Firsts (20 page)

German goldsmith and inventor Johannes Gutenberg began working on the first printing press in 1436, although it wasn’t until 1439 that an official record exists. Gutenberg was living and working at the time in Strassburg (now Strasbourg, France). He modified earlier printing attempts, as well as utilized ideas from presses for making cheese, wine, and oil. His printing press used individual wooden (later metal) type fonts (movable type) that were laid flat and in word-making order on a wooden plate. The paper for the words to appear upon was pressed down with a heavy screw that was turned by a handle. On September 30, 1452, the Gutenberg Bible was published. It was the first book to be published in volume using movable type.

In 1797, the first purposely built prisoner-of-war camp was established at Norman Cross, England, and housed prisoners captured in naval engagements from the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. The camp was located on a 40-acre field purchased by the English government. Five hundred carpenters and laborers constructed buildings, storage sheds, officers’ quarters, prisoner barracks, a series of inner surrounding walls, and an outside main wall and gatehouse. Around 30 wells were sunk to draw drinking water. This first prisoner-of-war camp could hold 5,000 to 6,000 prisoners.

The first professional basketball team was really two YMCA teams, one from Trenton, New Jersey, and the other from Brooklyn, New York, when they played each other on November 7, 1896. An admission fee was charged to spectators, and each player on both squads received $15 except for Trenton’s star player, Fred Cooper, who got $16. There were 9 players on the floor at a time for each team. This first-known professional game was played at the Trenton Masonic Temple to a packed house. The Trenton YMCA squad defeated the Brooklyn YMCA team with a score of 15-1.

In 1896, the Allegheny (Pennsylvania) Athletic Association team fielded the first completely professional football team, which played an abbreviated two-game season. The team defeated squads from the Pittsburgh Athletic Club and the Duquesne Country and Athletic Club (also of Pittsburgh) on consecutive days, winning both games by shutouts. The first pro football team’s colors were blue and white and used Three A’s as its nickname. Knowing that it would soon be barred from further competition by the Amateur Athletic Union, the Allegheny Athletic Association defiantly emptied its treasury to import a team of all-stars, including William “Pudge” Heffelfinger, the first openly professional player. After the two-game season, the sport was dropped from the club due to the “pro” football turmoil.

In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first men’s baseball team to publicly announce that their players were paid, making them the first professional team. Aaron B. Champion, a 26-year-old attorney, organized the team, mostly made of New Yorkers, with financing via a group of Ohio investors. The total payroll for the 1869 season was $9,300, with salaries ranging from $800 to a high of $1,400; the lone sub made $600. The Red Stockings also became the first team to travel across the United States with its players signed and bound to a club for the entire season. During their first season, the Red Stockings went 65-0.

In 1841, shoemaker John Augustus was the world’s first probation officer. The Boston, Massachusetts, resident volunteered to help drunks, vagrants, and petty thieves better themselves. His first case came about when he asked a judge to put a drunk in his care. When the drunk returned to the court after a period of probation under Augustus’s heed, no one believed the drunk was the same man. He had undergone a complete turnaround for the better, thanks to Augustus’s guidance. Although Augustus never got paid for years of service, he continued his work until his death in 1859.

In 1878, the Massachusetts’s general assembly authorized the mayor of Boston to hire a probation officer based on the work of the late criminal justice reformer. Between the times of Augustus’s death and an official hiring in 1878, numerous unofficial unpaid volunteers conducted probation affairs.

The first prosthetic, a toe, dates to 1069 to 664 B.C.E. and is credited to the ancient Egyptians. The prosthetic toe, believed to have belonged to a 50- to 60-year-old woman, was found in a tomb near the city of Thebes, Egypt. Archaeologists speculate the prosthetic came about as the result of the woman losing her real toe due to complications from diabetes. The wood and leather prosthetic toe was held in place by leather strapping and jointed in three places so it could bend. It was apparently fully functional and aided walking and balance because it showed signs of wear. The amputation area behind the prosthetic was well healed.

Around 400 B.C.E., the first public hospital was founded in Rome, Italy, by Fabiola, a Christian woman of noble birth who became the sole possessor of an affluent fortune on the death of her husband. With her fortune, she built an infirmary for the reception of the sick and homeless, where they were supplied with every comfort. She forsook her luxurious lifestyle and helped nurse the sick herself. The hospital was free for its patients, and some sources credit her as being the first woman surgeon.

The first public library of sorts was an archive of more than 23,600 clay tablets covered with cuneiform writings (wedge-shape impressions) dating from around 2285 B.C.E. and discovered in 1933 at the site of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Mari (present-day Tall Hariri, Syria). The first U.S. public library was founded on November 16, 1700. The South Carolina General Assembly passed a law that established the St. Philip’s Church Parsonage Provincial Library in Charles Town and provided for its governance. The library remained in operation for 14 years.

Around 530 B.C.E. in Ur (part of modern-day Iraq), an educational museum containing a collection of labeled antiquities was founded by Ennigaldi-Nanna, the daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylonia. Some of the museum’s artifacts included a Kassite boundary marker, a piece of a statue of King Shulgi, and a clay cone that had been part of a building at Larsa. Along with them were clay cylinders that identified the objects in three languages. Ennigaldi-Nanna served as high priestess and ran a scribal school for upper-class women. The museum was the perfect complement for the school as a public display of esteem.

Around 1175 B.C.E., the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III commissioned numerous public gardens and parks. These first parks had wide places for walking that passed through plantings of flowers and fruit trees. Describing one of his parks, Ramses III said (according to records discovered in his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu), “I dug a lake before it … planted trees and vegetation … It was surrounded with gardens and arbor-areas filled with fruit and flowers.” In addition to the public parks that he donated to the temples of his kingdom, Ramses III was benefactor to many of the public buildings of the era.

In 1543, Maurice, Duke of Saxony, established the first public schools of note in the southeastern part of present-day Germany. He donated the three major school facilities (Prince Schools, Meissen, and Grimma) in various cities to the New National Order that included public education after he had confiscated various properties during a warring conflict and sold them at enormous profits. With the monies and the inspirational help of Philipp Melanchthon, a German professor and friend of Lutheran church founder Martin Luther, Maurice’s newly established schools provided literacy for the children of laborers and farmers. These first public schools enabled ordinary students to read the Bible.

The pull-tab or zip-top can was born in 1959 in Dayton, Ohio. Ermal Fraze, a tool-and-die maker, used the material in the lid of the can to form a rivet to hold a tab in place. His challenge was to notch an opening into the can’s top the consumer could easily remove, but one still strong enough to withstand the can’s internal pressure. Thanks to his clever engineering and workable concept, Fraze came up with a solution and later sold the rights to Alcoa. Alcoa convinced the Iron City Brewing Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to give the new pull-tabs a test. In March 1962, the first pull-tabs were made available to the public on Iron City Beer. This first design had sharp edges on both the tab and the opening, and customers complained about cut fingers and lips. Improvements were made to fix the problems, and pull-tabs enjoyed decades of service until they were replaced on many soda cans in 1975.

On November 20, 1888, Willard Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, New York, invented the first punch clock. Also called a time clock, it was a mechanical timepiece used to track the hours an employee worked, which formed an official record to calculate an employee’s pay. At the beginning and ending of work, the employee “punched the clock” by inserting an assigned heavy paper card into a slot, and time and day information were printed on the card. In 1889, Willard’s brother, Harlow, organized the Bundy Manufacturing Company, which began successful mass production of the first punch clocks.

In 1856, the first product available to be purchased on credit or on an installment plan was the sewing machine. The plan was made available from the Singer Sewing Machine Company of New York City. Edward Clark, the business partner of the company’s founder, Isaac Singer, devised the innovative purchase plan. The arrangement allowed families who could not afford the lump sum $125 investment to purchase a sewing machine to pay monthly installments in the $3 to $5 range. At the time, the average yearly family income was about $500, and this first installment plan allowed households to get and use the product immediately. They were “buying on time,” or paying for something while they were using it.

General George Washington created the Purple Heart medal on August 7, 1782, to be awarded for “any singularly meritorious action.” He called upon close friend M. Pierre Charles L’Enfant to design the award, which was originally called the Badge of Military Merit. Washington presented the “heart of purple cloth with a narrow lace or binding” to Sergeant Elijah Churchill on May 3, 1783. Churchill was cited for heroism in action regarding whaleboat raids in the several enterprises against Fort St. George in November 1780 and Fort Slongo in October 1781 on Long Island, New York. During a successful Fort Slongo raid against the British, Churchill was the only man wounded.

The Purple Heart as we know it today was reestablished in 1932 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Today’s Purple Hearts are pins, medals, and/or variations of badges, depending on the military branch, but all have purple somewhere on them.

The first quarantine occurred around 1513 B.C.E. The Bible, in the Book of Leviticus, mentions the separation of the people infected with leprosy to prevent the further spread of the disease. The lepers were described as having blanched skin areas of some depth with whitened hair and were excluded from the community. Various verses from the Book of Leviticus further describe the quarantine: “The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp.” (King James Version) Those who recovered were permitted to return to camp after completing rites of purification.

During the Middle Paleolithic period in ancient Egypt about 40,000 years ago, stone from the Nile Valley was quarried by massive manpower and labor. The first quarries of this region consisted of pits and trenches for surface extraction of stones but also included vertical shafts and subterranean galleries. Limestone was the most commonly extracted stone, as it was utilized in huge quantities. Red, gray, and black granite were also mined. Hammerstones were used for the roughest stages, along with picks carved from the horns of gazelles and hartebeest for finer work. Without those mining operations and the backbreaking work of those first quarrymen, there would have been no great pyramids or grand temples constructed.