Firsts Read online

  Air-Raid Shelter

  In 1915 and 1916, during World War I, a German dirigible known as the zeppelin raided eastern England and London more than 50 times, dropping bombs in an effort to destroy the morale of the population. Civilians did the best they could, using their cellars and basements as makeshift emergency shelters, during the bombings. Howard Moyer Gounder built the first air-raid shelter in the United States in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania. Completed on November 1, 1940, the shelter’s stone walls were 18 inches thick and set in concrete that supported an 8-inch reinforced concrete roof that was weather conditioned with asphalt tar. The floors also were made of cement. Bunks on one inside wall accommodated six people, while a stove provided heating and cooking capabilities. A protected chimney in the rear provided ventilation. The shelter’s entrance had heavy double doors, one opening inward and one opening outward, each with a small window.

  Aircraft Carrier

  Several accounts exist of aircraft carriers that were adapted and modified from conventional warships to see service in wartime. The most notable was the British warship HMS Furious, built in 1917, later modified, and in 1918, used to launch a successful attack on a German zeppelin airbase. However, an aircraft carrier is a warship designed (not modified) for the primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, so the Ranger was the actual first specifically designed and built aircraft carrier. It was constructed by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company of Newport News, Virginia; launched on February 25, 1933; and placed into service at Norfolk, Virginia, on June 4, 1934. Ranger’s first captain was Arthur Leroy Bristol.

  Airline

  The world’s first airline that operated with scheduled flights on airplanes, not zeppelins, was the St. Petersburg-Tampa (Florida) Airboat Line. The airline, which flew from January to May 1914, offered twice-a-day, six-days-a-week service across the bay between St. Petersburg and Tampa. Aircraft builder Thomas Benoist, pilot Tony Jannus, and salesman Percival Fansler launched the concept. The airline operated two Model Benoist 14 airboats and one Model 13, which was used for instruction. Each flight across the bay lasted about 22 minutes. The passenger fare was $5, and each passenger was given a 200-pound allowance, including any baggage. The first passenger was a former mayor of St. Petersburg, Abram C. Pheil, who purchased the first seat at an auction with a bid of $400. The airline’s last official flight occurred on May 5, 1914, when the airline ceased operations. Profits declined after a town subsidy expired and seasonal residents had returned north. This first airline had no crashes, passenger injuries, or deaths.

  Airline Meal

  The first airline meal was served October 11, 1919, as an in-flight prepacked lunch box. It was onboard a modified WWI bomber of Britain’s Handley Page Aircraft Company on its London-to-Paris flight. This new passenger division of the company called Handley Page Transport became the first airline to serve in-flight meals. Although served as lunch boxes, the meals were prepared and packed before taking off to be available to paying customers at 3 shillings each. Those first lunch boxes probably contained a sandwich, a piece of fruit such as an apple, and hot coffee or tea.

  Another first occurred on August 26, 1919, when Handley Page Transport carried two women passengers on its airline service between England and France. The first kitchens for serving meals in flight were established by United Airlines in 1936.

  Airline Ticket

  The first ticket to fly on an airline with airplanes, not zeppelins, cost a walloping $400 and was used on January 1, 1914. The ticket was purchased at an auction by former St. Petersburg, Florida, mayor Abram C. Pheil. Pheil wanted to be on record as the first airline passenger and also to bolster profits for aircraft builder Thomas Benoist’s St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. Famed pioneering pilot Tony Jannus safely flew the former mayor round-trip across the bay between St. Petersburg and Tampa. The flight was only 22 minutes one-way, but it was the experience of a lifetime for Pheil. Afterward, normal fare dropped to $5 per passenger. That $5 allowed the passenger a 200-pound allowance, including any baggage, same as that first $400 ticket.

  Altar

  Around 2500 B.C.E., Noah constructed the first altar. As described in Genesis 8:21-22, the outdoor altar was made of earth or unwrought stone and built in the mountains of Ararat (present-day Turkey, about 750 miles northeast of Jerusalem) after the Ark had come to rest following the Great Flood. Sticks of wood were placed on top of the altar, upon which Noah made burnt offerings of every clean beast and every clean fowl. According to Scripture, the altar gave off a sweet scent and pleased the Lord.

  Aluminum Cookware

  On February 23, 1886, Charles Martin Hall of Oberlin, Ohio, invented a simplified process for producing aluminum, a lightweight, rust-free metal with good thermal conductivity. Hall went to Pittsburgh in search of financial backers and channeled his procedure into a line of cast aluminum cookware called Wear-Ever. On April 2, 1889, Hall obtained a patent for producing aluminum electrically instead of chemically, thus reducing its costs. His cookware met with indifference until 1903, when Wannamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, allowed a demonstration of aluminum cookware’s unique abilities. A chef made apple butter in a lightweight aluminum pan without the need to stir it. That one gesture made the cookware’s popularity skyrocket. Soon aluminum pots and pans become standard kitchen equipment almost everywhere.

  Ambulance Service

  The Knights of St. John created the first “ambulances” during the Crusades of eleventh-century Europe. The early emergency workers received instruction in first-aid treatment from Arab and Greek doctors and then treated soldiers on both sides of the battlefield by bringing the wounded, usually via hammocks or by physically carrying them, to nearby tents for further treatment. The men who transported the wounded were commonly paid small rewards.

  The first motorized ambulance came into being in 1899. Made and adapted in Chicago, it weighed about 1,600 pounds and could travel up to 16 miles an hour. Five businessmen donated it to Michael Reese Hospital.

  Amphitheater Stadium

  Around 50 B.C.E., Roman politician and high priest Gaius Scribonius Curio devised the concept of the first amphitheater. Until then, gladiatorial contests were held in open-area formats. To seat and accommodate spectators, Curio had two semicircular wooden stands built on a pivot. (It was really two theaters built back-to-back.) They could be pivoted or swiveled so that together they formed an oval with the audience inside. The next amphitheater, also made of wood, was built in 46 B.C.E. by Julius Caesar. Architectural engineering led the way for improvements to better support the weight of the spectators and protect the wood from being destroyed by fire. The first permanent stone amphitheater in Rome was built by Statilius Taurus in 29 B.C.E.

  Analgesic Pain Pill

  On January 1, 1915, German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer offered aspirin for the first time in tablet form, making it the first analgesic (antipain medicine) or painkiller in pill form. (Opium, the oldest painkiller known to man, dating to the times of Homer’s 750 B.C.E. Iliad, was either smoked or inhaled.) In the few years prior to 1915, aspirin was available via powdered form in glass bottles. German chemist Felix Hoffmann had developed it in 1897 as a treatment for his father’s arthritis. Another chemist, Arthur Eichengreen, also made significant contributions to the development of aspirin during this era. With the convenience of pill or tablet form, aspirin soon became the highest-selling analgesic medication in the world.

  Anesthetic

  As early as 1500 B.C.E., Egyptians used an elixir of opium to dull the senses of patients undergoing trepanning, an operation to relieve brain pressure by drilling a circular hole in the skull. Much later, the invention of ether, the first anesthetic, brought about the end of surgical pain. On March 30, 1842, Dr. Crawford Williamson Long of Jefferson, Georgia, applied ether gas under a towel to patient James M. Venable to numb him so he could painlessly remove a cystic tumor from the back of Venable’s neck. The operation was a success, and L
ong’s bill was $2.25 (25¢ for sulfuric ether and $2 for excising the tumor). In 1845, dentist Dr. Horace Wells demonstrated the use of ether during surgery for Harvard Medical School students. In 1846, he was credited as being the first to discover the use of ether as an anesthetic. (Dr. Long’s successful use in 1842 wasn’t reported until 1852, when the Georgia State Medical Society was informed.)

  Animated Cartoon

  The first animated cartoon was A Good Beer, created by French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud. On October 28, 1892, at the Musee Grevin in Paris, Reynaud exhibited three short animated cartoon films, A Good Beer, Poor Pete, and The Clown and His Dogs, consisting of loops of 300 to 700 individually painted images on frames. He had hand-drawn his cartoons onto film paper, which he then projected to audiences using his Theatre Optique system, a device that created optical moving illusions, similar to modern film projectors. This first performance of all three animated cartoons, which lasted about 15 minutes, was known as Pantomimes Lumineuses (Luminous Pantomimes).

  Antibiotic

  The first substance recognized as an antibiotic or as an agent that destroys bacteria was penicillin. In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish bacteriologist at London’s St. Mary’s Hospital, whose lab was often kept in disarray due to his workload, was straightening up a sink piled with Petri dishes (culture plates) when he noticed something strange. He found that a mold on a discarded culture plate had an antibacterial action. The mold was growing on the plate, but the area around the mold had no bacteria growing. It had killed the bacteria by interfering with cell wall growth. He called the mold penicillium and the chemical produced by it penicillin. Fleming really didn’t realize what he had discovered, but his findings, written up in 1929, presented penicillin as a possible antibiotic.

  Antitank Weapon

  Antitank rifles were the first attempt at stopping a tank with a portable weapon. They needed to be quick to reload and easily carried by one man. The world’s first antitank weapon was the 13.2mm Rifle Anti-Tank (Mauser), a German weapon created during World War I that first appeared in February 1918. German engineering originated the idea of using heavy caliber and high-velocity rifles to stop tanks, and they designed the world’s first weapon for the sole purpose of destroying armored targets. The weapons were mass-produced by the Mauser Company at Oberdorf and were issued to antitank detachments. Despite being cumbersome, the 13.2mm Rifle Anti-Tank weapons were fairly effective against early tanks that were protected by no more than about ½ inch of armor plating.

  Aqueduct

  Although famously associated with the Romans, aqueducts, artificial channels to convey water from one location to another, were actually devised much earlier. On the orders of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, the first aqueduct of notable record appeared in 691 B.C.E. and was 34 miles (55km) long. It consisted of a single arched bridge 30 feet high over a valley 900 feet long and was built to carry water from a distant river, the Great Zab, to Assyria’s capital city of Nineveh with its beautiful gardens. Built of limestone masonry, this first aqueduct demonstrated an understanding of siphons and basic hydraulic principles.

  Area Code

  In 1951, the first area code assigned for telephone customers was 201. It covered the entire state of New Jersey as part of the North American Numbering Plan. Although it was part of the original set of 3-digit area code telephone numbers assigned to the United States in 1947, this first 201 area code was not placed into service for customer-dialing calls until 1951. Before this, only long-distance operators used the codes. On November 10, 1951, the first directly dialed call was made from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California. Direct-dialing using area codes gradually spread throughout the country. By the mid-1960s, it was commonplace in many larger cities, as each 3-digit area code may contain up to 7,919,900 unique phone numbers. For uniformity and consistency, the first digit was a number between 2 and 9, and the second digit was either 0 or 1.

  Art Exhibition

  Although cave paintings were a form of communication and also an artful form of expression, it’s difficult if not impossible to ascertain any definite firsts among them, let alone the dates of creation. The first public exhibition of art began on April 9, 1667, in the courtyard of the Palais-Royale in Paris, France, and ran until April 23, 1667. Local artists displayed their paintings and hand-crafted sculptures as organized by the Academie de Peinture et de Sculpture. The palace was royal property at the time and was used for courtly entertainment, including opera productions and cultural events. The art exhibitions became very popular, and beginning in 1671, they were held biennially in the Louvre. This allowed for more exhibitions with public awareness and attendance.

  Artificial Gene

  A gene is a unit of heredity that determines the characteristics an organism inherits from its parents. Dr. Hargobind Khorana, an Indian American scientist, was responsible for producing the first manmade or artificial gene in his laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1970. It was created using transfer-ribonucleic acid and was a 207-base-pair chain identical to a virus gene. Six years later, Dr. Khorana and his team created a second artificial gene, this one remarkably capable of functioning in a living cell. This valuable effort laid the foundation for a future in which scientists could use artificial genes to manufacture important proteins or cure hereditary diseases in humans.

  Artificial Insemination

  In 1783, Lazzaro Spallanzani achieved the first recorded artificial insemination when he successfully transferred semen from a spaniel to a female hunting dog. The Italian biologist’s experiments on dogs proved for the first time that both semen and an ovum were required, and there must be physical contact between the two, for an embryo to develop. That first successful artificial insemination experiment in Spallanzani’s laboratory revolutionized the way scientists thought. Up until then, they had a very primitive understanding of conception largely based on how plants grew.

  Artificial Organ

  The human kidney was the first organ to be artificially approximated by a machine. Willem Kolff, a young Dutch physician, invented the artificial kidney in 1943, during World War II. From 1943 to 1945, he treated 16 patients with acute kidney failure but had little success. All that changed in 1945, when his drumlike contraption worked. A 67-year-old woman in a uremic coma regained consciousness after 11 hours of hemodialysis (blood filtering) with Kolff’s dialyzer. (Her first words out of the coma were, “I’m going to divorce my husband.”) Kolff’s invention, although crude, became the standard treatment for chronic kidney failure during the Eisenhower years, leading Dr. Willem Kolff to be known as “the father of dialysis.”

  Assembly Line

  In 1901, Ransom Eli Olds was the first person to use the assembly line, a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods, in a commercial environment. His product: the Curved Dash Oldsmobile. In 1901, the Olds Motor Vehicle Company of Lansing, Michigan, produced 425 cars and was the first high-volume automobile manufacturer of the day. Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan, came more than a decade later with his conveyor (moving) assembly line and is often wrongly credited as utilizing the first assembly line.

  Astronomer

  Aristarchus of Samos (Alexandria), who lived approximately from 310 to 250 B.C.E., is often referred to as the “Copernicus of antiquity.” Considered the world’s first astronomer, he laid the foundation for much scientific examination of the heavens. Aristarchus suggested that the earth revolved around the sun and provided the first estimate of Earth to sun distance. He was also the first to propose a heliocentric universe with the sun at the center. Written from a geocentric point of view, his thesis on the sizes and distances of the sun and moon was a breakthrough in finding distances to objects in the universe. His methods, concepts, and laws of the heavenly orbs were used by later astronomers and mathematicians.

  Athletic Club


  The world’s first amateur athletic club, founded in London, England, in 1866 mainly for track and field events, was applicably named the Amateur Athletic Club (AAC). John Chambers, an Eton and Cambridge graduate, and noted Oxford 1-mile race competitor Victor Albert Villiers formed the AAC. They organized a “counter-to-the-Olympics” group and published the world’s first definition of an amateur athlete. The AAC did not define amateur and professional as we do today in terms of money or athletic profit; rather, its definition was mainly a question of social class. Gentleman and amateur were synonymous, while professional meant “working class.” The AAC declared that men who were mechanics, artisans, or laborers were de facto “pros” and were barred from all amateur contests, which were reserved for “gentlemen,” the ones who did no labor for a living.

  ATM

  On September 2, 1969, the first ATM (automated teller machine) opened for business, dispensing cash to customers at Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York. This debut ATM, located in the bank’s wall and available for walk-up customers, was only able to give out cash after a coded card was inserted into a slot on the unit. Several industrious folks had worked on earlier versions of the ATM, but Don Wetzel, an executive at Docutel, a Dallas, Texas, company that developed automated baggage-handling equipment, is credited for conceiving and implementing the process for the modern ATM. Wetzel came up with the idea while waiting in line as a customer at a Dallas bank. The other two inventors listed on the patent along with Wetzel were Tom Barnes, the chief mechanical engineer, and George Chastain, the electrical engineer. It took $5 million to develop the ATM.