Firsts (10 page)

The custom of exchanging and rolling eggs began in ancient Egypt and Persia. In the 1500s, the Germans were the first to stage Easter-egg hunts. The German children waited all year long for the Easter-time appearance of the
Oschter Haws
(Easter bunny). Right before Easter, the children would run around making and hiding nests wherever they could—in barns, around in the yard, in their homes, etc.—in hopes the Oschter Haws would come and lay eggs in the nests. The adults would then secretly fill and place color-dyed eggs in the nests. On Easter morning, the children would eagerly jump out of bed to go on an Easter-egg hunt, checking the nests.

On August 6, 1890, at Auburn Prison in New York, William Kemmler, alias John Hart, was executed by electrocution in an electric chair in accordance with a law that went into effect January 1, 1889, allowing the use of electrocution. After Kemmler was strapped in, a charge of approximately 700 volts was delivered for only 17 seconds before the current failed. Kemmler was not dead though, and a second charge of 1,030 volts was applied for about 2 minutes, after which he was deceased. Kemmler had killed his lover, Matilda Ziegler, on March 29, 1889, with an axe and was convicted of first-degree murder.

Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist in Buffalo, New York, first suggested electrocution as a humane means of execution. Although often credited with the invention of the first electric chair, Southwick was really more of a lobbyist who worked with New York Governor David B. Hill to help pass laws making execution by electricity legal.

Paul H. Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington, invented the first electric guitar in the winter of 1930-1931 in his basement workshop with collaborator Art J. Simpson. Borrowing an idea from a telephone’s inner workings, the two created a transducer that converted one type of energy into another. They attached an iron blade with copper wire coiled around it to a large horseshoe-shape magnet. When it was placed in Tutmarc’s flat-top Spanish-styled guitar and plugged into a converted radio, the magnetic device picked up the instrument’s sound and amplified it with beautiful tone. Unfortunately for Tutmarc, this first electric guitar later became overshadowed by others thanks to a combination of bad advice from patent attorneys and Tutmarc’s own unfocused business interests.

In the first decade of the 1800s, English chemist Humphry Davy invented the first electric light, a controlled electric arc between two charcoal rods set 4 inches apart. The rods were attached to a 2,000-cell battery. After he connected the wires to his battery and pieces of carbon (charcoal rods), Davy discovered that electricity arced between the two carbon pieces and produced a hot, intense, and short-lived light. This electrical arc was the first electric light, and in 1810, Davy demonstrated his discovery to the Royal Institution of London.

British scientist Michael Faraday developed the first electric motor in 1821. Faraday’s invention demonstrated the conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy by electromagnetic means. The first simple electric motor consisted of a free-hanging wire that dipped into a pool of mercury, where a permanent magnet was located. When a current was passed through the wire, the wire rotated around the magnet, which showed that the current gave rise to a circular magnetic field around the wire. The process proved that electricity and magnetism are connected. Based on his experiments, Faraday published his work on what he called electromagnetic rotation.

The first electric motor capable of a practical application was invented by British scientist William Sturgeon in 1832.

In October 1878, Thomas Edison established the Edison Electric Light Company, with the help of his friend Grosvenor Lowry at 65 Fifth Avenue in New York, New York. Other investors included the Vanderbilts and J. P. Morgan. To finance Edison’s work, $300,000 was raised by selling 3,000 shares at a par value of $100 each. Half of the new company’s shares went to Edison on the agreement that he’d work on developing an incandescent lighting system. In 1889, the company merged with several other Edison ventures to become the Edison General Electric Company.

The first electric toaster was the Eclipse. On the market in 1893, it was invented by the Crompton and Company of Chelmsford, Great Britain. The iron-wired device only toasted one side of the bread at a time and required the user to turn it off when the toast was ready. This first toaster never provided a consistent piece of toast, and burnt bread was a common result. The Eclipse eventually failed because its wiring easily melted, causing a fire hazard.

In 1669, phosphorous was the first element discovered. Although elements such as copper, gold, lead, tin, mercury, iron, and silver have been known since antiquity, it wasn’t until the seventeenth century that the first scientific discovery of an element was made. It occurred in Hamburg when German amateur alchemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorous by boiling and filtering as many as 60 buckets of human urine. He was trying to manufacture gold, and by accident discovered phosphorous. The most interesting thing about the substance was that it glowed in the dark so brightly Brand was able to read by its light.

Around 236 B.C.E., the first elevator was a freight elevator in ancient Greece. It was a platform raised by a system of pulleys and winches. A rope was wound on a revolving drum with handles, which was cranked to raise and lower the platform. There were no sides or top to the platform. These first elevators were used for hoisting loads during construction projects. They were devised and built by Greek mathematician, engineer, and inventor Archimedes of Syracuse (same person of Archimedes Screw fame).

On March 11, 1967, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall of Arizona, published the first official list of endangered species. Congress had passed the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966 after being inspired by the plight of the whooping crane. That first 1967 list was compiled after consulting the states, interested organizations, and individual scientists. The total listing was 78 species and included native fish and wildlife that were threatened with extinction. Among the first listed were the Indiana Bat (mammal), the Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel (bird), the American alligator (reptile and amphibian), and the shortnose sturgeon (fish). The list is updated annually.

Composed around 1553 and printed in 1570 in London, William Baldwin’s
Beware the Cat
was the earliest original piece of long prose fiction in English. The first English novel was a work of satirical anti-Catholic jaunts. Among them, this Dark Ages book gave rise to the idea that cats have nine lives with its phrase, “It is permitted for a witch to take her cat’s body nine times.” Other works lay claim to being the first English novel, notably
Le Morte d’Arthur,
written by Sir Thomas Malory and first published in 1485 by William Caxton. Most experts don’t classify this work as a “novel” because it doesn’t contain enough original material, so
Beware the Cat
gets credit as the first English novel.

Around 1752, the first notable eraser was used at the eminent Académie Française (French Academy), which held meetings at the Louvre in Paris. The eraser was made of a natural substance called caoutochouc gum, an elastic, gummy substance obtained from the milky sap of euphorbiaceous trees. It was probably dried and heated somewhat so the immortels (members of the Academy) could hold it to erase errors, smudges, and other stray marks on their papers.

On August 9, 1859, the first patent for an escalator-like machine was granted to Nathan Ames of Saugus, Massachusetts. Ames called his improvement on regular stairs “Revolving Stairs.” His escalator was a giant triangle with steps mounted on a continuous belt or chain. The incline was at 45 degrees and came complete with handrails. One side was for riders going up, one side was for riders going down, and the upside-down bottom side ran under the surface of the floor. Although Ames died in 1865 before he could see a functioning escalator run, he was the first to show that a power-driven set of stairs could be used for transportation between floors or levels in buildings or in other places of pedestrian traffic.

Founded in Italy around 1104 C.E., the Venetian Arsenal was the first factory in the modern sense of the word—and several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution. The Venetian Arsenal, which employed 16,000 people, mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts at a rate of nearly one ship every day and night. The shipyard and naval depot was one of the most important areas of Venice. Today it is a naval base, research center, and exhibition venue.

In 1916, movie director D. W. Griffith came up with makeshift false eyelashes to give actress Seena Owen a more dramatic appearance for the filming of the movie
Intolerance.
Griffith instructed a wigmaker to weave some human hair through fine gauze that was then adhered to the actress’s eyelids. The lashes successfully made Owen’s eyes larger than life. Unfortunately, Griffin did not patent the idea.

In Cordoba, Spain, during the eighth century, Ali Ibn Nafi, otherwise known as Ziryab, introduced sophisticated clothing styles and the first fashion shows. The clothes were based on his inspirations and seasonal displays from his native Baghdad. The fashion shows were simple affairs at which he exhibited his wares brought from the Middle East to small groups. He had a lasting influence on fashion with his presentations that offered different clothing for mornings, afternoons, and evenings. Ziryab set the trends when each fashion was to be worn.

On June 12, 1902, the first Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart Automat opened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cafeteria-style prepared foods were available behind small glass windows and coin-operated slots. Food was served on real dishes with metal utensils, and drinks were served in glasses. Horn and Hardart opened another Automat in New York City at Broadway and 13th Street on July 7, 1912. Because of its popularity, the New York City Automat marked the real opening of the first fast-food restaurant. These restaurants popularized the concept of take-out food with the slogan “Less work for mother.”

In 1843, Scottish clockmaker Alexander Bain received a British patent for “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs”—or in layman terms, a fax machine. By combining parts from clock mechanisms and telegraph machines, Bain’s first fax machine transmitter scanned a flat metal surface using a stylus mounted on a pendulum. The stylus produced back-and-forth line-by-line scanning and picked up crude images from the flat metal surface. It took another 100-plus years, and various improvements, for the fax machine to become popular.

In 1908, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) originated from a group of special agents created by Attorney General Charles Bonaparte during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. The organization had neither a name nor an officially designated leader other than the attorney general, yet these former detectives, a number of Department of Justice personnel, and 10 Secret Service men were the first members of the FBI. On July 26, 1908, Attorney General Bonaparte ordered the 34 men to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch. This action is celebrated as the beginning of the FBI.

In 1960, Geraldyn M. “Jerrie” Cobb of Norman, Oklahoma, was the first woman to undergo and successfully pass all three phases of the Mercury astronaut tests. Along with other highly qualified ladies, Cobb had been chosen by the Mercury astronaut selection team. Nevertheless, as the first female astronaut, she was not allowed to fly in space. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) decision-makers at the time thought that furthering a special program for lady astronauts would be detrimental to the U.S. space program. On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova of the Yaroslavl region of the former USSR became the first woman in space.

In January 1936, in the Plaza de Acho in Lima, Peru, Conchita Cintron became the first female public bullfighter. Recognized as the first woman to compete at a high professional level, she slew around 800 bulls during a 13-year career. Born in Chile in 1922, Cintron had originally trained as a
rejoneadora,
or horseback bullfighter. Cintron performed and was a big draw on the bullfighting circuit in Mexico, Portugal, southern France, Spain, and Venezuela, among others. Depending on the local laws, she was able to fight on foot as a
matadora
or on horseback as a
rejoneadora.