Charles Seeberger invented the modern escalator

By the 1930s money was scarce because of the depression, so people did what they could to make their lives happy.  Movies were hot, parlor games and board games were popular.  People gathered around radios to listen to the Yankees.  Young people danced to the big bands.  Franklin Roosevelt influenced Americans with his fireside chats.

The construction of the Empire State Building begins in NY. The Chrysler Building is completed.

On March 3, 1931 the United States officially adopts “The Star Spangled Banner” as its national anthem.

1932 Unemployment reaches 14,000,000

The New Deal, introduced by F D Roosevelt was to transform America's economy which had been shattered by the Wall Street Crash. The economic downturn that followed the Wall Street Crash also had a major psychological impact on America and that Roosevelt was actually doing something did a great deal to boost America's self-esteem

The New York's World Fair of 1939 - true to its theme of "The World of Tomorrow" - gave its estimated 25.8 million visitors a glimpse of the future.  The fairgoers marveled at the flickering images of a TV set at the RCA Building and were amazed at the General Motors exhibit of a seven-lane cross-country highway system.  Many of the innovations demonstrated did not become a part of every day life until after World War II, but there was a peek at the technology to come.

The 1940's were dominated by World War II. European artists and intellectuals fled Hitler and the Holocaust, bringing new ideas created in disillusionment. War production pulled us out of the Great Depression. Women were needed to replace men who had gone off to war, and so the first great exodus of women from the home to the workplace began. Rationing affected the food we ate, the clothes we wore, the toys with which children played.

• The 1940's were dominated by World War II. European artists and intellectuals fled Hitler and the Holocaust, bringing new ideas created in disillusionment. War production pulled us out of the Great Depression. Women were needed to replace men who had gone off to war, and so the first great exodus of women from the home to the workplace began. Rationing affected the food we ate, the clothes we wore, the toys with which children played.

• 1941 Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor

• July 22, 1944, an international conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to discuss the economics of the postwar world, results in the formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

• 1945 First computer built ENIAC

• 1945 United Nations founded

• 1946 Bikinis introduced

• 1947 Polaroid camera invented

• 1948 Big Bang Theory

• World War II changed the order of world power; the  United States and the USSR become super powers

• Supreme Court decides Blacks have the right to vote

The end of World War II brought thousands of young servicemen back to America to pick up their lives and start new families in new homes with new jobs. With an energy never before experienced, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods not available during the war, which created corporate expansion of jobs.

• The end of World War II brought thousands of young servicemen back to America to pick up their lives and start new families in new homes with new jobs. With an energy never before experienced, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods not available during the war, which created corporate expansion of jobs.

• 1950 In January, US senator Joe McCarthy warns President Truman that the State Department is 'riddled with Communists' and begins anti-Communist witch-hunt.

• 1951 National television broadcasting begins in the U.S. Color TV Introduced

• 1952 Polio vaccine created

• 1954 American rock 'n' roll musician Bill Haley releases 'Rock around the Clock'. The first portable transistor radios are marketed.

• Drive-in movies  became popular for families and teens. Cars were seen as an indicator of prosperity and cool-ness. Highways were built to take people quickly from one place to another, by-passing small towns and helping to create central marketing areas or shopping malls such as Sharpstown Mall, Gulfgate Mall and Meyerland Plaza in Houston.

• 1955 In Alabama on 1 December, Rosa Parks, a black woman, refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her arrest for this triggers Martin Luther King's successful boycott of the Montgomery bus system (lasts until November 1956).

• 1956 On 17 January, American singer Elvis Presley releases 'Heartbreak Hotel', beginning a career that will lead him to be hailed as the king of rock 'n' roll.

The sixties were the age of youth, as 70 million children from the post-war baby boom became teenagers and young adults.  The movement away from the conservative fifties continued and eventually resulted in revolutionary ways of thinking and real change in the cultural fabric of American life.  No longer content to be images of the generation ahead of them, young people wanted change. The changes affected education, values, lifestyles, laws, and entertainment.  Many of the revolutionary ideas which began in the sixties are continuing to evolve today.

• The sixties were the age of youth, as 70 million children from the post-war baby boom became teenagers and young adults.  The movement away from the conservative fifties continued and eventually resulted in revolutionary ways of thinking and real change in the cultural fabric of American life.  No longer content to be images of the generation ahead of them, young people wanted change. The changes affected education, values, lifestyles, laws, and entertainment.  Many of the revolutionary ideas which began in the sixties are continuing to evolve today.

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