- 1950's: Television enters American homes.
- 1950:
The Korean War begins.
- 1950's
& 1960's: Minnesota's mathematical marvel of Amundson & Aris
stress the importance of mathematical modeling in Chemical Reactor
Engineering. Their work helps encourage greater mathematical competence
in Chemical Engineering Education.
- 1950's
& 1960's: Wisconsin's triumvirate of Bird, Stewart, & Lightfoot
reveal the unifying concepts of mass, momentum, and energy transport.
Their textbook, "Transport Phenomenon" continues to be a
phenomenon in Chemical Engineering Education.
- 1950:
Benzene produced from petroleum.
- 1951:
The first Fusion Bomb is tested.
- 1952:
Du Pont introduces Mylar polyester film.
- 1952:
4,000 die in a London smog.
- 1953:
Production of soap exceeded by synthetic detergents.
- 1953:
Francis Crick solved the three-dimensional structure of DNA molecule
disclosed by James Watson and discovered in 1950 by Erwin Chargaff.
- 1953:
After an extremely strong storm the North Sea floods southern Holland.
More than 1800 people die.
- 1954:
Polyisoprene rubber developed.
- 1955:
General Electric produces synthetic diamond.
- 1955:
Government sells synthetic rubber plants to private industry.
- 1957:
The Russians launch Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite.
- 1957:
Windscale graphite nuclear reactor burns for 42 hours in England.
Releases I-131. Residents curtail milk consumption for safety reasons.
- 1957:
General Electric develops polycarbonate plastics.
- 1959:
The computer control of chemical processes gains credibility.
- 1959:
A large scale hydrogen plant, to produce rocket fuel, is completed
by Air Products.
- 1960:
Theodore Maiman builds the first LASER based upon the proposal of
Arthur Schawlow.
- 1961:
Alan Shepard becomes the first American into space.
- 1961:
William McBride, an Australian obstetrician, discovers that
thalidomide, a mourning sickness drug, causes birth defects. Twenty
years later he similarly "discovers" that debendox, another mourning
sickness drug, also causes birth defects. However, this time his McBride had
altered his data. Debendox produces no ill effects. In 1993, he was found
guilty of scientific fraud by a medical tribunal.
- 1962:
The Russians remove their missiles from Cuba.
- 1962:
The smog in London kills 1,000.
- 1962:
Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring", presents an emotional plea for
protecting human health and the environment from chemical
pesticides.
- 1965:
American Troops enter the Vietnam War.
- 1965:
Bottles made from polyvinyl chloride gain market share.
- 1965:
NutraSweet is discovered by a researcher, Mr. James Schlatter, at the
G.D. Searle & Co. The calorie free sugar replacer is 200 times sweeter than
common sucrose.
- 1966:
Fist attempt to control organic solvent emissions made by Los Angeles'
Rule 66.
- 1968:
Consumption of man-made fibers tops natural fibers in US
- 1969:
The Apollo 11 mission succeeds by landing Man on the Moon.
- 1969:
The horribly polluted Cuyahoga River, running through Cleveland,
actually caught on fire.
- 1970's:
America's heavy dependence on foreign oil results in an Energy Crisis
as the Arabs stop shipment to countries which supported Israel in the
Arab-Israeli Wars.
- 1970:
America holds its first "Earth Day" on April 22.
- 1970:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is formed. It consists
of 6,000 employees and has an annual budget of $1.3 billion.
- 1970:
Congress passes the "Clean Air Act" establishing national air quality
standards.
- 1972:
Congress passes the "Clean Water Act" to confront water pollution.
- 1973:
The last American Troops leave Vietnam.
- 1973:
Stanley Cohen & Herbert Boyer perform the first experiment in Genetic
Engineering.
- 1973:
Construction on New York's "World Trade Center" and Chicago's "Sears
Tower" are completed.
- 1974:
Richard Nixon resigns from office.
- 1974:
Cyclohexan vapor from ruptured makeshift bypass pipe explodes
killing 28 workers in Flixborough, England, prompting legislation for risk
studies in British chemical plants.
- Mid
1970's: Toxic releases including: the Kepone tragedy at
Hopewell, VA; the PCB contamination of the Hudson River; and
the PBB poisoning of cows in Michigan keep environment issues in
the headlines.
- 1975:
Catalytic converters are introduced in many automobiles to meet
emissions standards established by the US government.
- 1975:
Cable fire at Browns Ferry nuclear reactor in Alabama almost leads to
disaster. It was caused by an electrician who used a candle to check for air
leaks below the nuclear plant's control room.
- 1975:
Du Pont recognizes the contributions of Nathaniel C. Wyeth. He was responsible
for introducing the plastic soda bottles made from polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) which quickly replaced their glass
predecessors.
- 1975:
McDonald's fast food chain starts using Polystyrene to package its
hamburgers.
- 1976:
Congress passes the "Toxic Substances Control Act" regulating toxic
chemicals.
- 1976:
Seymour Cray, of Cray Research, makes the Cray-1 super-computer
- 1976:
The US National Academy of Sciences reports that chlorofluorocarbons (Freons)
can deplete the Ozone Layer.
- 1976:
The US bans the use of chloroform in drugs and cosmetics.
- 1976:
Viking 1 lands on Mars, becoming the first man-made object to ever
soft-land on another planet.
- 1977:The
FDA moves to ban Saccharin, a calorie free sweetener, because it
has been found to cause cancer in rats.
- 1977:
Raymond Damadian builds his first Magnetic Resonance Imager (MRI) used to
generate 3-D images of the human body using the principles of
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR).
- 1978:
Due to considerable grass roots pressure, the FDA decides to merely
require an information label on Saccharin, despite being shown to cause
cancer in laboratory animals.
- 1978:
Chlorofluorcarbons (Freons) are banned as spray propellants in the
US because of fears over the Ozone Layer.
- 1978:
The US Government begins limiting the amount of lead permitted in
gasoline. The action is taken to prevent deterioration of the
platinum catalysts in catalytic converters, not to protect the
public's safety.
- 1979:
No one is injured, but many are terrified, by an nuclear reactor incident
at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.
- 1979:
Soviet troops retreat from Afghanistan.
- 1979:
Genetic Engineering succeeds in synthesizing human insulin.
- Late
1970's: Love Canal (in New York) and the Valley of Drums (10,000
leaking hazardous waste drums near West Point, KY) keep environmental issues in
the news and are described as "ticking time bombs."
- 1980:
The US Supreme Court rules that General Electric can Patent a
microbe used for oil cleanup.
- 1980:
The "push through tabs" used on today's pop and beer cans are
first introduced.
- 1980:
The US Government bans the sale of lead based paints.
- 1980:
The Superfund, containing $1.6 billion, is formed to be used by the
EPA in cleaning up pollution sites.
- 1981:
Microsoft develops MS-DOS for the IBM PC.
- 1981:
Chemical Process Simulation software is released for the PC. Soon
packages like DESIGN II, ASPEN, SIMSCI (PROII), HYSIM, & CHEMCAD start appearing
on engineering desktops.
- 1981:
John Darsee, a former Harvard researcher, was found to be faking heart
study data. His fraud had been propagated in almost 100 published research
studies.
- 1981:
Gerd Binnig & Heinrich Rohrer develop the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM)
which is capable of resolving individual atoms on a surface.
- 1981:
NASA's "Columbia" Space Shuttle becomes the world's first reusable
space craft.
- 1983:
Carl Sagan, and a group of scientists, publishes an alarming report
concerning the long term climatic impacts of nuclear war.
- 1984:
AT&T is broken into "Baby Bells" by the US government.
- 1984:
Apple introduces the Macintosh personal computer.
- 1984:
An accidental toxic gas release by Union Carbide kills over 2000 and
disables 10000 in Bhopal, India.
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