Media History Timeline: 1950s

20th Century: Sixth Decade

Gallery

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 Pþr 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 Franois 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 Ôn' 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, pointÑof-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 veritŽ (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: GŸnter 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.