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 22, 1876 – Johns Hopkins opens as first research university in America.
At his inauguration, Johns Hopkins first president, Daniel Coit Gilman asked: What are we aiming at? The encouragement of research … and the advancement of individual scholars, who by [...]

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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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Today in History – February 1, 1972 – First scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, introduced for $395. I was an undergraduate in engineering when the HP-35 was released. I couldn’t afford to buy one and stuck with my slide rule. But the next year, I gave in and bought the next model, the HP-45 [...]

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