Dealing with one of the oldest challenges to house cleaning — dust — motivated Ives McGaffey of Chicago to patent the first vacuum cleaner in the U.S. this week in 1869. It was hand powered, made of wood and canvas, and sold under the name “Whirlwind.” Thirty years later, a motorized vacuum cleaner was patented. The problem with it was that the motor was gas powered, and thus had to run outside the house, using very long hoses for the …
Category: Open Lines
Monday Open Line
A major pop culture phenomenon, lasting several decades, began on this date in 1933. With the automobile increasingly reshaping Americans’ habits, Richard Hollingshead opened the nation’s first drive-in movie theater in Camden, New Jersey. Soon, drive-in movies became a fixture across the country and a popular place for teenage dating and family outings. Drive-ins reached their peak in the 1950s. There were some 20,000 movie theaters then, and almost 5,000 of them were drive-ins. Now, there are nearly 4,500 movie …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, June 3rd. Among the assorted observances in June is one that will be welcomed by a great part of the U.S. population — especially youngsters. It’s National Candy Month, although Americans consume about 22 pounds of candy year round, much of it is chocolate. There are about 1,200 firms in the U.S. making chocolate and cocoa products worth $14.5 billion a year. Another 420 locations make nonchocolate confections selling for $8 billion. Together, there are more than 56,000 Americans …
Thursday Open Line
On this date 91 years ago, Congress passed — and President Coolidge signed — the Indian Citizenship Act, which stated “all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby declared to be, citizens of the United States: Provided that the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.” Prior to this act, about two-thirds of American Indians …
Wednesday Open Line
The first public phone booth was installed on this date in 1880 in New Haven, Connecticut, just four years after the telephone was invented. These first public telephones were supervised by attendants, while those operated by coins came along nine years later. Today, it’s increasingly rare to see a pay phone beyond transportation terminals, but the latest models have computer-like features, and worldwide, some booths are converting to wireless fidelity hot spots. Now, almost 98 percent of U.S. households have …
Tuesday Open Line
One of the worst calamities to hit the U.S. happened on this date in 1889 — the Johnstown, Pennsylvania Flood. Torrential rains caused a nearby artificial lake to spill over and weaken its earthen dam. When the dam broke, it unleashed 20 million tons of water in a giant wave that roared through Johnstown, killing more than 2,300 people, and destroying the homes of thousands more. The flood remains one of the nation’s most costly, single weather-related disasters. While tornadoes …
Monday Open Line
Today is Memorial Day, looked on as the start of the summer season, and a time for family gatherings and sporting events. But the true meaning of the day is underlined by the continuing sacrifices made by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and other tense areas. The first official observance of Memorial Day was on May 30 in 1868. Ordered by Gen. John Logan, flowers were placed on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. From …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, May 27th. The difficulty of neatly painting cars two different colors led to the patenting of one of the world’s most practical on this date in 1930. Five years earlier, Richard Drew, while working for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, had developed an easy-to-peel, glue-backed masking tape. It considerably eased the task of separating two-tone paint jobs on new cars, which until then involved moistened plaster tape. Then, he expanded its use by introducing a clear backing. The …
Thursday Open Line
The first public high school in the U.S. was founded this month in 1820. The English Classical School opened in 1821 with 101 male students in Boston, which also was the seat for America’s first high school of any kind, the Boston Latin Grammar School. Boston Latin, beginning in 1635, sought to prepare young men for admittance to Harvard as divinity students. English Classical placed its emphasis on more general studies. High schools were slow to spread, and by 1870, …
Wednesday Open Line
The first criminal case in the U.S. in which fingerprint evidence alone won conviction occurred this month in New York City in 1911. Burglary suspect Caesar Cella, alias Charles Crispi, was undone by prints identified by detective Joseph Faurot. The first known crime case solved by fingerprint matching occurred in 1898 in India, but the unique pattern of each person’s fingerprints had been known since ancient China. The Census Bureau’s national prisoner statistics program reports the federal and state prison …
Tuesday Open Line
In a way, today marks the 172nd birthday of the World Wide Web. Only it was electro-mechanical, not digital. On this date in 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse activated the first telegraph line, sending a dots-and-dashes code message from the U.S. Capitol building to a receiver in Baltimore. By the late 1850s, the first telegraph cable had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean, and in 1861, the telegraph spanned the continental United States. Over the ensuing decades, the wires wrapped around …
Monday Open Line
There are few bonds in nature as gratifying as that between pets and their owners. Most pets are rewarded for their loyalty and devotion with shelter, food, and welcome attention. Though less welcome, they are also rewarded with medical care. The first state sponsored veterinary school in the U.S. opened on this date in 1879 at Iowa State College — now university — in Ames, Iowa. Today, there are over 30,000 veterinary establishments located around the U.S. There, 317,000 veterinarians …
Friday / Weekend Open Line
Friday, May 20th. Gas prices are a frequent cause for consumer complaint — but at least purchases aren’t restricted, as they were beginning this month in 1942. That’s when 17 states began rationing gasoline to help the fight World War II. By December, rationing was nationwide and remained in effect until the end of the war, along with a national speed limit of 35 miles an hour, which was promoted as “Victory Speed.” Now, there are more than 112,000 gas …
Thursday Open Line
Spam, the pork product in a can, debuted in 1937, and World War II spread its fame, such as it is, around the globe. Spam, the unsolicited email message, debuted this month in 1978, and the World Wide Web has spread its infamy everywhere. The first cyberspam was an invitation to a computer system demonstration sent to the few existing email addresses over ARPANET, the Internet’s precursor. Almost 16 years later, commercial spam first coursed through the worldwide web. In …
Wednesday Open Line
The New York Stock Exchange, by signaling business prospects through share prices, has long been a bellwether of the nation’s economic health. The exchange started this week in 1792, as some two dozen merchants and brokers established an organized approach to their buying and selling. In good weather, they operated under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street. Otherwise, they moved to the shelter of a nearby coffeehouse to continue their trading. This makeshift setup eventually evolved into an economic powerhouse, …
Tuesday Open Line
On this date in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most historic decisions, changing the social landscape of the nation. The justices ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools based solely on race was unconstitutional. The ruling effectively did away with the “separate but equal” concept that had legitimized segregation for decades after Reconstruction. The case was argued on behalf of the NAACP by Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first …
Monday Open Line
The first disc-type phonograph record was demonstrated publicly on this date in 1888. The invention of Emile Berliner of Washington, D.C. was called a gramophone and used a flat disc of grooves to reproduce sound, rather than the cylinders of the day. These proved easier to duplicate for the mass market. In 1899, 151,000 phonograph players were manufactured. That number rose steadily to over 4 million just a half century ago. The advent of the compact disc in the early …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, May 13th. Today marks the 408th anniversary of the founding of the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, at Jamestown, Virginia. Captains John Smith and Christopher Newport were among the leaders of a group of royally chartered settlers who sailed from Plymouth, England aboard three small ships — the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. By 1625, more than 1,200 European colonists lived in Virginia, with perhaps 30,000 native Indians. Today, the state has a …
Thursday Open Line
May is National Moving Month, beginning the busiest moving season of the year. More than half of all residential moves take place from May through August. In 2015, more than 36 million Americans moved, about 11 percent of the population. Nearly two-thirds of movers, some 23 million, moved within the same county. Another 6.6 million stayed in-state, but crossed into another county. Almost 1.7 million Americans moved abroad. Very nearly half of all those who moved were either between 30 …
Wednesday Open Line
America’s first medical college was established early this month in 1765. Students at the College of Philadelphia — now the University of Pennsylvania — were able to enroll in “anatomical lectures” and a class about “the theory and practice of physik.” The faculty modeled the instruction after the style of European predecessors. They supplemented their instruction with observation and practice at nearby Pennsylvania Hospital, which was founded in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond. The addition of these courses …