With the discovery of penicillin in 1928, interest in vaccines to prevent pneumonia waned. The assumption was that the problem would largely be eliminated by use of this antibiotic. Austrian and Gold, however, showed that, despite treatment with penicillin, deaths from pneumococcal pneumonia were unchanged in the first 96 hours of therapy. These efforts ultimately led to the licensing first of a 14-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1977 followed by the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1983.