- 1947: Two million radios can receive FM.
- 1947: Television network service expands with line from New York to Boston.
- 1947: A State of the Union address, by President Harry Truman, is televised.
- 1947: World Series is telecast. Yankees beat Dodgers.
- 1947: Poet W.H. Auden wins Pulitzer Prize for “Nones.”
- 1947: The Diary of Anne Frank is published.
- 1947: Two more radio shows for kids: Lassie and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.
- 1947: American television viewers watch commercials.
- 1947: Edwin Land’s Polaroid camera prints pictures in a minute.
- 1947: The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered in a cave.
- 1947: Allen Funt begins his foolery with Candid Microphone on ABC radio.
- 1947: Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man (in U.S.: Survival in Auschwitz)
- 1947: Meet the Press shifts from radio to TV; will be television’s longest running program.
- 1947: André Gide wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 1947: From Chicago, Kukla, Fran & Ollie entertain children.
- 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: NBC cuts to dead air when Fred Allen tells joke about NBC vice presidents.
- 1947: U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee attacks entertainment industry.
- 1947: Oscars (given 1948): 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: Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury, points to new direction for potboilers.
- 1947: Howdy Doody starts a 13-year television run.
- 1947: History on radio: You Are There.
- 1947: Groucho Marx quiz show, You Bet Your Life.
- 1947: Telephone area codes.
- 1947: A record 97% of all AM stations in U.S. are affiliated with a network.
- 1948: Founding of the Public Relations Society of America.
- 1948: Wilbur Schramm’s Source-Message-Channel-Receiver commmunication model.
- 1948: On radio: Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour.
- 1948: On TV, CBS Evening News, Ed Sullivan Show, Candid Camera, Arthur Godfrey.
- 1948: From RCA, a 16-inch television display tube.
- 1948: Radio’s Candid Microphone becmes TV’s Candid Camera.
- 1948: CBS and NBC begin nightly 15-minute television newscasts.
- 1948: Truman Capote’s first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
- 1948: TV coverage of GOP convention reaches Midwest via airplane Stratovision.
- 1948: Newsreels come to TV with Camel Newsreel Theatre.
- 1948: WFIL-FM, owned by Philadelphia newspaper, transmits fax editions twice a day.
- 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: Bell system has 30 million telephones.
- 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 dramatic poem, 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: Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater jumps sales of television sets.
- 1948: From RCA, the Ultrafax system can transmit one million words per minute.
- 1948: Shannon and Weaver of Bell Labs propound information theory.
- 1948: B.F. Skinner, Walden Two, a utopia based on operant behavior.
- 1948: French ink maker Marcel Bich introduces the Bic ballpoint pen.
- 1948: Hollywood switches to nonflammable film.
- 1948: Two radio sitcoms: Our Miss Brooks and Lucille Ball’s My Favorite Husband.
- 1948: From the United Nations, a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- 1948: Public clamor for television begins; FCC freezes new licenses.
- 1948: CBS raids NBC for radio, TV top talent.
- 1948: Western Union manufactures 50,000 Deskfax machines for fax transmission.
- 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 (given 1949): 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 import quotas on foreign films hit Hollywood.
- 1948: Artist Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World.
- 1948: George Orwell’s novel of a bleak, fascist future, 1984.
- 1948: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet T.S. Eliot.
- 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: Network TV established in U.S.
- 1949: Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize play, Death of a Salesman.
- 1949: Presidential inauguration is televised.
- 1949: Simone de Beauvoir, in 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; Columbia has 33 1/3 rpm LP.
- 1949: Look magazine says radio is doomed; instead, Look will die.
- 1949: James Michener writes semi-autobiographical The Fires of Spring.
- 1949: Milton Berle hosts the first telethon.
- 1949: NBC prime-time, half-hour TV soap opera: One Man’s Family.
- 1949: Supreme Court decision splits movie studios from theater chains.
- 1949: Hollywood studios begin to produce television programs.
- 1949: Nobel Prize in Literature: American novelist William Faulkner.
- 1949: FCC Fairness Doctrine reverses 1941 Mayflower; stations must carry opinions.
- 1949: The McIntosh amplifier improves home listening.
- 1949: Dragnet starts on NBC radio.
- 1949: AT&T; phone combines ringer and handset, volume control.
- 1949: Nelson Algren’s novel of drug addiction, The Man with the Golden Arm.
- 1949: The Lone Ranger gallops onto television screens.
- 1949: Oscars (given 1950): All the King’s Men, Broderick Crawford, Olivia De Haviland.
- 1949: Also at the movies: Twelve O’Clock High, Battleground, Champion.
- 1949: Hollywood tackles race issue in Pinky, but plays safe with a white actress.
- 1949: Italian neo-realism continues with The Bicycle Thief.
- 1949: Talent, money, energy move from radio to television.
- 1949: Whirlwind at MIT is the first real-time computer.
- 1949: Library of Congress awards annual Bollingen Prize for living poets.
- 1949: The acoustic suspension loudspeaker.
- 1949: On TV: Captain Video, Easy Aces, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Voice of Firestone.
- 1949: Shirley Jackson’s story of sheeplike behavior, “The Lottery.”
- 1949: The United States has 98 television stations.
- 1949: Poet Stephen Spender’s essay on communism, The God That Failed.
- 1949: These Are My Children, NBC televised soap opera.
- 1949: New York - Chicago co-ax lines: three channels westbound, two east.
- 1949: British EDSAC computer stores programs in memory, switches programs.