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| 2. Science and Technology |
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| Scientific discoveries and the development of technologies emphasized the globalization of material life during the second half of the century. Global communication networks and the exchange of ideas, ranging from espionage to formal associations of scholars and international institutions, played an important role. The worldwide nature of scientific enterprise and technological development was reflected in many fields, including the development and use of nuclear power, the exploration of space, world health and disease control, and in communication and information technologies themselves. | 1 |
| NUCLEAR POWER. The immense amounts of energy created by atomic processes of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion had long been recognized. During World War II, the major combatants worked to develop atomic bombs. The United States succeeded, testing the first successful major nuclear military device in 1945, and then dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI in an effort to hasten the end of the war. The U.S. action was subject to much international debate, but the ATOMIC AGE, both in military and in civilian terms, had begun. The development of nuclear weapons and efforts to prevent nuclear war were very important aspects of global life in the second half of the 20th century. | 2 |
| Spread of nuclear weapons. For a short period, the United States was the only state with employable nuclear weapons. Efforts to create international structures to control nuclear weaponry interacted with the development of the weaponry itself. In 1946 the United Nations worked to establish an Atomic Energy Commission, and the United States, in the Baruch Plan (1946), proposed the creation of an international atomic development authority with a virtual monopoly over all forms of nuclear energy production, military or civilian. Developing cold war tensions made international control impossible, and other countries gained nuclear weapons capacities: the Soviet Union in 1949, Great Britain in 1952, France in 1960, and the People's Republic of China in 1964. By the 1970s, a number of other countries were believed to have fission weapon capacities, including India, Israel, South Africa, and Brazil. Concern over nuclear proliferation resulted in many conferences, negotiations, and some success in global nuclear arms limitation and agreement on broader issues of disarmament. The United Nations established the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957 to promote the peaceful uses of atomic power. In 1963 a nuclear test ban treaty was signed by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, and more than 100 states subsequently adhered to it, and in 1968, 62 states ratified the NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY, which limited the spread of atomic weapons. Other treaties banned nuclear weapons in space (1967) and on the ocean floor beyond the 12-mile national limit (1971). The major reduction in the threat of nuclear war involved the changing conditions of the cold war. The United States and the Soviet Union began serious arms reductions negotiations in the 1970s with the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) in 1972 and SALT II (1972–79), which resulted in an agreement that was largely implemented although never formally ratified. In the 1980s, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) moved beyond limiting the arms race to an actual reduction in the existing weapons arsenals of the superpowers. The resulting treaty was signed in 1991. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the major concern regarding nuclear weapons was no longer global nuclear war so much as the possible development and use of nuclear weapons by smaller powers in regional wars. Some of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan, came into possession of substantial nuclear arsenals, and after 1992 engaged in long negotiations, with support from the U.S., for denuclearization and the implementation of their areas of the START treaty. The possible development of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan was a long-standing dispute that assumed new importance in the post–cold war world. And one of the major areas of tension in the Middle East following the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91 was monitoring Iraq for the production of weapons of mass destruction. By the 1990s, nuclear weapons and their control had, however, lost much of their importance as a source of international concern. | 3 |
| Nuclear power for both military and civilian use became very significant. Energy produced by nuclear facilities came to be used in many different ways, from providing power for running large ships to producing electricity. The United States developed the first nuclear-powered submarine, the Nautilus, by 1954. Nuclear submarines, capable of remaining submerged for many months, transformed the nature of underwater warfare. Also nuclear submarines undertook important explorations under the Artic ice cap in 1958, demonstrating their utility. A nuclear-powered merchant cargo ship, the Savannah, was launched in 1959, and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise was launched in 1960. The most important use, in global terms, of nuclear power was in the production of electricity. Nuclear power plants were built in the Soviet Union (1954), Great Britain (1956), and France (1957), and the first commercial nuclear power plant was opened in the United States in 1957. By the early 1990s, almost one-fifth of the world's electricity was produced by nuclear power plants. Although nuclear power had many advantages in terms of cost of fuel, efficiency, and availability, by the end of the century, there was a growing awareness of important risks. Problems of disposing of radioactive waste had not been solved by the early 1990s as some of the early plants were beginning the decommissioning process. Accidents and malfunctioning equipment posed major dangers as well. The first serious accident was at a British weapons production facility in 1957. A more serious accident occurred at the Three Mile Island reactor in 1979 in Pennsylvania. The worst known nuclear accident took place at the CHERNOBYL REACTOR in the former Soviet Union in 1979. The radioactive pollution from this event illustrated important international dimensions of nuclear power and its management. | 4 |
| SPACE EXPLORATION. The exploration of the earth's upper atmospheric regions and of outer space represented an important part of global affairs in the second half of the century. Many things, like space travel in general and human travel to the moon in particular, which had been the subject of science fiction and were believed even at midcentury to be in the distant future, were accomplished by the 1990s. Initially space exploration was associated with the development of military capacity, especially for building more effective rockets and space station technology. Space programs were national in organization but by the 1990s had become significantly multinational and increasingly civilian in nature. Orbiting satellites became essential not just for military surveillance but also in global communication networks. Following World War II, most major powers undertook programs for rocket development and possible space exploration. Important events in the history of human activity in space include the launching of the first successful human-made satellite, the Soviet Sputnik I, in 1957, and the first human orbit of the earth, by Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. By the 1960s, both the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in serious efforts to explore the earth's moon and other parts of the solar system. Soviet and U.S. probes of Mars and Venus were begun in 1960–64, and rockets were sent to other planets as well during the 1960s and 1970s. A climax of these efforts was the first landing of humans on the moon, in 1969, as a completion of the priority program set by U.S. president John Kennedy in 1961. Other important specific U.S. SPACE PROGRAMS were the Mariner spacecraft (ten flights between 1962 and 1973 exploring Mercury, Venus, and Mars), the Pioneer program (Pioneer 10, launched in 1973, was the first human-made object to leave the solar system, which it did in 1986), and the Voyagers (launched in 1977 for exploration of the outer planets of the solar system). SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS, in addition to the early Sputniks, included the Lunas, which in 1959 sent the first space vehicle to reach the moon; the VEGAS, which were deployed on Venus in 1985; and the SALYUT program of large space stations (1971–91) for human operation in earth's orbit. Orbiting space stations and satellites were major parts of the developing programs. In 1958, the first attempt at establishing a communications receiver and transmitter in space was made, and by 1963 the United States established the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) to utilize the new communications technologies. In 1964 the United States provided the initiative for the formation of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT) as a vehicle for providing access for all countries to space communications satellites. Initially the consortium had 12 members, but by the 1990s there were more than 100 states involved in INTELSAT. The Soviet Union also established a multinational network, utilizing its MOLNIYA satellite systems. By the 1980s satellites played an increasingly important role in virtually all aspects of global communications. A U.S. shuttle mission in 1983, for example, deployed or worked with communications satellites from West Germany, Canada, and Indonesia, and in 1985 a consortium of Arab states established a special Arab-world communications satellite system. By the early 1990s more than 200 countries relied in some significant way on satellites to meet their needs for communications services. | 5 |
| HEALTH AND DISEASE CONTROL. The globalization of human life in the 20th century had an important impact on issues of health and disease control. Humans have always been subject to interregional outbreaks of disease that have spread across continents. The Black Death plagues seen in postclassical Eastern Hemisphere societies are important examples, as is the spread of smallpox into the Western Hemisphere in the early era of European expansion. However, by the second half of the 20th century, conscious human activity on a global scale had transformed the world health situation, as had the involuntary consequences of intensified human interactions. | 6 |
| Conscious disease control made important advances in the 20th century. Expanded research facilities made it possible to lessen and sometimes even eliminate major historical illnesses. Research on the crippling disease poliomyelitis resulted in the development of vaccines by Jonas Salk in 1953–54 and of an oral vaccine by Albert Sabine in 1960, significantly reducing the incidence of this disease. In the case of SMALLPOX, a vaccine had already been developed in the 19th century, but the disease was still relatively common in the 20th. In 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the beginning of a program aimed at the total eradication of smallpox, and in 1979 WHO officially declared that the world was smallpox free. This represented a notable turning point in the world history of human health, since smallpox had been one of the most deadly diseases in history. Other major historic diseases have also been affected by 20th-century developments. MALARIA is an ancient and widespread disease whose causes were discovered in the late 19th century. It is transmitted by mosquitoes, so mosquito control was an important part of combatting the disease. Following World War II, the development of the highly effective insecticide DDT, and its extensive use in regions with a high incidence of malaria, lead to a reduction in the number of people infected. On the basis of the growing effectiveness of insecticides, the World Health Organization announced in 1955 the initiation of a program for the worldwide eradication of malaria. Throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America, extensive use of insecticides was part of the eradication program, and there was a reduction in the incidence of malaria. However, migrations of people, especially in Africa, the emergence of DDT-resistant strains of mosquitoes, and the discovery of the disastrous environmental consequences of using DDT were important factors in making the total eradication of malaria impossible. The modern history of other major diseases also involves the development of powerful drugs for effective treatment and the subsequent emergence of drug-resistant variants of the disease. Effective drug treatment of TUBERCULOSIS (TB) had been readily available in the industrialized world since the 1950s. However, in the 1980s the number of cases of TB rose significantly. While much of this increase could be attributed to increasing poverty in many areas and to the rise of AIDS, which made people more susceptible to TB, the number of drug-resistant strains of TB had doubled within the decade as well. Overuse and misuse of the powerful drugs created by medical research had the potential to create dangerous versions of many ancient diseases. | 7 |
| New diseases also were encouraged by the globalization process. Great continental pandemics are a part of world history, but throughout most of history, the spread of diseases, even in pandemic conditions, was a relatively slow process tied to the speed of the transportation facilities available. In a globalized world of high-speed transport, diseases can spread around the world in remarkably short time periods. FLU VIRUSES develop new strains rapidly, and this makes immunization and treatment difficult. The great influenza pandemic in 1918–19 began as a result of the coming together of soldiers from North America, Europe, and Africa in northern France at the end of World War I. The disease spread rapidly throughout the world, killing possibly as many as 20 million people. Such great flu pandemics are always possible, because of the constant interaction of global populations, but modern research facilities enable a rapid response in recognition of new virus strains and the creation of appropriate vaccines. In the second half of the century, there have been many instances of the rise and spread of a new flu virus followed by a relatively rapid global response, so the catastrophe of the influenza epidemic of 1918–19 has not been repeated. There have, however, been widespread epidemics, like the epidemics of Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968. The development and spread of the HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS (HIV), which causes ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS), was the single most important new disease epidemic in the second half of the 20th century. The disease spread widely in parts of Africa (See Overview). The first cases were reported and identified in the United States in 1981, and by mid-1993 almost 200,000 deaths from AIDS had been reported in the United States alone. World Health Organization estimates in mid-1993 were that more than 25 million cumulative AIDS cases had occurred in the world by that date. More than 80 percent of the estimated cases were in developing countries, but the disease had spread throughout the world. Despite major efforts, vaccines and cures had not been found by the end of the century. | 8 |
| On June 23, 2000, the U.S. announced that its Human Genome Project scientists had completed a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome. | 9 |
| AGRICULTURE AND FOOD RELIEF. Agricultural production remained a regional issue for the most part, though food exports continued to increase. International food aid, developed in response to famine conditions in Europe after World War I, increased after 1945. The United States provided food relief to postwar Europe. Private organizations and governments organized food relief in a number of subsequent famine situations, such as that in Somalia in 1993. The agricultural arm of the United Nations, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, sponsored many studies and development projects to promote greater agricultural productivity in many areas. As part of the cold war rivalry, the United States and its allies provided agricultural experts to promote food production in many areas. Agricultural experts from the United States contributed greatly to the GREEN REVOLUTION that improved food conditions in India and other parts of Asia by the 1960s. High-yield Mexican wheat (Sonora 64) and Taiwanese and Philippine rice (Taichung Native I and Tainan II and IR 8), developed by the United States, greatly increased India's food grain production. Greater food production helped account for a longer life expectancy (to 51 years in India by 1969) in many Third World countries. | 10 |
| INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES. The development of new means of communication and information management created a revolutionary transformation of virtually every aspect of human life in the second half of the 20th century. The wireless radio and the telephone were already widely used by the middle of the century, changing the way people around the world gained information and communicated with each other. Motion pictures had already begun to transform entertainment. Following World War II, technologies in these media developed significantly. Telephones became increasingly automated and mobile, with the handheld, wireless telephone of the 1990s being representative of the changes. New technologies rapidly became available for mass public use in virtually every part of the world. TELEVISION was conceived during the 19th century, and the first public broadcasts in black and white were made in the 1930s. However, it was in the post–World War II period that television rapidly became a major medium for communication. In the United States in 1949, there were approximately 1 million TV sets in use. By 1951 that number was 10 million, and in 1975, the number of TVs in use had risen to more than 100 million. The first television transmissions in Japan were made in 1953, and by 1975 television reached more than 90 percent of all Japanese households. Similar expansions of television took place throughout the world. By the 1990s, a global network of television stations, such as the Cable News Network (CNN), could broadcast via satellite to any country in the world. Direct, live broadcasting of events made them known immediately around the world. The beginning of the U.S. bombing of Baghdad in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War was viewed by the worldwide CNN television audience as it happened. In 1992 it was estimated that even in relatively isolated countries, like Papua New Guinea, there were ten thousand TVs, or 1 for every 383 persons, while in countries like Panama, there was 1 for 12 and in Poland, 1 for 7. In the United Kingdom, the ratio was 1 television receiver for every 2.9 persons, and in France, 1 per 1.9 persons. The immediacy of the visual images of television was an important force in the increasing sense in the 1990s that the world is a “global village.” The technologies for duplication and transmission of documents also created important new conditions for communication. A special method of xerography, a form of electrostatic printing, made possible the rapid reproduction of exact copies in a convenient dry-printing process. This process was developed by Chester Floyd Carlson in the 1930s and was commercially developed by the Xerox Corporation by the late 1950s. The ease of the reproduction process transformed many administrative, business, and scholarly activities. Another important development was in fascimile, or FAX TRANSMISSION, of exact copies over telephone lines. Basic transmission methods had been developed early in the 20th century and were used by newspapers and police forces. However, these were slow and inefficient until they were combined with computer technology and digitalization processes. In 1980 common standards for transmission methods and equipment were established, and the fax machine rapidly became an important vehicle for international communication. In the rise of revolutionary movements in the late 1980s, fax technology was important in that it provided an uncensorable vehicle for communication. The ELECTRONIC COMPUTER is in many ways the symbol of the new technological age of the second half of the 20th century. For centuries, people had developed various calculating machines and other mechanical devices, and in the early 20th century “business machines” performed accounting and calculating functions. However, during World War II the first truly electronic digital computers were designed. By the 1950s, the first commercially available computers were the UNIVAC, produced by the Sperry Rand Corporation, and the EDVAC. Through the 1950s and 1960s, computers were large and expensive, and only highly trained experts could operate them. Even at this stage, the great magnitude of calculations that could be performed meant computers had a major impact on military technology and scientific research. By the 1970s, important changes were taking place. Miniaturization of component parts and greater sophistication of theory and design meant that corporations like Cray Research and Control Data could produce small SUPERCOMPUTERS capable of very large numbers of operations. At the same time, small PERSONAL COMPUTERS began to be developed, and companies like Apple Computer and Commodore led the field in creating computers for home use and computer games. By the 1990s, in most industrialized countries the computer had transformed important aspects of daily life and had become a powerful tool for military defense and scientific research. | 11 |
| New modes of international communication, along with larger international business organizations, produced more intense global cultural interactions. Most of these built on previous trends in Western Europe and the United States. Western-based political groups like Amnesty International (founded in London, 1961) monitored human rights violations in many countries and tried to mobilize world public opinion. The “international” architectural style, implemented by practitioners from many regions, created similar kinds of buildings in various cities. Western rock music, disseminated through cable television and world concert tours, had a strong impact in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Popular culture also changed under the influence of U.S. exports of films, television shows, fashions (such as blue jeans) and fast-food chains. AMERICANIZATION affected Western Europe as well as other parts of the world. Called “coca-colonization” by French critics in the 1950s, it brought new-style supermarkets to many areas, reduced the filmmaking industries of many countries, particularly at the popular level, and gave rise to imitations—like the spread of television game shows—even where American products were not directly used. English increased in importance as the most commonly learned second language. Yet no single world culture formed. Western influences were variously used—Japanese game shows, for example, involved a distinctive level of shaming—and rejected. The rejection of these influences played a role in nationalist and religious revivals by the 1970s. | 12 |
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