While the Industrial Revolution forever changed the way Americans manufactured, bought, and sold everyday goods, fewer inventions had a larger impact on home life for American families than the sewing machine. While there had been several experimental and industrial models of sewing machines in existence since the earliest years of the 19th century, smaller…
Tag: connecticut inventors
December 11: The World’s First Jet-Powered Helicopter Flies Over Bloomfield
Today in 1951, aerospace engineer Charles H. Kaman’s modified K-225 helicopter took its first test flight in Bloomfield, Connecticut, changing the future of helicopter aviation forever. As the first helicopter to use a jet engine to power its drive shaft, the K-225 demonstrated a way to make helicopters fly faster and higher, with less…
December 10: A Stage Show Entertainment Leads to the Discovery of Anesthesia
On December 10, 1844, Hartford residents were treated to a special performance of famous showman and former medical student Gardner Colton’s “Laughing Gas Entertainment.” Colton had first encountered “laughing gas,” or nitrous oxide, while in medical school and soon found he could make quite a bit of money traveling the country demonstrating its hilarity-inducing…
December 2: The First Successful Permanent Artificial Heart
Born in 1946, renowned medical scientist Robert Jarvik grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. He. developed an affinity for the medical field at an early age, having frequently accompanied his father, an accomplished physician, to work. As a young man, he became fascinated with the intricate tools his father used during surgeries, and invented a…
November 17: Eli Terry Gets the First American Clock Patent –– His First of 10
Today in 1797, inventor and famous clock manufacturer Eli Terry of Plymouth received the first clock-making patent ever issued in the United States, launching an incredible career in manufacturing that helped make Connecticut the epicenter of quality clock manufacturing for the duration of the 19th century. Born in the eastern division of Windsor in…
November 9: The Nation’s First Planned Burying Ground Receives Its First Resident – During an Epidemic
In the 1790s, a deadly epidemic of yellow fever swept throughout the eastern United States, hitting densely populated urban centers like New Haven especially hard. As fever-related fatalities multiplied, the burying grounds located behind the churches on the New Haven green — operation for nearly 150 years — quickly exceeded capacity. City leaders responded…
August 29: Wind Power for the Prairies
During the first half of the 19th century, as thousands of Americans journeyed westward in search of new fortunes, necessity became the mother of invention as would-be farmers were forced to adapt to new climates and topographies that were unlike anything they had ever seen before. Since the Great Plains generally lacked the forests…
August 20: Connecticut Inventor Breaks the Rule of Wind Over Water
During the Age of Sail, all people who traveled by water did so at the mercy of wind and tide. Too little wind, or wind from the wrong direction, brought delay or disruption to the best-laid plans. Too much wind brought danger, and sometimes even death and destruction. No trip was predictable. When it…
August 18: Connecticut Man with a Rifle Enters Lincoln’s Office
It would be easy to hold up Connecticut inventor Christopher Miner Spencer as an archetype of 19th century Yankee ingenuity: Not only was he a man who spent his whole life tinkering with machinery, filing patents, and aggressively marketing his creations, but as with so many other Connecticut inventors, his innovations changed the course…
August 11: A Piano Maker’s Play to Cut Insurance Rates Nets Him Millions
As the Industrial Revolution transformed American market towns into industrial cities during the 19th century, the risk of urban fires – always a hazard – sharply increased. This was especially true in the era that preceded the establishment of building and fire codes. In response to the sharp increase in fire-related damage claims in…
April 12: For Writers, It Was the First Laptop
Today in 1892, George Canfield Blickensderfer of Stamford patented the first successful portable typewriter, one of the most transformative examples of Yankee ingenuity ever to come from the Constitution State. An antique Blickensderfer portable typewriter Model 5, manufactured sometime in the 1890s. Blickensderfer’s machine used a radical, minimalist design that contained up to 90…
January 24: A. C. Gilbert, the Greatest Generation’s Greatest Toymaker
Today in 1961, A. C. “A. Co.” Gilbert, the man whose hands-on-learning toys were the foundation of the American toy industry during the first half of the twentieth century, died at age 76. A gifted athlete and pole-vaulting gold medalist at the 1908 London Olympics, Gilbert was also a talented illusionist who financed his…