On this date in 1892, the first U.S. patent for a truly portable typewriter was issued to George C. Blickensderfer of Stamford, Connecticut. His “type writing machine” featured 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 manufacturers in a crowded field. In 1900, U.S. manufacturers …
Category: Open Lines
Monday Open Line
On this date 48 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 became law. At the bill signing ceremony, President Lyndon 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.” Putting the event into perspective, it occurred one week to the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Among its provisions, the Act protected civil rights workers, expanded the rights of …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, April 8th. On this date 103 years 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. Because of such developments, at least 29 states by 1913 were nominating senators on a …
Thursday Open Line
The years of Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, were considered a noble experiment that failed, as the subsequent crime associated with bootlegging caused problems worse than the lone problem of drunkenness. The crumbling of the unpopular Volstead Act accelerated on this date in 1933 when Congress amended the act to permit beer of 3.2 percent alcohol to be brewed and sold. The beer permitted earlier under Prohibition contained only .05 percent. Called “near beer,” and much disdained, one humorist declared …
Tuesday Open Line
One of world’s foremost lifesaving medicines — insulin — became available this month in 1923 for treating 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 automatic death sentence; the next, people who were affected …
Monday Open Line
Today is Vitamin C Day, celebrated — if that’s the word — every April 4 on the anniversary of the isolation of this vitamin. The breakthrough was made in 1932 by two doctors at the University of Pittsburgh. Before then, people knew that eating citrus fruit and fresh greens warded off certain diseases, such as scurvy, but didn’t know why. Also known as ascorbic acid, vitamin C is required to sustain human life. Studies have shown that people with a …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, April 1st. Broadcast advertising was confronted with a major downsizing on this date in 1970 as President Nixon signed a bill into law prohibiting cigarette advertising on the nation’s airwaves. The ban went into effect on January 1 of the following year — the first major step in the ongoing debate over the public health risk of smoking. Until then, names such as Lucky Strike, Chesterfield and Philip Morris had sponsored some of the most famous shows since the …
Thursday Open Line
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution declared the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was ratified on February 3, 1870. The new, affirmed civil right was first exercised on this date that year, though in a decidedly minor electoral matter. Thomas Peterson-Mundy, a former slave, was the first African-American to exercise the franchise, casting a vote in favor …
Wednesday Open Line
FM radio is 75 years old. In March 1941, the first commercial FM station went on the air — W47NV in Nashville, Tennessee. FM — standing for frequency modulation — was first proposed in a scientific paper written by Edwin Armstrong in 1922. By 1934, he was demonstrating to network officials how FM was unaffected by static, like all the radio stations then on the air, which used AM, or amplitude modulation. World War II interrupted the advance of FM …
Tuesday Open Line
One of the most successful brand names of all time got its start on this date in 1886. That’s when Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton brewed up the first batch of Coca-Cola — designed as a hangover cure. The product went on sale at Jacob’s pharmacy a few weeks later, and sold an average of nine servings a day at the start. Success followed quickly, and until 1905, contained extracts of cocaine, as well as the caffeine-rich kola nut. Today, the …
Monday Open Line
While openings of a major department store or a branch of a big-box chain are often welcomed by shoppers and communities, they are also the cause of some concern. Small local businesses face greater competition, yet those small businesses are an outsized engine of economic growth. Additionally, they are important distinguishing features in local communities. That’s why today is Mom and Pop Business Owners Day. In 2012, there were nearly 28 million business firms in the U.S., but only 5.4 …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, March 25th. The fact that pencils have erasers is supposed to indicate that no one is perfect. But it’s doubtful that people were perfect before this month in 1858. That’s when Hyman Lipman was granted a patent for a pencil with an incorporated rubber eraser. Lipman’s eraser could be sharpened, as it protruded from the wood sheath at the end opposite the graphite. The familiar wood-encased pencil dates back to 1662, when they were mass-produced in Nuremberg, Germany. More …
Thursday Open Line
A number of various causes are recognized in March. Two of these seem to go hand in hand, or hand to mouth — National Nutrition Month and National Frozen Food Month. The goal of the first is make consumers aware of just how easy it is to eat healthy meals. And one of the ways this is possible is because of frozen food. Developed by Clarence Birdseye, the first commercially available items were quick-frozen fish fillets in 1925. Frozen food …
Wednesday Open Line
The first town in America to have its streets illuminated by electric lights wasn’t one of the familiar, Eastern metropolises that loom in our history. That distinction instead went to the north-central Indiana town of Wabash, late this month in 1880. Wabash had a population of just 3,800 Hoosiers in 1880, so it took only four 3,000-candlepower arc lamps on the county courthouse to light the streets. By newspaper accounts, witnesses were awestruck by the modern wonder. Now, the 10,400 …
Tuesday Open Line
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. While this act is a famous landmark in the national effort to assure equality of treatment, its ban on sex discrimination was not in the forefront of the effort. On this date in 1872, the state of Illinois enacted the first such ban on discrimination. It came about through the lobbying of Alta Hulett, who had been kept from sitting …
Monday Open Line
Today marks the birthday in 1910 of one of the major figures of the American wine industry — Julio Gallo. When Prohibition ended, he and his brother Ernest started making wine in humble surroundings — a rented California warehouse with equipment bought on credit. Years of hard work saw their winery became the largest in the U.S., and their creative marketing techniques helped shape the nation’s drinking tastes. When the Gallos began their business in 1934, Americans on average drank …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, March 18th. This is National Peanut Month — celebrating one of the nation’s favorite foods, and absolutely America’s favorite snack nut. They are enjoyed in many ways — roasted in the shell, used in salads and stir-fry recipes, in cookies and, of course, ground into peanut butter. The idea of honoring the peanut has been a monthlong observance since 1974. Americans eat an average of more than six pounds of shelled peanuts a year, about half in the form …
Thursday Open Line
This is a day when people of all ethnicities are cheerfully encouraged to wear something green. It is St. Patrick’s Day, a rare national holiday observed outside its native land. The day honors Bishop Patrick, born in England, who brought Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century, using a shamrock to illustrate divinity. The celebration here goes back to Colonial times. New York City’s parade has taken place every year since 1762, and today is the largest such event in …
Wednesday Open Line
The first salvo in what we’ve come to know as the War on Poverty was fired on this date 52 years ago. Following President Lyndon Johnson’s State of the Union call for tackling poverty in America, the Economic Opportunity Act was introduced and passed by Congress with 11 program components. The landmark legislation was signed into law in August. The poverty rate in 1965, at the implementation of the programs, was around 16 percent, down from some 22 percent in …
Tuesday Open Line
Ask many Americans where their food comes from, and they’ll answer the supermarket, while clothing comes from the mall. That’s why today is National Agriculture Day, and March 13 to 19 is National Agriculture Week. These annual programs focus on students across the nation, the consumers of tomorrow. They’ll learn that from pizzas to cosmetics, from clothing to orange juice, agriculture gives us what we eat each day and much of what we wear and use. In 1920, there were …