Firsts (7 page)

Around 1580, the first caricatures known to have been drawn intentionally as individual works appeared, created by Annibale Carracci of Bologna, Italy. The word
caricature
is thought to have come from the Italian
caricare,
which means “to load,” so Carracci’s goal was to create images with as much meaning as possible. Another theory is that the word
caricature
was derived from Carracci’s name. The first (or one of the first) caricature depicted a nude man who had climbed a tree and was picking grapes. Caricatures experienced their first successes in the closed aristocratic circles of Italy and France, where they were passed around for mutual enjoyment.

In 1879, the Ritty Model I was the world’s first mechanical cash register. It was invented by saloon owner James Ritty of Dayton, Ohio, who devised the concept after seeing a tool that counted the revolutions of an ocean liner’s propeller in its engine room. This first cash register was not electric powered and used metal taps with amount denominations pressed into them to indicate the amount of the sale. It also had a totals feature that summed up all the cash values of the keys pressed during a day. Another feature was the bell sound as the cash drawer opened when sales were rung up.

The oldest casino or gaming house in the world, the Casinò di Venezia, was established in Venice, Italy, in 1638. The casino opened in a district of Venice noted for its entertainment area and offered games and innovative amusement in a sumptuous environment. Built as an elegant palazzi, it was, and still is, a perfect example of aristocratic renaissance architecture. The first casino game played? A card game called faro that was further popularized by King Louis XIV in France.

Around 1400 B.C.E., the first walled city or castle complex was the biblical city Jericho. Located in the southern Jordan valley of Israel, Jericho was a walled city, complete with watch towers, in which more than a thousand people likely lived. The walls of this first castled city “came tumbling down” at the hands of the Israelites. An earthquake caused the complex’s foundation and mud brick walls to crumble. The bricks fell into a pile at the base of the wall, forming a ramp that Joshua and his troops used to gain access to the now-defenseless castle.

In 1598, the earliest recorded cat show took place in England at the St. Giles Fair in Winchester. The event was a sideshow attraction at the fair, probably a spectacle not of beauty, but of beast. Live mice and rats were systematically released, and prizes were awarded for the “best ratter” and the “best mouser.” A handful of cat entrants participated while onlookers gambled and drank.

A cataract is an opaque film that covers the eye and affects sight, and the first cataract-removal surgery was performed by Indian physician Sushruta in the sixth century B.C.E. After the patient was given some relaxing herbs, Sushruta used a Jabamukhi Salaka, or a curved needle, to loosen the lens and push the cataract out of the field of vision. After these first cataract surgeries were performed, the eye was soaked with warm butter and then bandaged. Although the process was deemed successful, it was only performed when absolutely necessary.

In 1876, an Ivy League man by the name of Fred Thayer invented the first catcher’s mask. Thayer adapted a fencing mask for catcher Alexander Tyng of the Harvard Nine baseball team. This first catcher’s mask, called a rat-trap, added protection and reduced the catcher’s apprehension of being struck by the ball. Thayer immediately obtained a patent, and his mask was offered in the Spalding sporting goods catalog for the 1878 season. This first catcher’s mask looked like a wire-basket cage with a vertical piece that ran between the eyes. It did have a little padding and a strap that went around the wearer’s head to help hold it in place.

In the late 1950s, actor-turned-designer Richard Blackwell launched the House of Blackwell, and soon, he and his celebrity clothing line became synonymous. Mr. Blackwell was the first in history to present his clothing line on a television broadcast, called
Mr. Blackwell Presents,
and the first to make his line available for plus-size women. Blackwell offered fashionable dresses in the $800 to $1,000 price range and was designer to Yvonne DeCarlo, Jayne Mansfield, Dorothy Lamour, Jane Russell, Nancy Reagan, and others. Although a respected actor and designer, Blackwell is best remembered as a fashion journalist for his annual “Worst Dressed” list that named the biggest fashion disasters of the year.

On April 3, 1973, on the streets of New York City, Martin Cooper, general manager of Motorola’s Communications Systems Division in Chicago, Illinois, made the first public telephone call placed on a portable cellular phone. Who did he call? His rival, Joel Engel of AT&T’s Bell Labs. Cooper had come to New York to demonstrate his new invention and connected to the area’s telephone system through a base station he had installed in a Manhattan skyscraper. The first commercially marketed cell phone was 1983’s Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. It cost $3,500.

On March 1, 1790, an act of Congress provided for the counting of all the residents of the United States to determine the number of representatives and amounts of taxes, authorizing the first organized census. The U.S. Secretary of State at the time, Thomas Jefferson, was the nominal director of the first census. The law required that every household be visited on Census Day, August 2, 1790, and that completed census schedules be posted in two of the most public places within each jurisdiction. The result of the census was to be delivered to President George Washington. The 1790 census showed a population of 3,939,326 located in 16 states and the Ohio territory. Virginia came in as the most populated, with 747,610 residents, and Rhode Island was the least populous at 68,825.

Around 350 B.C.E., the Lakedaemonians (Spartans) of Greece had developed a central heating system for buildings. They warmed their floors from underneath using an arrangement of ceramic pipes that transported air that had been heated by an underground fire in a central location. The heat from the floors rose up to heat the rooms. Their method was the precursor to the ancient Roman hypocaust system that similarly moved air heated by furnaces through empty spaces under the floors and out of pipes in the walls.

In 1966, Nabisco Company introduced Snack Mate, the first cheese in a can, with such flavors as American, cheddar, and pimento. Snack Mate was also referred to as aerosol cheese, but its container was not actually an aerosol spray can. The cheese was forced out of the can by an aerosol propellant, although the two products never came in contact within the can so it was safe to eat.

Many different sources claim the first hamburger, and the cheeseburger also has its share of steadfast beginnings. Most historians agree the first cheeseburger was created in 1924 when 16-year-old Lionel Clark Sternberger (later proprietor of a Los Angeles-area steak house called The Rite Spot) experimentally dropped a slab of American cheese on a sizzling hamburger while helping out at his father’s sandwich shop in Pasadena, California. Story has it that it was at the suggestion of a homeless man wanting to add a piece of cheese to his hamburger order. Sternberger liked it, and so did his dad, and the first cheeseburger—“cheese hamburger,” as they called it—was born.

In 1847, Joseph Fry produced the first chocolate bar in Fry’s chocolate factory in Keynsham, near Bristol, England. Fry discovered a method of mixing melted cacao butter back into defatted cocoa powder. By blending in some sugar, Fry created a paste that could be pressed into a mold. After cooling, these molded chocolate bars became suitable for widespread consumption. These first bars, which Fry called
chocolat delicieux a manger,
or “eating chocolate,” were immensely popular.

The first chocolate-chip cookie was conceived and invented in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield, of Whitman, Massachusetts. Wakefield ran the Toll House Restaurant, and one of her favorite recipes was Butter Drop Do Cookies, which called for baker’s chocolate. One day she found herself without baker’s chocolate but with a bar of semisweet chocolate on hand. So she chopped it into pieces and stirred the chunks of chocolate into the cookie dough. Wakefield thought the chocolate would melt and spread throughout as the cookies baked, but she soon found out otherwise. The chocolate bits held their shape and created a sensation she called Toll House Crunch Cookies. The cookies soon became very popular, and Wakefield’s recipe was published in papers throughout the New England area. In 1939, the cookie became nationally known when Betty Crocker used it in her radio series, “Famous Foods from Famous Eating Places.”

The widespread use of chopsticks has been traced to around 500 B.C.E. during the time of Confucius. (Although the first chopsticks may have been simple twigs used to spear a roast over an open fire 5,000 years ago.) The precise origins of using a pair of chopsticks to hold and take food to the mouth are unknown, but we do know they were invented in China. The chopsticks of Confucius’s time were probably made of bamboo, and they paired well with the Chinese cooking method of cutting food into tiny pieces.

John Calcott Horsley designed the first commercial Christmas card in 1843 in London, England. Wealthy businessman Sir Henry Cole, founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum, commissioned the design. The card was a picture of an old English festivity that showed a family toasting the season. One thousand cards were printed lithographically and hand painted by an artist named Mason. They were on a single piece of pasteboard measuring 5x3¼ inches and displayed the message, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” Cole used as many as he personally desired (around half) before selling the rest at 1 shilling each.

Circuses have been around since the time of the ancient Romans. Around 75 B.C.E., the emperor Pompey held spectacular shows full of lions, elephants, and chariot racing. These ancient circuses also featured slaves fighting to their deaths in quest of freedom and also dangerous duels with live animals. It was a spectacle of entertainment where the masses flocked to eagerly watch the happenings.

Around 124 B.C.E. in ancient China, the Han dynasty introduced the first civil service exams. During this time, an imperial university and a system of schools were founded to teach Confucian political and social ideologies to students pursuing a career in government. Candidates were chosen by written examinations that took place over a series of days. Scribes copied potential students’ answers to conceal the identity of the candidates from the examiners. The appointments to the schools were made, and the responsibilities were awarded based on demonstrated talent and ability. This was the first system of meritocracy.

Around 3000 B.C.E., the ancient Egyptians developed the first clocks in the form of sundials. To make the device, the Egyptians used
gnomons,
or shadow sticks. These were vertical sticks, or stakes, placed in the ground and used to indicate time by the length and direction of their shadow. The Egyptians next developed a more advanced sundial by placing a T-shape bar in the ground. This device was calibrated to divide the interval between the sunrise and sunset into 12 parts.

Born on July 5, 1996, Dolly the Sheep was the world’s first successfully cloned healthy animal. She lived until the age of 6 and was dubbed “the world’s most famous sheep.” The donor cell for the cloning was taken from a sheep’s mammary gland. Using the process of nuclear transfer, it took 277 tries to effectively clone Dolly. The eventual successful cloning proved that a cell taken from a specific body part could re-create a whole individual. Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell, and their colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, facilitated the cloning process. They had to take a cell, deprogram it, and then implant the resulting embryo. Dolly did not die from any deformations of cloning, by the way. It was progressive lung disease.

On Sunday night, March 16, 1980, three networks officially offered closed-captioned television for the first time. On PBS, it was
Masterpiece Theatre.
On NBC, it was the Wonderful World of Disney’s
Son of Flubber.
On ABC, it was the ABC Sunday Night Movie’s
Semi-Tough.
The closed-captions were seen in households that had the first generation of the closed-caption decoder. That meant the viewers could see a transcription of the audio portion of the programming. The special device that permitted this was called the TeleCaption adapter. It was manufactured by Sanyo, sold by Sears for $250, and easily connected to a standard television set.