Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10)

by James T. Patterson

Many things that middle-class Americans took for granted by the 1960s scarcely existed for the 139.9 million people who inhabited the forty-eight states in 1945 or for the 151.7 million in 1950. Consider a few of these things: supermarkets, malls, fast-food chains, residential air-conditioning, ranch-style homes, freezers, dishwashers, and detergents. Also ballpoint pens, hi-fis, tape recorders, long-playing records, Polaroid cameras, computers, and transistors. And four-lane highways, automatic transmissions and direction signals, tubeless tires, and power steering. In 1945 only 46 percent of households had a telephone; to get long distance, people paid a good deal and asked for an operator. In 1950, 10 percent of families had television sets and 38 percent had never seen a TV program. Although 33 million of America's roughly 38 million households in 1945 had radios, these were for the most part bulky things cased in wooden cabinets, and they took time to warm up. Some 52 percent of farm dwellings, inhabited by more than 25 million people, had no electricity in 1945.