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4-12-2007 Man had not invented pantyhose, air conditioners, dishwashers, clothes dryers, the clothes were hung out to dry in the fresh air, and man hadn’t yet walked on the moon." The final upshot of the email is, of course, that grandma would be only 58-years-old to have been born before all of these wondrous inventions. A mere youngster if you ask us. And while it is true that some of the items mentioned would not have been in existence before someone who is 58 would have been born, a number of them, specifically ballpoint pens, dishwashers and television, were. According to our limited research, done for the most part on the website inventors. about.com, the ballpoint pen had its first success in October of 1945 when a crowd of over 5,000 people responded to an ad in the New York Times promoting the first sale of ballpoints in the United States at Gimbels Department Store in New York. Evidently on that first day of sales, Gimbels sold out its entire stock of 10,000 pens, at $12.50 each. Various attempts to create a ballpoint pen date back to 1888, when a ballpoint pen patent was granted to John Loud, an American leather tanner. Unfortunately, his pen did not work well and it wasn’t until 1935 that an improved version was invented in Hungary by Ladislas Biro and his brother, Georg. And, as far as we can tell, the pens sold by Gimbels were based on the Ladislas pen. And, in spite of the tremendous sale of ballpoint pens in 1945, the pens still had a number of problems which were not successfully ironed out until the 1950s when a French manufacturer of penholders and pen cases introduced a new clear-barreled, smoothwriting, non-leaky, inexpensive ballpoint pen he called the "Ballpoint Bic." In much the same vein as the ballpoint pen, the first patent for a dishwasher dates from 1850 when Joel Houghton produced a wooden machine with a hand-turned wheel which splashed water on dirty dishes. Although that machine was hardly successful, in 1886 Josephine Cochran invented the first practical dishwasher which she unveiled at the 1893 World’s Fair. Of course, at that time only hotels and large restaurants were interested in the dishwasher that was manufactured by a company founded by Josephine Cochran which eventually became known as Kitchen Aid. And it was not until the 1950s that dishwashers started showing up in the home. And, of course, television has been around much longer than most people realize. The first long distance use of television took place, we gather, between Washington, D.C. and New York City in 1927. By 1936 something like 200 televisions were in use worldwide. And television was demonstrated in 1939 at both the New York Worlds’ Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition. And at about the same time that the supposed grandma of the e-mail would have arrived on the scene, namely 1948, not only was cable television introduced in Pennsylvania, but about one million homes in the United States had televisions. All of this quite leads us to believe that one needs to be rather careful about the unlimited amount of information which is literally floating around these days. The internet has, we think, provided a method of communication, second only, we suspect, to the Cooperstown grapevine, which can quickly spread both fact and fiction, leaving it up to the recipient of same to decide which is which. And while we appreciate the ease with which we are able to research any number of things, we always tend to wonder what the real value is of what we learn. In fact, we are beginning to question the value of all forms of media, something which readers of this column have no doubt questioned for years. In closing, we would hope that, as a result of this column, no one would be deterred from forwarding e-mails which were found to be of interest on to us. We always try to read them to see not only what is of interest to others, but also to broaden our awareness of the concerns of others. We know that many people tend to simply delete such e-mails. But we have, over the years, always been glad that we have taken the time to read them. Granted, we may not send them on to our 10 dearest friends, or even back to the person who sent them, but we always feel reading them is time well spent, especially when we are able to turn one into a column like this. We remain, In these Otsego hills, The Ellsworths The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, N.Y. 13326, by telephone at 547-8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny. rr.com. They look forward to hearing from you. |
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