The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. Construction of the system was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956; the system extends throughout the contiguous United States and has routes in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The U. S. federal government first funded roadways through the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, began an effort to construct a national road grid with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921. After Dwight D. Eisenhower became president in 1953, his administration developed a proposal for an interstate highway system resulting in the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Construction of the Interstate Highway System was proclaimed complete in 1992, though some planned routes were canceled and several routes have stretches that do not conform with federal standards; the cost of construction of the Interstate Highway System was $114 billion.

The original system has been expanded numerous times through the creation of new designations and the extension of existing designations. Though much of their construction was funded by the federal government, Interstate Highways are owned by the state in which they were built. All Interstates must meet federal standards such as having controlled access, using a minimal number of traffic lights, complying with federal traffic sign specifications. Interstate Highways use a numbering scheme in which primary Interstates are assigned one- or two-digit numbers and shorter routes are assigned three-digit numbers where the last two digits match the parent route; the Interstate Highway System is financed through the Highway Trust Fund, which itself is funded by a federal fuel tax. Though federal legislation banned the collection of tolls, some Interstate routes are toll roads; as of 2016, about one-quarter of all vehicle miles driven in the country used the Interstate Highway System, which had a total length of 48,191 miles.

Several future routes are in development. The United States government's efforts to construct a national network of highways began on an ad hoc basis with the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, which provided for $75 million over a five-year period for matching funds to the states for the construction and improvement of highways; the nation's revenue needs associated with World War I prevented any significant implementation of this policy, which expired in 1921. In December 1918, E. J. Mehren, a civil engineer and the editor of Engineering News-Record, presented his "A Suggested National Highway Policy and Plan" during a gathering of the State Highway Officials and Highway Industries Association at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. In the plan, Mehren proposed a 50,000-mile system, consisting of five east–west routes and 10 north–south routes; the system would include two percent of all roads and would pass through every state at a cost of $25,000 per mile, providing commercial as well as military transport benefits.

As the landmark 1916 law expired, new legislation was passed—the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921. This new road construction initiative once again provided for federal matching funds for road construction and improvement, $75 million allocated annually. Moreover, this new legislation for the first time sought to target these funds to the construction of a national road grid of interconnected "primary highways", setting up cooperation among the various state highway planning boards; the Bureau of Public Roads asked the Army to provide a list of roads that it considered necessary for national defense. In 1922, General John J. Pershing, former head of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during the war, complied by submitting a detailed network of 20,000 miles of interconnected primary highways—the so-called Pershing Map. A boom in road construction followed throughout the decade of the 1920s, with such projects as the New York parkway system constructed as part of a new national highway system.

As automobile traffic increased, planners saw a need for such an interconnected national system to supplement the existing non-freeway, United States Numbered Highways system. By the late 1930s, planning had expanded to a system of new superhighways. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave Thomas MacDonald, chief at the Bureau of Public Roads, a hand-drawn map of the United States marked with eight superhighway corridors for study. In 1939, Bureau of Public Roads Division of Information chief Herbert S. Fairbank wrote a report called Toll Roads and Free Roads, "the first formal description of what became the Interstate Highway System" and, in 1944, the themed Interregional Highways; the Interstate Highway System gained a champion in President Dwight D. Eisenhower, influenced by his experiences as a young Army officer crossing the country in the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America. Eisenhower gained an appreciation of the Reichsautobahn system, the first "national" implementation of modern Germany's Autobahn network, as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II.

In 1954, Eisenhower appointed General Lucius D. Clay to head a committee charged with proposing an interstate highway system plan. Summing up motivations for the construction of such a system, Clay stated, It was evident we needed better highways. We needed them for safety. We needed them for defense purposes, if that should be necessary, and we needed them for the economy. Not

After the Rain Comes Sunshine is a 1949 West German comedy film directed by Erich Kobler and starring Sonja Ziemann, Gert Fröbe and Rudolf Platte. It takes its title from a popular song of the postwar era; the film's sets were designed by the art director Theo Zwierski. Sonja Ziemann as Sabine Gert Fröbe as Konstantin Rudolf Platte as Onkel Eduard Ralph Lothar as Beni Willy Reichert as Der Bürgermeister Liesl Karlstadt as Die Bürgermeisterin Beppo Brem as Polizist Schneider Willi Rose as Hauptwachtmeister Gunnar Möller as Polizist Otto Gisela von Jagen as Agathe Renate Mannhardt as Renate Heini Göbel as Der Bandit Ellinor von Hartlieb as Babett Paula Braend as Paula Buchenau Gerald Grote. Der Kommissar: eine Serie und ihre Folgen. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2003. After the Rain Comes Sunshine on IMDb

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