Category: Open Lines

Construction began on this date in 1884 in Chicago for a radical new building design — destined to be America’s first skyscraper. It was the Home Insurance Company headquarters, designed by engineer William Jenney. Jenney’s building used a metal frame for support, with the exterior walls hung like curtains on the frame. Previously, thick outer walls supported buildings, limiting the height that could be safely reached. Soon, skyscrapers using Jenney’s method thrust up across the country and today dominate city …

This is the anniversary of the one of greatest real estate deals in history — one that doubled the size of the U.S. and put the nation in position to become a world power. The year was 1803, and the deal was the Louisiana Purchase. The young U.S. under President Thomas Jefferson bought nearly 830,000 square miles from France at the cost of four cents an acre. The land stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from …

Health insurance and its affordability has been a topic of political contention mostly in the past two decades, the social need was recognized much earlier. On this date in 1942, Rhode Island became the first state to set up a health or temporary disability insurance program for its working citizens unemployed because of sickness. The covered workers — and not employers — funded the program with a 1 percent tax on wages of less than $3,000 a year. Today, health …

Everyone knows that a clean car seems to run better — possibly because someone who cares what their car looks like also tends to its mechanical needs. April is one of two National Car Care months this year, the other is in October. This month was chosen to make sure the ravages of winter have not compromised the safety of your car — and October is to look your car over so it’s ready for next winter. The goal is …

Many automobile license plates proclaim glories of the issuing states; others spell out something dear to the drivers. Those plates and the basic ones handed out by motor vehicle departments are requirements to drive on public roads. New York was the first state to require license plates on motor vehicles on this date in 1901. At the time, there were just under 15,000 sputtering automobiles in the entire country, traveling over muddy, rudimentary roads without a license for the driver …

Early America certainly was a simpler society than that which we have today, but some of today’s familiar institutions were part of the national experience over 200 years ago. On this date in 1795, the city of Baltimore set up a permanent, elected board of health, successor to the nation’s first such appointed agency. The first board was created by Maryland’s governor to cope with yellow fever epidemics beginning in 1792. At one point the city of Baltimore quarantined or …

Tomorrow is Administrative Professionals Day, a time to recognize a job well done and to promote the growth and training required by today’s fast-changing and highly technical workplace. For years, the observance was known as Secretaries’ Day. The change in name reflects the change in the nature of these jobs. These positions were once thought of mainly as message takers, typists, and coffee makers, rewarded once a year with lunch and a humorous greeting card. The job of an administrative …

One of world’s most important medicines — insulin –became available for general use this month in 1923, saving the lives of millions of people suffering from diabetes. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas, and is critical in the processing of carbohydrates in the human body. It was first isolated the year before by a Canadian team led by Dr. Frederick Banting at the University of Toronto. The effect was like a miracle. One year, the disease was an …

The first all-news radio format in the U.S. debuted on this date in 1965, as WINS AM in New York City switched from rock and roll to rip and read. Almost 20 years earlier, the station had notched another first, by broadcasting every New York Yankee game live, both home and away. The station shut off the music — its last record was the Shangri-La’s “Out in the Streets” — and became “all news, all the time.” The format has …

For urban dwellers, the hassle — or at least the expense — of doing their laundry began to ease on this date in 1934, when the first public, self-operated laundry in the U.S. opened its doors in Fort Worth, Texas. The first name was “Washateria,” eventually replaced with the now familiar “Laundromat.” Early facilities were not necessarily coin-operated, and there was always an attendant on duty. The automatic washing machine came along in 1937, and by the late 1940s, the …

April is an important month in the world of books. In 1800, one of the world’s greatest libraries, the Library of Congress, was founded, and Noah Webster published the first dictionary of American English in 1826. This is also the fourth day of National Library Week, celebrating libraries, those who staff them and the billions of materials they circulate. While computers and electronic media are of increasing importance in the services libraries offer, books remain at the core of their …

Children have worked throughout history, especially on family farms and in trades. But their employment in industrialized settings raised many popular objections. On this date in 1836, Massachusetts became the first state, to prohibit children under 15 from working in factories. Massachusetts acted again six years later; limiting children’s work to 10 hours per day. But it wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that long, dangerous child labor was ended nationally. The restrictions on child labor scarcely …

To borrow from some recent advertising slogans, although many Americans couldn’t imagine leaving home without them, and they’re everywhere they want to be, there was a time when credit cards were rare; issued only by individual merchants. But that proprietary limitation ended on this date in 1952, when the Franklin National Bank in New York launched a credit card for use by the customers of varied merchants. In this, the bank was following the lead of the Diners Club Card, …

On this date in 1892, the first U.S. patent for a truly portable typewriter was issued to George C. Blickensderfer of Stamford, Connecticut for a “type writing machine.” The machine worked on the principle of a revolving type wheel, a precursor to the type ball of 1970s typewriters. The wheel reduced the number of moving parts from 2,500 to 250, improving reliability and reducing the weight by one-fourth. The Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company eventually became one of the world’s largest typewriter …

Forty-five years ago today, the Civil Rights Act became law. At the ceremony, President Johnson said: “The proudest moments of my presidency have been times such as this when I have signed into law the promises of a century.” The event occurred one week to the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Among its provisions, the act protected civil rights workers, expanded the rights of American Indians, and established measures to end discrimination in housing. At the …

The need to pay a $15 debt sparked one of the most useful of inventions, patented on this date in 1849. Walter Hunt, a mechanic in New York, owed the debt. While he thought about how to raise the money, he fiddled with a small piece of wire. Finally, he bent the wire with a twist in the middle, creating a spring, and formed a clasp at the other end, to guard the point of the wire. He had invented …

For much of history, a cooked meal was followed by the drudgery of scrubbing the pans used to prepare it. But something was discovered this week in 1938 that changed all that, a solidified refrigerant gas that we now know as Teflon. Developed by Roy Plunkett of the DuPont Company, slippery Teflon revolutionized cooking utensils in the 1960s. By the time he died in the early 1990s, 3-out-of-4 of all cooking pans in the nation where coated with his invention. …

On this date one century ago, the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified establishing direct popular election of senators. Previously, members of the Senate were elected by each state’s legislature. As the voting franchise expanded after the Civil War and into the Progressive Era, growing sentiment held that senators ought to be popularly elected in the same manner as representatives. In fact, as a result of such developments, at least 29 states were nominating senators on a popular …

One of the most desirable cars in automobile showrooms across the U.S. in 1954 was the Packard. The new models were the first to be equipped with a feature that soon swept the industry–the tubeless tire. The idea had been patented more than 50 years earlier by Goodyear, but had never been developed for sale. So for many decades, cars rode on tires containing an inner tube to hold the air. The air-filled or pneumatic tire was conceived by a …

Many people who use computers regularly will recognize the saying “garbage in — garbage out.” In these days of intensive search for alternative ways to create power, the words have become “garbage in — energy out,” as a number of power plants burn garbage instead of fossil fuels. The first power plant in the U.S. to burn garbage was the Union Electric Company in St. Louis, Missouri, on this day in 1972. The U.S. now burns about 14 percent of …