Category: Open Lines

Friday, July 31st. The first patent in the young United States was issued on this date in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a new method of making potash — useful in producing soap, fertilizer, and glass. The Constitution recognized, for the first time in history, the intrinsic right of an inventor to profit from his invention. Hopkins’ application was initially reviewed by Thomas Jefferson and approved by President Washington. By 1802, the U.S. Patent Office was established to …

The national government’s broad involvement in individual health insurance goes back to this date 50 years ago. That’s when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments, which established Medicare and Medicaid. The legislation was introduced in Congress in March 1965, and went through more than 500 amendments before being passed by large majorities in both the House and Senate. In January 1966, President Johnson handed the first Medicare cards to former President Harry Truman — who had advocated such …

Long before there were automobiles in the U.S., good roads were badly needed to get farm produce to market and to allow people to go visiting and shopping without battling mud. An American professor who had emigrated from Belgium — Edward de Smedt — invented an asphalt mix, which could be applied in sheets to make a smooth surface. His first trial occurred on this date in 1870 on William Street in Newark, New Jersey. Even though de Smedt’s technique …

The nation’s love affair with automobiles is generations old. Our devotion can be traced down through the decades by looking at advertising, as cars progressed from romantic if noisy new playthings to a near necessity in our vast country. The first known national ad promoting a car appeared at the end of July 1898 in the Scientific American magazine. It was for the now forgotten Winton Motor Carriage with the headline “dispense with a horse.” Americans did just that, and …

The origins of the humble hamburger are unclear, but a precursor traces back as far as the fifth century in Imperial Rome. There are several claimants for the distinction of serving the first recognizable, made in the USA hamburger. One of them was Oscar Weber Bilby of Oklahoma. He is supposed to have served the first burgers on this month in 1891. Some forms of ground or chopped beef had previously been served on or between slices of bread. But …

Friday, July 24th. Today is National Drive-Thru Day, following closely on National Junk Food Day. But rather than pass judgment, this occasion recognizes the popularity of restaurants that serve customers wanting to keep on the move. The first such service is believed to have been at Red’s Giant Hamburg on Route 66 in Springfield, Missouri, in 1947. The following year, the concept was expanded by the In N Out Burger restaurants in California. At the time, drive-in restaurants were very …

With the nation’s average warmest day of the year coming up tomorrow, many of us welcome ducking into a cool office, business, or home. For this relief, we can thank Willis Carrier, who in the depths of winter in 1906 received a patent for what he called an “apparatus for treating air.” His idea has changed the way many Americans live and where they might comfortably do so. He launched his own company 100 years ago this month, and the …

The home front during World War II had to cope with some irritating impositions, notably gas rationing and a lack of new cars and tires. But what for many was a real crisis was coffee rationing. Decreed in 1942 because of hoarding and supply concerns, it proved very unpopular. Late this month in 1943, President Roosevelt ended the program because imports had rebounded. Coffee may have been an early import by the Jamestown colony in the 17th century. Coffee consumption …

A substantial and recurring feature of national media reporting — on TV, in newspapers and on the web — is devoted to nutrition and health. There, doctors and public health officials express concerns about obesity, diabetes, and the quality of the diet of many Americans. However, junk food shows little sign of waning in popularity. And every devil has its advocate, as today is National Junk Food Day. It celebrates the naughty temptations on offer, notably at the nearly quarter-million …

It took a while after the invention of the gas-powered automobile by Karl Benz in Germany in 1886 for someone to steal the wheels. The first stolen car is said to be of a French aristocrat’s Peugeot in Paris in 1896. In this country, the first auto theft is believed to have occurred in St. Louis in 1905. But this slow beginning has become an all-too-robust present. With July and August being the peak months for automotive thefts, this is …

Friday, July 17th. Harvard University, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Thus, it was already a bit long in the tooth when on this date in 1867, it opened the first dental school associated with a medical school. It was also the first to be permanently established by a university, making the full scholarly and scientific resources of a university available to dental education. Today, there are 65 dental …

On this date in 1935, drivers in Oklahoma City were confronted with America’s first parking meter, collecting rent for a space on the corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue. While local drivers could avoid that single space, they couldn’t escape for long. That meter was just the first of many to sprout up in Oklahoma City and across the nation, as millions of ticketed motorists will attest. While municipalities sought to rotate street parking spots among more drivers, raising …

It’s time to pass the mixed carrots, or maybe the pear zucchini corn. Fremont, Michigan is celebrating the 25th annual National Baby Food Festival, which begins today and ends Saturday. The town of 4,000 is home to the Gerber Baby Food Company, and is welcoming thousands of visitors to enjoy entertainment as well as baby food eating contests by adults and a baby crawl race. Today in the U.S., there are around 3.9 million babies being cradled or held in …

Almost every home has at least one. They can be made out of cloth, plastic, or metal. Seamstresses and tailors use them, as do professional craftsmen and weekend do-it-yourselfers. It’s the tape measure, patented on this date in 1868 by Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut. His version had a feature still found today — a spring click lock to hold the tape at any desired point. One notable tape measure was 600 feet long and gold plated. It …

Major league baseball is paused in order to play its 86th All-Star Game. Tomorrow’s event takes place in Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, home of baseball’s oldest franchise — the Reds. The first All-Star Game was played on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. In 1933, all 16 teams in the major leagues were clustered in the northeast of the country, with St. Louis being the southern-most and farthest west outpost of the national pastime. That year, the …

Friday, July 10th. A number of special observances are held in July — three of them seem just right for summer. It’s not only National Grilling Month but also National Hot Dog Month and, since 1984, National Ice Cream Month. Whether we call them frankfurters or just plain hot dogs, Americans eat some 7 billion of them during the summer months, grilled, microwaved, or boiled. While more hot dogs are consumed during the season, they are popular all year round …

One of the most important inventions of our times was announced in early July 1948 in a press release by Bell Laboratories in New Jersey — the transfer resistance device — far better known as the transistor. The small, simple, and tough transistor replaced fragile and heat-generating vacuum tubes, which had been the heart of electronics for decades. The discovery led to the development of the integrated circuit and the microprocessor that are the basis of modern electronics. Today, transistor …

On this date in 1831, a baby was born in Knoxville, Georgia who would grow up to invent a product that rather symbolizes America all around the world. John Stith Pemberton was a pharmacist addicted to morphine after using it to treat a wound he received as a Confederate officer in the Civil War. His search for a cure for the addiction, which he never found, led him to create a beverage with a powerful, global attraction.  His syrup debuted …

When something is proclaimed the best thing since sliced bread, that praise doesn’t encompass as much time as one might think. Sliced bread, wrapped for sale in wax paper, first appeared on store shelves on this date in 1928 in Chillicothe, Missouri.  The Chillicothe Baking Company’s innovation of uniform, pre-sliced bread loaves remained local for a short while. By the 1930s, the obvious convenience of satisfactory sliced bread was spreading nationally. In large part, this was due to the Wonder …

The Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1788, somewhat famously made this nation the first in the world to conduct a census of population on a regular basis. Every 10 years, on years ending in zero, in fact. Divisibility by tens had still more and earlier attraction for the Continental Congress, as on this date in 1785, for the first time in history, a nation adopted a decimal coinage system, founded on the dollar we know today. At the …