50 Years Ago What Americans and Indians were doing in 1958

By Richa Varma

The National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) was created in October 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, partially in response to America's fear of falling behind the Soviet Union in the exploration of outer space. NASA integrated the 8,000-strong workforce and missions of its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The new agency was made responsible for civilian human, satellite and robotic space programs. At that time, NASA had an annual budget of $100 million. Its net operational cost for 2007 was $15.1 billion.

Indian technicians tried their hands at using American impact grinders, cutting glass as easily as with diamonds and "spinning" metal at the U.S. Small Industries Exhibit at the Ferozshah Kotla Grounds in New Delhi on December 10, 1958. A combined effort of American manufacturers and the U.S. government, the month-long exhibit demonstrated the economic importance of new machinery for small businesses. "We have learned in the United States that small business plays a primary part in economic and social progress," Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker said while inaugurating the exhibit, reflecting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's beliefs that many of India's 400 million people could find fruitful work in small and village businesses rather than in big industries.

In the summer of 1958, American electrical engineer Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit, the key behind today's high-technology world. The microchip is used in processing data and storing memory in everything from personal computers to cell phones. During World War II, Kilby had joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in India, repairing radios at an outpost in the northeast. After the war, he finished university and joined Texas Instruments, where he came up with the groundbreaking idea of the integrated circuit and obtained more than 60 patents for a variety of electronic inventions. The integrated circuit won Kilby the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000, five years before his death.

Alaska became the 49th U.S. state on July 7, 1958, when President Eisenhower signed into law the Alaska Statehood Act that had been passed by the U.S. Congress on June 30. Eisenhower (left) is with Alaska Governor Mike Stepovich, holding a celebratory newspaper headline the next day. Alaska's path to becoming America's largest state began in 1867, when Treasury Secretary William Seward convinced President Andrew Johnson to purchase the 1.53-million-square-kilometer territory from Russia for $7.2 million. Critics attacked the purchase for the vast amount of money spent, labeling it "Seward's icebox" and Johnson's "polar bear garden." The discovery of gold in the late 1890s increased its value as a U.S. possession and boosted its population.

Four years after the U.S. Navy commissioned the world's first nuclear powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, it became the first vessel to pass through the North Pole. There were 116 men aboard when the feat was accomplished on August 3, 1958. After the voyage, the entire crew was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for their achievement, the first time the award was given in peace time. The submarine was decommissioned in 1980, after 25 years of shattering all submerged speed and distance records, and traveling more than 800,000 kilometers.

From performing Pulitzer Prize-winning plays to organizing workshops for local artists, the first American drama group to visit India had a busy itinerary in March-April, 1958. The amateur troupe consisted of 13 students and three faculty members from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Among the works performed was American playwright Thornton Wilder's "Pullman car Hiawatha."

During two sittings with the Indian Prime Minister, American sculptor Mack M. Greene, a visiting Fulbright scholar, chiseled two busts of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1958. Greene was working as a physical education lecturer at the YMCA College in Madras. One of the busts, in bronze, was presented to Nehru by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker in October, 1958. "The labor and talent which the sculptor has put into this figure and your interest in his artistic effort demonstrate the friendship and good feeling between our two countries," Bunker said while making the presentation. Bunker (left) and Greene (center) presented the second bust, in granite, to Senator J. William Ful-bright (right), father of the Fulbright educational exchange program, when he visited New Delhi.

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Courtesy: SPAN Magazine