Life is a Highway
The largest public works program in American history.
What is the Federal Highway Act
It's how the term "soap opera" came to be.
A soap opera, daily soap or soap for short, is typically a long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio and television dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers.
Although regular television broadcasts had begun in the 1940’s, there were few stations, and sets were expensive.
However, by 1957, this percentage of Americans had a television in their household.
What is 80% (40 million televisions)?
Learned to play guitar by imitating rhythm and blues music he heard on the radio. Known for his hip-swiveling gyration dance style, he was a hit with the teenagers but not with conservative 1950’s parents. In fact, when he was invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan show, the host insisted that the cameras show him from the waist up.
Who is Elvis Presley?
This invention generated electric signals and made it possible to miniaturize radios and calculators.
What is a transistor?
Government figure the government sets to reflect the minimum income required to support a family.
What is the poverty line?
The United States Interstate System was highly influenced by this freeway system that General Eisenhower saw while serving as a general in WW2.
What is the Autobahn?
The right or license to market a company's goods or services in an area, such as a store of a chain operation.
What is a franchise?
Why did the famous Marshall Fields department store switch their sales night form Monday to Thursday nights?
Marshall Field’s department store used to run sales the night ‘I Love Lucy’ aired but switched sales to a different night because no one was coming out, because they were all watching ‘Lucy’.
"I Love Lucy"...was so popular that, as Lucille Ball commented in her memoirs, “Our show changed the Monday-night habits of America. Between nine and nine-thirty, taxis disappeared from the streets of New York. Marshall Fields department store in Chicago hung up a sign: ‘We love Lucy too, so from now on we’ll be open Thursday nights instead of Monday.’ Telephone calls across the nation dropped sharply during that half hour, as well as the water flush rate, as whole families sat glued to their seats.” Marshall Fields specifically changed their weekly sale event from Monday to Thursday night.
Disc Jockey who helped launch rock and roll by playing African American music on the air.
Who is Alan Freed?
These large metal tanks with pumps helped people with polio breathe.
What are iron lungs?
Program that brought nearly 5 million Mexicans to the United States to work on farms and ranches in the Southwest. Most were temporary contract workers and many returned home, but some came with their families, however, and about 350,000 settled permanently in the United States. They often worked 12-hour days in temperatures over 100 degrees.
What is the Bracero Program?
Direction-wise, how are interstate highways numbered?
Major Interstate routes are designated by one- or two-digit numbers. Routes with odd numbers run north and south, while even numbered run east and west. For north-south routes, the lowest numbers begin in the west, while the lowest numbered east-west routes are in the south.
Give 3 reasons for the "baby boom".
What are:
A) Young couples who delayed marriage during WWII and the Korean War could now marry, buy homes and begin families.
B) The government encouraged the growth of families offering G.I. benefits for home purchases.
C) On television and in magazines, pregnancy, parenthood and large families were celebrated.
D) the result of a strong postwar economy, in which Americans felt confident they would be able to support a larger number of children.
While television shows were popular in the 1950's, they often depicted a narrow view of American culture.
How so?
What is:
Usually it was an image that was predominantly white, middle class and suburban, and where traditional gender roles were reinforced. (Fathers working, mothers staying home to raise children and take care of the house.)
African American singer who had an amazing voice and had a musical variety show for 64 episodes, until NBC cancelled the show after failing to secure a national sponsor for a show hosted by an African American.
Who is Nat King Cole?
In 1953, when a Swanson salesman named Gerry Thomas saw that his company had 260 tons of frozen turkey left over after Thanksgiving, sitting in ten refrigerated railroad cars, he invented these convenient, individual meals meant to help busy housewives prepare fast meals for their husbands.
What are T.V. dinners?
U.S. Government policy through which Native American tribes were disbanded, their land sold, and were relocated off of reservations and into urban areas in an effort to "assimilate" them into mainstream society.
What is the termination policy?
How was the Federal Highway Act/Interstate System initially paid for?
What is :
1) The Federal Government would pay 90% of construction costs through gasoline taxes.
2) The States would pick up the other 10%.
Name 3 reasons why advertising became the fastest growing industry in the United States during the 1950's?
What are:
1)1950s Culture
Advertising boomed in the 1950s because of America's culture at the time and TV's massive reach. Consumer consumption peaked at a historically high level. The end of World War II signaled the end of a thrift-based consciousness that Americans had held since the Great Depression. Goods, no longer as scarce as they were during the war, flowed into the marketplace. Credit was easy. Purchases could be made on "time." And advertisers were relentlessly urging consumers to "buy, buy, buy," writes Young. Consumers felt closer to the American Dream than in the previous decades.
2) TV Advertising: The lure of the new medium and potential for wealth eventually beat out price. In 1951, TV earned $41 million in advertising revenue, a small fortune by today's multibillion-dollar figures. Just two years later, that figure rose to $336 million. America had an electronic mall by the mid-'50s. By 1959, TV commercials could reach 90 percent of all U.S. households, the only medium with that capability.
3) The conformity of the 1950’s included people’s desires to own the same new products as their neighbors. With more disposable income, Americans bought more luxury items-refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, coffee makers, blenders, etc.
4) Manufacturers employed new marketing techniques to gain advantages over their competitors.
5) Celebrity Endorsements
6) Targeting of Teenagers and Women in Advertising. Teenagers, who were forming their own subculture for the first time ever, were seen as a lucrative demographic to target due to the fact that they had disposable incomes and an influence over parental spending habits. They were regular consumers of food, music, and of course. Women were targeted for advertisers because they made most of the purchasing decisions for the household.
Quiz shows grew in popularity in the 1950's until a scandal broke which gave them a bad name and forced them off the air for awhile. What was the scandal?
What is:
Quiz shows were also popular. Shows like the $64,000 Question had contestants answering questions from separate glass encased booths. Winners would return the following week. Quiz shows were popular until 1956, when it was discovered that on the show ‘Twenty-One’ it was discovered that contestant Charles Van Doren and other contestants had received the answers in advance. After a congressional hearing in 1959, Van Doren admitted his role in the scandal, and quiz shows went off the air for awhile
This city actually banned Rock and Roll from the jukeboxes at public swimming pools because it declared, that the music attracted “undesirable elements and people gyrating to music in their bathing suits.”
What is San Antonio, TX?
Found on almost all items you use today, this was invented in 1952 and originally used to identify railroad cars. Later it became an efficient way to automatically read product information like pricing during checkout at a grocery store.
What is the barcode system?
Name 3 reasons why 1.5 Million people abandoned Appalachia in the 1950's to seek a better life in the nation’s cities.
What are:
1) Studies revealed high rates of nutritional deficiency and infant mortality.
2) Appalachia had fewer doctors per thousand people than the rest of the country.
3) Schooling the region was considered even worse than inner city slums.
Name 5 ways the Federal Highway system changed America.
What are: (Answers may vary
1) the Interstate Highways drastically decreased the time it took to travel across the continent.
2) The interstate system contributed to the growth of suburban communities. Using the interstates, suburbanites could commute to their jobs miles away, and no longer did everyone need to live near jobs in the city.
3) It encourage the growth of other industries that popped up as a necessity to the Interstate system. Fast food chains, motels, gas stations, etc. all grew as a result of the Federal Highway system.
4) Another consequence of the interstate was that many small towns, centered around old state roads and U.S. routes, were left in the dust after the construction of larger interstate roads. These small towns suffered financially after the construction of the interstate because people were able to bypass these towns in favor of the faster route of transportation.
5) Some argue the time savings from reduced commuting times has translated into additional time for preferred activities. On the other hand, some argue that the time savings from using interstates are reduced or eliminated because of induced traffic from induced highway demand — that is, increasing the supply or quantity of roads makes people want to use them more.
6) Displaced residents for its construction. The interstate connected suburban and rural communities to city centers, but it divided and destroyed urban neighborhoods, particularly in minority communities. For example, within the Fifth District, neighborhoods in Southwest Washington, D.C., were sacrificed to construct I-395, forcing those residents to move to other areas.
6) Trains and trolleys were were used more infrequently. Railroads were initially the primary method of shipping freight, consumer goods, and people across states. The increased number of shipments required by the war, however, caused the railroads to become congested. One solution to this problem was to ship some of the cargo on trucks. So interstate transportation of freight by truck became essential, yet interstate roads were still primarily made of dirt, and the trucks caused substantial damage to them. For example, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), roads in New York that cost $11,000 per mile to build in 1912 were estimated to cost $32,000 per mile to repair at inflated 1918 costs. Despite these costs, it soon became evident that the cost savings of shipping by truck outweighed the costs of repairing roads. After the war, the interstate system made the roads better and faster, which phased out business for other transport systems.
7) Provided efficient military transport.
Name 5 reasons for the large migration to the suburbs during the 1950's.
What are:
a) Escape crime and congestion of cities.
b) Fresh air, green lawns, trees.
c) More for your money.
d) G.I. Bill offered low interest loans and made housing more affordable.
e) Better schools.
f) Interstate freeway system allowed them not to be confined to the cities anymore.
Name 3 ways movies were forced to adapt and 3 ways radio was forced to adapt to television's growing popularity.
Movies:
1) contests,
2) door prizes,
3) intense advertising campaigns.
4) Made films 3-D
5) Made Cinemascope movies, or movies that were on a large panoramic screen and played large, epic films that cost lots of money to produce.
6)Started to film movies for television, and they also rebroadcast old movies .
Radio:
1) focus on music
2) news,
3) talk shows,
4) weather
5) public service programming.
Correctly identify the artists who made the following songs famous:
1) Rock Around the Clock
2) Tutti Frutti
3) Peggy Sue
4) Hound Dog
5) Maybelline (and Johnny B. Goode)
Who are:
1) Bill Haley and the Comets
2) Little Richard
3) Buddy Holly
4) Elvis Presley
5) Chuck Berry
Name 5 musical genres that were the roots of rock and roll.
Name 5 major medical/technological advancements of the 1950's.
What are: (Answers may vary)
1)a device called a transistor, generated electric signals and made it possible to miniaturize radios and calculators.
2) scientists developed one of the earliest computers. Known as ENIAC(Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), it made military calculations. Later a model called UNIVAC would handle business data and launch the computer revolution.
3)Medical breakthroughs also occurred. Antibiotics to fight infection, new drugs to combat arthritis, diabetes, cancer and heart disease were invented.
4)Polio, a crippling disease which caused paralysis, would strike every summer and many died. Those that lived were often confined to “iron lung” machines to help them breathe. Jonas Salk developed an injectable vaccine that prevented polio.
5) 4 months after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the U.S. launches its own satellite (Explorer 1) from Cape Canaveral, FL.
6) Smoother and faster commercial planes were being built. The first American jet flight from New York to Los Angeles took 5 and a half hours.
Name 5 reasons experts gave as to why juvenile crime rates saw a 45% rise during the 1950's.
What are:
a)Poverty,
b) lack of religion,
c)television, movies,
d) comic books,
e) racism,
f) busy parents, rising divorce rate
g) anxiety of military draft.
h)Conservatives pointed to a “lack of discipline” by parents, and Liberals blamed it on poverty and feelings of hopelessness.