Farnsworth House

One of the pioneers  of Modern architectures is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who is a German-American Architect. Farnsworth House is the one of his famous work. The house was build in 1946 through 1951 . it was built as a weekend retreat outside of chicago for an independent professional woman "Dr. Erin Farnsworth". Here, Mies explored the relationship between people, shelter, and nature. The glass pavilion is raised six feet above a floodplain next to the Fox River, surrounded by forest and rural prairies.

The highly-crafted pristine white structural frame and all-glass walls define a simple rectilinear interior space, allowing nature and light to envelop the interior space. A wood-panelled fireplace (also housing mechanical equipment, kitchen, and toilets) is positioned within the open space to suggest living, dining and sleeping spaces without using walls. No partitions touch the surrounding all-glass enclosure. Without solid exterior walls, full-height draperies on a perimeter track allow freedom to provide full or partial privacy when and where desired. The house has been described as sublime, a temple hovering between heaven and earth, a poem, a work of art.

The Farnsworth House and its 60-acre (240,000 m2) wooded site was purchased at auction for US$7.5 million by preservation groups in 2004 and is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a public museum. The building influenced the creation of hundreds of modernist glass houses, most notably the Glass House by Philip Johnson, located near New York City and also now owned by the National Trust.

The Atomic bombs

The infamous event of the 1940's (May, 8 1945) in my opinion is the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The brutality of the results cant be justified by war. The atomic bombs claimed so many life and left the rest effected for so many years.

ENIAC

Partnership of John Mauchly & John Presper Eckert

On May 31, 1943, the military commission on the new computer began; John Mauchly was the chief consultant and John Presper Eckert was the chief engineer. Eckert was a graduate student studying at the Moore School when he met John Mauchly in 1943. It took the team about one year to design the ENIAC and 18 months and 500,000 tax dollars to build it. By that time, the war was over. The ENIAC was still put to work by the military doing calculations for the design of a hydrogen bomb, weather prediction, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies and wind-tunnel design.

What Was Inside The ENIAC?

The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. It covered 1800 square feet (167 square meters) of floor space, weighed 30 tons, consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power. There was even a rumor that when turned on the ENIAC caused the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts, however, this was first reported incorrectly by the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1946 and since then has become an urban myth.

In one second, the ENIAC (one thousand times faster than any other calculating machine to date) could perform 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications or 38 divisions. The use of vacuum tubes instead of switches and relays created the increase in speed, but it was not a quick machine to re-program. Programming changes would take the technicians weeks, and the machine always required long hours of maintenance. As a side note, research on the ENIAC led to many improvements in the vacuum tube.

Academy Awards in 1940

 In 1940's Academy Award, the film "Gone with the wind" was the film that got most of the oscars.

• Best Actress in a Leading Role
• Vivien Leigh
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role
• Hattie McDaniel
• Became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Oscar.
• Best Art Direction
• Lyle R. Wheeler
• Best Cinematography, Color
• Ernest Haller
• Ray Rennahan
• Best Director
• Victor Fleming
• Best Film Editing
• Hal C. Kern
• James E. Newcom
• Best Picture
• (Selznick International Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)).
• Best Writing, Screenplay
• Sidney Howard
• Technical Achievement Award
• R.D. Musgrave
• (Selznick International Pictures Inc.).
• For pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment in the production Gone with the Wind.
• Honorary Award
• William Cameron Menzies
• For outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood in the production of Gone with the Wind (plaque).

Music in the 1940's

Jazz was the most popular form of music during the war, but there were audiences for country music, western swing, blues and R&B, rhythm and blues.

It was hard to keep bands together. By October, 1942, the jazz magazine Down Beat was running a regular feature called "Killed in Action" listing musicians who had been lost. At one point, there were over 60 bandleaders who enlisted. Others, like Benny Goodman, who couldn't qualify because of health or age volunteered to go to the troops through the USO or who made special "V-Discs" that were distributed to troops.

Radio in the 1940's

By 1940, radio had become a mass medium. Almost 80 percent of the households in the U.S. owned a radio. Yet before the war, only seven percent of the airtime was devoted to news. By the end of the war, 25 percent of the airtime was news, and audiences had been transported to the battlefront in live and recorded reports.The desperate need for news spurred additional radio set sales despite a cutback in production because of wartime rationing.

Songs captured the emotions of the war. Some spoke of the longings that loved ones felt for each other when they were separated by events, and these are the songs that have endured. Other songs of longing included –

• "Shoo-Shoo Baby" where the Andrews Sisters told a young one don't cry because you're papa's off to the seven seas. "Papa's gotta be rough now / so that he can be sweet to you another day."
• "I'm Making Believe" that you're in my arms though I know you're so far away.
• "I'll Be Seeing You" talked about all the familiar places, including "the morning sun / And when the night is new / I'll be looking at the moon / But I'll be seeing you."
• In 1943,"I'll be Home by Christmas" struck a bittersweet note when it finished with "... if only in my dreams." The song was at the top of charts for 11 weeks, and the original Bing Crosby version along with countless others have been popular sellers ever since.

Yet there were other songs that dealt head on with the sense of loss when a relationship came apart.
"Somebody Else is Taking My Place" rose to number 11 on the charts in 1942.

"Somebody else is taking my place
Somebody else now shares your embrace
While I am trying
To keep from crying
You go around with a smile on your face
Little you care for vows that you made
Little you care how much I have paid
My heart is aching
My heart is breaking
For somebody's taking my place."

In "My Heart Tells Me," a jilted lover wonders whether or not to believe it when "you say our love means everything … My heart tells me I will cry again / Lips that kiss like yours could lie again… / Should I believe my heart or you?"

1940's toys

Even children's toys was effected by the propaganda of war. Some toys were models of military airplanes or trucks. Other games were kits for Nurses or Army Doctors. Some were models of trains other were bicycles, cars models and Farm models. The most interesting toy in my opinion is the Blackbird Crystal Set it is the basic and first type of modern day walkie-talkies.