1948
Selected Events
Charles Petrie born on 14 September
14 September 1938 -
The first flight of Zeppelin LZ130 'Graf Zeppelin'.
Britain changed to the Gregorian Calendar on Thursday, 14 September 1752 .
Computer Technology
- Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley create
first transistor
- IBM introduces the programmable vacuum tube-based 604 calculator. The IBM 402 tabulator was also introduced and is still in use in 2022.
- Freddy Williams and Tom Kilburn, and Max Newman at the
the Royal Society Computing Laboratory at Manchester,
created the first working prototype, "Baby", of
a modern RAM-stored program computer.
- The first computers that stored programs as data were developed,
including the IBM SSEC, the ARC2, the Manchester Baby, and the
ENIAC.
- Konrad Zuse invents and publishes the first high-level
programming language, Plankalkül, way ahead of his time.
- Norman Wiener writes
"Cybernetics, control and communication in the animal
and machine."
- J. von Neumann gives the first talk on cellular automata at the Hixon
Symposium, September 1948;
The General and Logical Theory of Automata", in Taub (1961),
chapter 9, pp. 288-328; and pp. 1-41 of
Jeffress (1951).
- Claude E. Shannon writes
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication"
-
Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) founded
Astronomy
200 inch
Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar is dedicated. Perhaps more important
is the completion of the 48 inch Schmidt telescope, the largest in the
world. The first picture taken in September is good enough that
it is used in Hubble's galaxy atlas. This telescope was used to make
the first Palomar
Observatory Sky Survey.
Aviation In June 1948,
Civil Aviation Administration installed the first high-powered, low
frequency, long-range navigation facility for ocean
navigation.
The USAF announces that Chuck Yeager broke the
sound barrier a year before.
F86 makes first flight: first plane with swept
wings.
Thermonuclear Bomb Design: Layer Cake design developed.
World Political Changes
- 14 Sep 1948: The US National Security Council completes
NSC 30 that gives the US President complete
authorization to order a nuclear strike.
- North & South Korea, Burma, PR China, W
Germany, and Israel founded.
The Soviet Union takes over
Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but loses Yugoslavia.
- Jan - Gandhi
assasinated
- Eastern Europe changes
- February 25 - Communist coup, Czechoslovakia: "Victorious February" (Vitezny
unor)
May 9 - constitution guaranteeing leading role for Communists
passed. Soviet "advisors" arrive.
- Hungary becomes a Soviet republic completely by mid-year.
- Tito criticizes Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary
and Yogoslavia is expelled from Cominform, the confederation of
Eastern European Communist Parties, 28 June.
- March - Peron in Argentina begins nationalizing its railroads.
- April - World Health Organization founded.
- April - Burma founded.
- April -
Apartheid established in South Africa
- April - September -
West Germany founded
- April - Marshall
Plan (Economic Cooperation Act) became law.
And the
Free
University of Berlin is founded.
"Wahrheit, Gerechtigkeit, Freiheit"
- June - France agrees with London recommondation
for the creation of a German parlimnet. Independently,
the new
Deutsche Mark is established by Ludwig Erhard.
The allies announce the new currency in Berlin
as well, and in response, the Soviets close
the access routes to the city.
- August - The Berlin Airlift was
the amazing Allied response to the Berlin Blockade
begun by the Soviet Union in response to plans to establish West
Germany by the other Allies.
See also the Official U.S. State Department report, dated September 1948, titled "The Berlin Crisis: A Report on the Moscow Discussions, 1948." The document is U.S. State Department publication 3298, European and British Commonwealth Series 1.
- September - First
German
Parliamentary Council in Bonn
on 1 Sep 48.
BTW, in 1930, Cahncellor Bruening had to call for
new elections on 14 September.
This was the date
of Hitler's first stunning political victory.
- May - December - Israel founded
See also
additional
commentaries.
- July -
US Army racially integrated as a result of
Presidential Executive Order 9981
- Sept -
Chairman Mao
establishes the
Northern China People's Government
after winning
several major battles
over the Kuomintang government.
- Sept - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands adbicates.
- 14 September 1948 Ground Breaking
Ceremony for the UN Building
- Oct -
B29 out of Robbins AFB in Georgia crashes
: resulting United States
vs. Reynolds case
establishes the right
of the US government to have "state secrets"
that cannot be exposed in court.
- UN Assembly adopts a
declaration
of human rights
and makes Genocide
an international crime
- International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) founded.
-
First Congress of Europe in The Hague
-
Faeroes achieve home rule from Denmark.
- Dec - India
and Pakistan Kashmiri war ends in a stalemate causing continued
conflict thereafter.
- Costa Rica has a civil war that re-enforces democracy there.
WW II is Really Over
- March -
The United Nations War Crimes Commission is ended.
- The Zoo Flak Tower and Bunker in the Tiergarten in Berlin are
finally completely demolished.
-
The first post-war BMW motorcycle, the R24, is
produced.
-
Beate Uhse starts her business.
-
Citroen 2 CV is displayed at the Paris Auto Show, after
development was interrupted by WW II.
- April - Some of the last of Nuerenberg trials -
Einsatzgruppen case
tried and convicted
- May - Unity Mitford
dies, as a result of her 1939 suicide attempt in the English Gardens
in Munich. She was born in Swastika, Ontario.
- July -
Olympic games held in England and
IOC Winter Olympics resume after WWW II
in St. Moritz.
- July - Last
German-Americans interned in the USA
released
- - German spies in US released and deported to Germany.
- November - The
Japanese dictator Tojo and six others are sentenced to death and in December,
hanged, after a trial that began in May of 1946.
- Archduke Wilhelm Franz of Austria-Teschen, the
would-be Hapsburg king of the Ukraine and British spy against
the Nazis, dies in a Soviet prision.
- Smith-Mundt Act is passed to authorize propaganda
by the US overseas (for use in the new cold war), and to be prohibited
domestically.
On 12 September 1990, the treaty was signed reunifying East and West
Germany and on 14 September, the last of the travel restrictions
between East and West Germany ended - a British Airways
commercial flight was the last to use the air corridor
between East Berlin and West Germany, exactly 60
years later to the day.
Cultural
US Society Changes
Firsts and Records
Birthdays
<petrie@stanford.edu>
