Today in History-March 3, 1831–Thomas Jennings became the first African-American to receive a patent for his invention of ‘dry-scouring’, a process better known today as dry-cleaning.
As a free man, he established a local business in New York in which he sold clothing. However, customers became disgruntled that there was no means to effectively clean the [...]

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Today in History – February 25, 1837 – Thomas Davenport patents the electric motor and electric railway. Thomas Davenport, an American blacksmith, first invented the DC electrical motor in 1834 and used it to make a small model of electrical railway in 1835. He patented a device for “Improvements in propelling machinery by [...]

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Today in History – February 21, 1994 -  Whirlpool begins production of refrigerators without freon.
In the 1930s, refrigerators began to use freon as a refrigerant. However, the use of freon became an environmental concern once it was identified as a ozone-depleting chemical. Fortunately, household appliance manufacturers have since switched to a different refrigerant, HFC-134a, [...]

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Today in History – February 18, 1901 – First vacuum cleaner patented by Hubert Cecil Booth, an English structural engineer. This design had the disadvantage that it had no way to collect the dust and never became a commercial success. In 1907, James Spangler, a janitor working in Canton, Ohio, was not aware of [...]

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Today in History – February 17, 2009 – Television originally scheduled to go digital in the U.S. Congress mandated this as the date when all full-power TV stations would cease to broadcast analog programming. This transition to digital television was promoted as enabling more efficient use of the nation’s airwaves, including allowing new [...]

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