The United States in the 1950s experienced marked economic growth – with an increase in manufacturing and home construction amongst a post–World War II economic expansion. The Cold War and its associated conflicts helped create a politically conservative climate in the country, as the quasi-confrontation intensified throughout the entire decade. Fear of communism caused public Congressional hearings in both houses of Congress while anti-communism was the prevailing sentiment in the United States throughout the period. Conformity and conservatism characterized the social norms of the time. Accordingly, the 1950s in the United States are generally considered both socially conservative and highly materialistic in nature. The 1950s are noted in United States history as a time of compliance, conformity and also, to a lesser extent, of rebellion. Major U.S. events during the decade included: the Korean War (1950–1953); the 1952 election of Second World War hero and retired Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower as President and his subsequent re-election in 1956; the Red Scare and anti-communist concerns of the McCarthy-era; and the U.S. reaction to the 1957 launch by the Soviet Union of the Sputnik satellite, a major milestone in the Cold War.
Isaac Newton was creative in his use of prisms to show how white light is actually made up of multiple colors. He used logic in the way he presented his arguments rhetorically in order to convince readers of the correctness of his conclusions.
Newton was not the first to experiment with passing light through prisms to determine how light works. French philosopher Rene Descartes had done prism experiments of his own. But Descartes had thought that passing through a prism actually modified the light in order to produce the color spectrum. Newton correctly understood that when light refracted through the prism, it revealed the range of colors that were naturally in the light. He then used a second prism, blocking all but one color, to show that a single color passing through a prism was not modified in color. He also showed--by positioning the second prism differently--how the multiple colors of light could be recombined into white light again.
Newton's 1672 paper on light refracting through prisms established his reputation as a scientist. He continued to study light throughout his scientific career, publishing a larger work in 1704 on <em>Opticks </em>(as they spelled "optics" then).
