Firsts (18 page)

On August 27, 1859, Titusville, Pennsylvania, became the birthplace of the oil industry. It was there that the first commercial oil well in the world was drilled and the first oil strike took place. Former railroad conductor Edwin L. Drake, working for the Seneca Oil Company at the time, opened a 70-foot shaft by using an old steam engine to power the drill. Drake struck oil at 69½ feet but had been prepared to drill 1,000 feet if necessary. Before this oil strike, Drake was the subject of much ridicule. Others laughed at his theory that drilling would be the best way to extract oil from the earth. During its heyday, the Titusville oil well produced some 400 gallons a day.

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the predecessor of Internet dating was soc.singles, followed closely by alt.romance. Both were newsgroups with a massive collection of articles filled with questions, answers, views, and ideas on all things concerning romance and love. These newsgroups were a place to hang out, debate issues, and of course flirt. People from around the world logged on to these first online matchup sites to unwind, have fun, and maybe “meet” someone worthwhile.

Written and performed in 1597, the first opera (known by that name) was
Dafne.
Its libretto was written by poet Ottavio Rinuccini, and its music was by Florentine choirmaster Jacopo Peri. First performed in Florence, Italy,
Dafne
was commissioned by the Count of Vernio. Its storyline was a version of the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo and was a collection of recitatives separated by occasional orchestral interludes. The word
opera
was invented by a group of late Renaissance Italian intel lectuals to describe their new artistic form that combined music, drama, scenery, and movement. It means “a work” or “labor.”

Paper folding originated in China around the first or second century C.E. for the purpose of folding certain special documents such as certificates and diplomas. It wasn’t the recreational origami we think of today. That “play” origami didn’t develop until the end of the nineteenth century. The ceremonial preciseness of paper folding reached Japan by the sixth century, and it was the Japanese who first called this new art form origami.

In 1970, the U.S. Post Office was the first to begin experimenting with overnight mail delivery. During this time, a new generation of wide-bodied or jumbo-jet transports began operations. The overnight possibilities wouldn’t have been possible if not for the farsighted innovation and planning of the U.S. Post Office. Federal Express (FedEx) began shipping overnight packages in 1974, while Express Mail Next Day became a standard postal service in 1977. United Parcel Service (UPS) inaugurated its overnight delivery plan in 1985.

On October 8, 1958, Dr. Ake Senning, a surgeon at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, installed the first human implantable pacemaker. The patient was Arne Larsson, who lived until December 28, 2001, and had about two dozen pacemakers over his extended lifetime. That first pacemaker was developed by Dr. Rune Elmqvist. It had a pulse amplitude of 2 volts, a pulse width of 1.5 milliseconds, and supplied a constant rate of 70 to 80 impulses a minute. It was approximately 55 millimeters in diameter and 16 millimeters thick and was encapsulated in epoxy resin. The device’s two NiCad battery cells were recharged weekly by beaming radio energy from an external device through the skin to the pacemaker’s antenna.

September 9, 1963, marked the birth date of modern times’ first live birth of a giant panda born in captivity. The baby girl panda named Ming Ming was born at the Beijing Zoo, China, to parents Li Li (mother) and Pi Pi (father). China’s attempts to breed pandas in captivity began in 1955, and in 1978, the Beijing Zoo was also the first to have a panda birth resulting from artificial insemination.

On June 7, 1860, the first mass-marketed paperback book,
Malaseka: Indian Wife of the White Hunter,
was advertised in the
New York Tribune.
It was a work of fiction by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens and published by Irwin P. Beadle and Company of No. 141 William Street, New York City. Labeled as a “dime novel,” the 128-page book sold for 10¢. The newspaper ad copy listed it as “Beadle’s Dime Novels No. 1” to be ready Saturday morning, June 9, 1860.

Aside from the thirteenth-century European method of putting ribbon through parallel cuts in the upper-left corner of pages, the first paperclip is attributed to Johan Vaaler in 1899. Vaaler was a Norwegian inventor who was the first to patent a paperclip design. The patent said, “It consists of forming same of a spring material, such as a piece of wire, that is bent to a rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop, the end parts of which wire piece form members or tongues lying side by side in contrary directions.” This first paperclip was not curved like the common ones of today. That design didn’t officially come into play until 1904, when Cushman and Denison, a New York City company, trademarked the Gem.

Around 100 B.C.E. in ancient Rome, aging Centurions were perhaps the first paramedics. The former military leaders had commanded a century of roughly 100 men and understood battlefield conditions. Aged and not able to fight, these first paramedics managed the injured soldiers, removing the wounded from the battlefield and performing some care. Although they weren’t physicians, they had to stop bleedings, suture wounds, and complete amputations.

Aside from antiquity’s letters, notes, and tax receipts that at times permitted safe passage, in 1414, King Henry V of England invented the first true passports, called Safe Conducts. The king wanted a means to help his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands. With the Safe Conducts, the King warned foreign people that they should allow his subjects to travel freely. No photographs were on these first passports, but they did contain a description of the holder. The official documents were foldable and were mainly issued for a very limited time and generally for a single journey.

Modern pencils are the descendants of ancient writing instruments. Crude pencils can be traced back to the charred sticks of prehistoric times. With a blackened burnt stick, a caveman could make temporary markings on rocks or trees. Around 3500 B.C.E., the Sumerians used a stylus for inscribing marks on wet clay tablets. The stylus was made from sharpened reeds that honored their goddess of writing, Nissaba (originally their goddess of grass plants that included reeds). The ancient Egyptians used hollow pieces of reeds, bamboo, and tiny brushes of hair to mark on papyrus, a paperlike material made from plants. As early as 500 B.C.E., the Romans wrote with a thin metal rod that left a light but readable mark. Some of these early rods were made from a kind of lead. That made the Romans history’s first people to use a “lead” pencil. It’s not certain what culture may have called their writing tool a
pencillus,
Latin for “little tail,” as the term arrived later (with no exact date or credit). But it’s definite that
pencillus
is where our modern
pencil
comes from.

In 1896, 32 years before Alexander Fleming revealed the antibiotic properties of penicillin, French medical student Ernest Duchesne noticed that certain molds kill bacteria. Duchesne’s research on the first penicillin went relatively unnoticed. In 1897, he submitted a thesis to get his doctorate degree from the Military Health Service School of Lyon. His thesis described the first “penicillin,” but it wasn’t called or named that at the time. The thesis was on the therapeutic capabilities of molds resulting from their antimicrobial activity.

The first pension plan was passed in early 1776 prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was a national pension program for soldiers, although it really wasn’t fully instigated until the time immediately following the Civil War. This pension plan went to one special segment of the American population—the disabled and/or survivors of deceased breadwinners. Following the Civil War, the program issued monthly checks to the North and the South’s hundreds of thousands of widows, orphans, and disabled veterans. The creation of the Civil War pensions was the first time a full-fledged pension system was developed and executed. It also was America’s first Social Security program.

Although no one attended the ceremony, the first human burial on the moon took place on July 31, 1999, when a small container holding 1 ounce of the ashes of astro-geologist Eugene M. Shoemaker arrived near the south pole of the moon after a controlled crash. The ashes were aboard a NASA lunar prospector probe that had been launched in January 1998. This special first moon burial was arranged by Space Services, Inc., of Houston, Texas. Shoemaker died on July 18, 1997, and as the codiscoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1993, it seemed fitting to those he left behind to honor him by launching part of his remains into space for eternity.

Around 2500 B.C.E., the first-known pesticide was sulfur dusting. This first pesticide was used in Sumeria in ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians ignited the sulfur and used the fumes and dust from its combustion to spread over their crops as an insecticide and pesticide. The early civilizations were able to meet their meager needs from the easily mined native sulfur deposits near active and extinct volcanoes. Sulfur is also known as brimstone in its natural state and is a yellow nonmetallic element. The ancients also believed that burning sulfur cleansed the air of evil.

In 1896, veterinarian Dr. Samuel Johnson founded the Hartsdale Canine Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. A distressed client of Dr. Johnson had called his New York City office to say her dog had died and that she wanted to give it a proper burial. The problem—there was no way for this to be conducted legally in the city of New York. The compassionate doctor informed her that if she wanted to make the trip up to Hartsdale, located about 20 miles north of New York City, he’d be pleased to allow her to bury the animal in his apple orchard. That kind gesture served as the cornerstone of what was to become the world’s first pet cemetery. Now called the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery and Crematory, it is the final resting place of more than 70,000 beloved pets.

Before the arrival of pet foods as we know them today, most dogs and cats lived off grains, meats, table scraps, and homemade food from their owners. It wasn’t until 1860 that an electrician, James Spratt of Cincinnati, Ohio, who was living in London at the time, created a biscuit made of wheat and vegetables mixed with beef blood. He had conceived the idea as he watched dogs around a shipyard eating scraps of discarded biscuits. His “Spratt’s Patent Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes” were made and successfully sold in England some 30 years before they reached U.S. stores.

As the story goes, Gary Dahl, a California advertising man, purchased what was to become the first pet rock, a Rosarita Beach stone (a rounded gray pebble) at a builder’s supply store in San Jose, California, in April 1975 for 1 penny. Later, when Dahl was having drinks with his buddies one night, the conversation turned to pets. Dahl told them he had a pet rock and that it was an ideal pet—easy, cheap, and with a great personality. Afterward, Dahl spent 2 weeks writing the
Pet Rock Training Manual,
a step-by-step guide to having a happy relationship with the ecological pet. He next packed his pet rock in a gift box shaped like a pet carrying case and included the instruction book. About a month later, in June 1975, Dahl’s pet rock hit store shelves. Retailing at $3.95, the pet rock fad spread like wildfire to the rest of the country and made Dahl an instant millionaire.

In 1859, the raw material for the first petroleum jelly was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The paraffin-like material was found sticking to some of the first oil rigs. Although it caused the rigs to seize, the workers used the rod wax, as they called it, on their cuts and burns because it hastened healing. Robert Chesebrough, a young chemist, discovered that by distilling the lighter, thinner oil products from the rod wax, he could create a light-colored gel. He opened his first petroleum jelly factory in 1870 in Brooklyn, New York. Chesebrough received a patent in 1872 and named his new product Vaseline.

Around 700 C.E. in ancient Japan, men filled roles comparable to modern-day pharmacists. These first pharmacists mixed medicines, prepared compresses, and produced concoctions of herbs and plants. They performed their craft for the ill and injured, but especially for the high command of imperial royalty. Their place in the Japanese society was settled in the Taih Code of 701 C.E., which was an administrative element of procedures in the Japanese code of ethics and government. These early pharmacists were highly respected and assigned a status superior to many others.