Our history: 1950s
1950 Pent-up demand for consumer products explodes. Subscriptions to Consumer Reports reach nearly 400,000. 1951 The Newspaper Guild of New York begins representing Consumers Union's unionized staff. 1952 The first automobile Frequency-of-Repair tables appear in Consumer Reports, based on readers' responses to the Annual Questionnaire. 1953 Consumer Reports publishes the first in a  series of reports on the tar and nicotine content of cigarette smoke and health hazards of smoking. Information on exactly what cigarettes contained was available from no other source at the time. 1954 Consumers Union moves its headquarters from Union Square in New York City to a converted factory building in Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
Consumer Reports tests its first color TV sets, Westinghouse models that cost $1,295. They're rated excellent at showing stationary objects, but moving objects appeared blurred. 1954 The Senate "condemns" Joseph McCarthy, the Republican from Wisconsin, thus ending the so-called McCarthy Era. The same year, the House Un-American Activities Committee announces it's dropping Consumers Union from its list of subversive organizations. In 1940, Consumer Reports had laughed off such accusations. "If the condemnation of worthless, adulterated, and misrepresented products is a communistic activity, then the Federal Food & Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and the American Medical Association must be paid direct from Moscow." 1959 Consumer Reports starts reporting on the strontium-90 content of the U.S. diet, particularly milk--contamination caused by fallout from the testing of nuclear weapons.
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