growabrain: First Ever Archives

March 02, 2008

First VCR

The The Ampex Signature V. The first domestic video recorder. In 1963 this unit was offered in the Neiman-Marcus catalog for $30,000 It was nine feet long and weighed 900 pounds. The video portion of the system included the Black & White reel-to-reel video recorder with TV tuner and automatic timer as well as a home television camera.

The cabinet also housed a complete audio system including an AM/FM tuner, stereo amplifier, record player, reel-to-reel audio recorder, and stereo loudspeakers. A colour TV was viewable from the front of the console, while all other components were accessed from the top. The $30,000 price tag included a personalized plaque and installation by an Ampex service engineer

The Philips N1500 VCR with analogue clock from 1972. Everyone agrees that this was the first domestic cassette recorder

Much more at The Museum of early consumer electronics Rewind museum

1938 - First album cover. (From Undependent)

A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

March 2, 2008 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 17, 2007

The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances for Many Years

1485 - Le Morte d'Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory. The first book in English

1809 - The French confectioner Nicolas François Appert developed a method of vacuum-sealing food inside glass jars, thus creating the first can

1889: The first jukebox is installed at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. It becomes an overnight sensation and its popularity spreads around the world

Re-post: The first transistor was built 60 years ago on Dec. 16, 1947

Kicki Håkansson, the first woman to win the Miss World title, 1951

Rocket 88 by Ike Turner & Jackie Brenston (1951), first recorded at Sam Phillips' recording studio in Memphis, on 3 March or 5 March 1951. It is usually acknowledged as the first "rock and roll" song (YT)

The First Ever Coin-Operated Arcade Machine from 1971 (with Video)

2000 - Erik Weihenmayer, first blind person to Summit Everest and the only blind person to have climbed the "Seven Summits"

A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

December 17, 2007 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 06, 2007

Horn broken. Watch for finger

Sept. 13, 1899: Henry Bliss becomes the First Pedestrian Killed by Car in North America.

Bliss, a Manhattan real estate salesman, had just stepped off a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West when he was struck by a passing taxicab. It knocked him unconscious, crushing his skull and chest. He died the following morning.

The driver of the cab, an electric-powered vehicle, was arrested and charged with manslaughter. The charges were dropped after it was determined that Bliss' death was unintentional.

On the centennial of his death, a plaque was placed at the site by Citystreets, a safety-awareness organization

A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

November 6, 2007 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 09, 2007

The Morris worm

The first time that certain people & things were mentioned in the New York Times. For example, Microsoft on August 13, 1981, The Simpsons on December 23, 1988

First ever singer to use a wireless headset radio microphone on stage, Kate Bush in her 1979 Tour of Life

The Morris worm, first computer worm distributed via the Internet, November 2, 1988

WebCrawler, the first full text search engine (April 20, 1994)

Born between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn, one of the sites on wikipedia’s Mozart article. This was the first of wikipedia’s featured articles, February 22, 2004. Today’s excellent article, for example, is about “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion”, a 1944 triptych by Francis Bacon

Re-post / unrelated: Sad Song by Fredo Viola (created entirely using 15 second JPEG movies from my Nikon Coolpix 775 camera and composted in After Effects)

A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

August 9, 2007 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 29, 2007

The great Eugene Sandow

Bertha Benz was the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance (1888)

The great Eugene Sandow (YT) & Loïe Fuller's Danse Serpentine - What the first moviegoers saw

Mary Phelps Jacob, Inventor of the Modern Brassiere (1914). From Neatorama’s stories about the origins of everyday objects

Many of us think of the movie “Tron” as the the first film to use computer animation or effects in any form. But the technology goes back a lot further than 1982, when Tron was released. The World's First Computer Animation And Effects In Film

Also - UNRELATED - a missing puzzle piece gallery from Planet Dan

/// A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories (my favorite collection) Here

June 29, 2007 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2007

First photo on the www

Oldest. Thing. Ever. At least 4,600,000,000 years

World’s First Coin - c. 600-575 BC

The 'Tulip stairs’ at The Queen's House in Greenwich, the first centrally unsupported spiral stair in Britain - 1616

Robert Cocking was the developer of an early unsuccessful parachute design and the first person to be killed in a parachuting accident - 1837

Shoshone National Forest, in Yellowstone, the first federally protected forest in the US - 1891

First zipper - 1893. (From Apparel Search)

The first triangular postal map stamp was issued in 1894 by Liberia

Outrageous Firsts in Television History. (Also there, Top Ten Closet Stoners in TV History)

Back in 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of "the CERN girls" to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the "World Wide Web". I had only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and FTPed them to Tim's now famous "info.cern.ch" - Les Horribles Cernettes, the first rock band to have a website, and the subject of the first photographic image on the Web -1992

/// Add it to your del.icio.us /// A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories (my favorite collection) Here

January 15, 2007 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 17, 2006

First Frisbee

In Bridgeport, CT., the Frisbie Baking Company sold pies in metal dishes. Boredom led to recreation and the Frisbee was born - 1948. (From Slap’s blog)

First Garfield strip: June 19, 1978

The First Russian Laptop, made under the brand “Elektronika”. The production started in 1991 and lasted not very long due to the high price of the device - none of the common people could afford themselves such devices. The price for the computer was around $6000, that equals 25,000 roubles according to that time’s exchange rate, when the average salary across the country was 500 roubles

In the game of life, no one remembers the second bluegrass icon killed by a tractor. Blender salutes the songs, stars—and cannibals—who got there first. Famous Musical Firsts. (From J-Walk)

/// Add it to your del.icio.us /// A Huge Depository of Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

November 17, 2006 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 15, 2006

First town in the world to have electric street lights

Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent on his telephone in 1876. He demonstrated it to visitors to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition that same year. In early 1878, he installed the first telephone exchange, in New Haven, Connecticut. The First Telephone Book - actually just a single 14 cm. x 21 cm. sheet - was issued in New Haven in 1878. Below is a 1978 facsimile of that sheet

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse

First lighthouse in the US - Boston, MA (1716)

The first concrete highway in N.J. built with concrete from the Edison Cement Plant in New Village. Photos by Dick Harpster

First ever 1,000,000 answer thread (Still 981,675 comments short)

Famous Firsts - history making "first ever" accomplishments. Also from Corsinet, the last of things

Bush’s first veto, July 20, 2006 - get rid of them no-good, pesky stem cells

Many More Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here /// Digg this post /// Add it to your del.icio.us

August 15, 2006 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 17, 2006

Naked World Records

First man to stand naked at both North and South poles and other naked records (Including First picture of naked person transmitted over the internet, on Rusty n Edie's BBS, May 11, 1987. (When you search for Naked on Google, this website comes up first… SFW)

First uses of computer-generated imagery in film and television, since 1973

World's Oldest Condom, 1640

Earliest portrait discovered 27,000 years old

Earliest bird fossils from China are 11 million years old, announced this week on the journal Nature. (Here’s an electronic version of the first issue from 1869)

Many More Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here /// Digg this post /// Add it to your del.icio.us

June 17, 2006 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 04, 2006

First spam email

Dan Rice (1823-1901) - Lincoln's Court Jester, Uncle Sam's model and America's first clown. (From America's First Greats)

The Birth of the test card

What was the world's first spam email? (1978)

The first Astronomy Picture of the Day, June 16, 1995. APOD of yesterday, March 3, 2006. APOD of March 1, 2006: Multiverses: Do Other Universes Exist? By Clifford Pickover. All pictures in the APOD Archive

Six years ago today I posted the following to a group on Usenet: “... Mizzy. I have great respect for the way you live your life. We share so much of what we find important in this world. You are kind, thoughtful, intelligent, loving, and a beautiful soul. My greatest dream would be to spend the rest of my life with you. If I spent hours writing this I could not list all that is great about you. I'll close with words directly from my heart…Will you marry me? “… I have no idea if it was the first first marriage proposal on Usenet, but it was my only one. She said yes. We were married soon after

Many More Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

March 4, 2006 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2005

History of Cell Phones

The first cocktail ever was made in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, using wine, beer, apple juice and honey

Oldest Chinese noodles - 4,000 old

1790 - First U.S. Patent: U.S. Patent No. 1X "Method of producing pot ash and pearl ash" issued to Samuel Hopkins

First modern bodybuilder, Eugen Sandow, born Friederich Wilhelm Mueller on April 2, 1867

1871 - Andrew Smith Hallidie Patented the first cable car

The first issue of National Geographic Magazine hit the newsstands this day, October 17, 1888. Wikipedia has a daily what happened on this day feature

1973 - First public telephone call placed on a portable cellular phone

First glimpse of The Simpsons on the Tracey Ullman Show 1987-1989, before and after ad breaks

Many More Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

October 17, 2005 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 26, 2005

The man behind the curtain

The Milestone motel by Highway 101, the very first motel - 1925

The first Academy Award (Oscar) winners - 1929

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the first electronic digital computer, built in 1937-1942 at Iowa State University

Noughts And Crosses - The oldest graphical computer game - 1952. From the previously-blogged Pong Story

First Starbucks Coffee store opens for business in the Pike Place Market - 1971. (Ooops - This is a re-post)

The Trojan Room coffee pot - 1991, the inspiration for the world's first webcam

Craig Silverstein, Google employee No. 1, the Man behind the curtain - 1998

The British Armed Forces has officially recognized Naval technician Chris Cranmer, 24, its first registered Satanist - 2004

Many More Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

June 26, 2005 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 21, 2005

The first time -

World's Oldest Board Game - 3,000 BC

Philogelos, the oldest joke in the world: "Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said "I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died." (2,500 years old, I told this joke less than 6 months ago)

The first omnibus newspaper ever published in Scandinavia - January 1749

What do you say when you answer a ringing telephone? The first Hello - 1880

The world's first practical light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, and a mere three years later in 1882 an associate of his, one Edward Johnson, electrically lit a Christmas tree for the first time. Update: See comment below from "New Links" regarding the first electrically lit street

Scrooge McDuck - The very first image on the very first Macintosh - January 1980. (From ”Folklore”, anecdotes about the development of Apple's original Macintosh computer, and the people who created it)

The first web browser was written in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee. See 2 screen shots.

Making the rounds: The first image on the Web - 1992

Many More Unusual ‘First Ever’ Stories Here

Today’s “Blog Of The Day” is a work of progress by Cynthia Korzekwa from Rome, “Art for Housewives”, - Make art not war. If you know of a blog that should be considered as “Blog Of The Day”, please email me at realhanan (at) yahoo (dot) com, or post a comment at the bottom of this post.

February 21, 2005 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 21, 2004

First TV dinner at The Waldorf

The Oldest Map of the World , 6200 B.C. Located at the Konya Museum, Turkey

More about Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s first photograph (1826)

World's First Commercial Christmas Card, 1843

A dinner celebrating the first live television transmittion was held after the demonstration at the Waldorf Astoria. Hence, the first true TV Dinner. June 29, 1936

The 100 Oldest .com Domains that are Currently Registered. (From Jason Kottke)

An Eclectic & Long List of ‘Firsts‘ Here

December 21, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 05, 2004

What was the second music video played on MTV?

Oldest Known Musical Instrument Plays Notes of Do, Re, Mi Scale. This artifact is dated between 43,000 to 82,000 years old, making it the first flute ever to be associated with Neanderthals and oldest musical instrument ever found. Also, the Oldest Song in the World

1405 - Oldest Chastity Belt

14th century - First paper banknote

Oldest known pencil from the 17 century. (Found at “Reality Carnival”)

1817 – The first bicycle, the steerable Draisienne was invented

July 8, 1870. The first registered US trademark was one of the «Averill Chemical Paint Company» of New York City, which represented an eagle holding in its beak a pot of paint and a pennant with a slogan

August 28, 1884. Oldest known image of a tornado. It was taken near Howard, South Dakota. From “Gallery of Fluid Mechanics”

The oldest known existing model A in the world is A 189, one of the 200 very first prototype cars from 1927. This is a presentation of a 1928 Ford A Roadster, the earliest known Model A Ford

1947 - First Computer Bug

August 1, 1981. What was the first music video played on MTV? Video Killed The Radio Star, by the Buggles . What was the second MTV music video ?

October 27, 1994. Watch AT&T’s "you will" campaign, the First banner ads. (From ”Boing Boing”)

May 8, 2003. First Picture of Earth From Mars

Today’s “Blog Of The Day” is Tony Pierce’s Busblog, “nothing in here is true”. If you wish to have your blog considered as “Blog Of The Day”, or if you know of a blog that should get same recognition, please email me at realhanan (at) yahoo (dot) com, or post a comment at the bottom of this post.

Our Long List of ‘Firsts‘ Here

November 5, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2004

First Barbie doll

First Kaleidoscope, invented in 1816 by David Brewster

From the Early Office Museum: Antique Office Illustrations & Photographs, 1830s - 1880s

The First Miss America Beauty Pageant, 1921

First Barbie doll, sold March 9, 1959

First 911 call - February, 1967

First woman on the moon, August 28, 1999

I am on vacation and will be away for a few weeks. This post has been pre-blogged for your enjoyment. Any complains will have to wait until my return. Visit Our Fascinating First Ever List Here

September 20, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 24, 2004

Elvis has left the building: Time for another portion of Grow-a-Brain’s “List of Firsts”

Games of the First Olympiad - 1896

The car that changed the world: First Model T comes together - August 12, 1908

"My Daddy Rocks Me (with One Good Steady Roll)" - There are many candidates for the title of the first Rock and Roll record - 1922!

The Earliest Known Recording of Broadcast Television from the BBC's 30-line service: The 'Silvatone' Recording: 1933

Who was the first to say “Elvis has left the building”? December 15, 1956

Speech synthesis have come along way. Listen to the first full text-to-speech system, done by the Japanese Noriko Umeda and co. - 1968

One of William Henry Gates III first open letters to hobbyists - February 3, 1976

The First Blog Ever! - April 27, 1983

Who will be the first to swim around the world? Farfetched it may seem but when Benoit Lecomte swam across the Atlantic in 1998 he introduced a new global sports challenge: the first to swim around the world

Painting of Elvis with a banana above by Naoki Mitsuse. If you like ‘em, you must visit our Long List of Eclectic “First Ever”s Here

August 24, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 25, 2004

(My favorite collection:) List of First’s

Index of Cartographic Images and the first maps - 6,200 B.C.

Oldest surviving Joke book compiled in the fourth or fifth century CE. Sample #219. A glutton betrothed his daughter to another glutton. Asked what he was giving her as a dowry, he replied: "A house whose windows face the bakery." (From “Beautiful Stuff” )

First Library (from 2000 years ago) discovered last month. (Found on the new literary blog Kineret from Israel. Hebrew only for now)

Lenardo and Blandine, the First comic book dated 1783

Who built the first Martini? (1870)

The Birth of a Salesman: John H. Patterson and the Sales Strategy of the National Cash Register Company, (1884 to 1922) Transformed Selling in America

Our long List of “Firsts” Here

May 25, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 09, 2004

Oldest / Goldest

Vindolanda - The earliest known examples of writing in Latin by a woman . (From “Particles”) - AD 127

Cave yields 'earliest jewellery' (75,000 years BC) and recordings of the first financial transactions (Uruk, Iraq, approx. 1000 BC). Both found at “Rebecca's pocket”.

The British Library now presents the oldest printed book in the world, the 868AD Diamond Sutra, in Shockwave format

What was the first license plate? (1893). Many more license plates links here.

Many More “First Ever” Links Here

May 9, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 23, 2004

Firstest Ever

First known example of the use of photography for propaganda purposes, and also of a faked picture - 1840

Southdale Shopping Center, in Edina, Minnesota was the first totally enclosed shopping center in the nation - 1952. Here’s an interesting New Yorker article about The birth of the modern mall

Starbucks Coffee opens first store in Pike Place Market, Seattle - April 1971. (Thanks to Alan Stein, staff historian of ”History Link”)

First prepaid phonecard - 1976.

Usenet Group “firsts” - First thread about AIDS (December 1982), First thread about the Chernobyl meltdown (March 1986), First thread after 9/11 terrorist attacks - Date: 2001-09-11 05:51:48 PST

More at my favorite “Collection”: The List of First Ever’s Here

April 23, 2004 in First Ever | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBack

February 29, 2004

Here is the second of over 150 collections from the old "Grow-a-Brain"! The list of "First Ever"

World's First written words - approx. 3000 BC

First ice cream - about 700 A.D.

First Scottish books - 1508 (From "Plep") - 11/29/03

Magellan's First Circumnavigation Of The Globe - 1518 (- 11/29/03)

The Gutenberg Bible, first printed book - 1554

A "First Thanksgiving" Dinner - 1621 (- 9/16/03)

Benjamin Franklin's Club of Mutual Improvement - 1731, the nation's first subscription public library

The First Amendment - 1786 (- 9/19/03)

First Bicycle The Walking Machine - 1817

Some thoughts on the First known photograph - 1826

The Penny Black - World's first Stamp - 1840

The First Typewriter - 1874 (from "Plep")

Tom Sawyer - The first novel ever written on a typewriter - 1876 (- 8/31/03)

"Mary had a little Lamb" - 1877

Eadweard Muybridge & the first serial motion photography - 1878

Flat Disc Record - 1881

Victoria C. Woodhull, first woman to run for president - 1888 (by Susan Kullmann Puz)

The hand of Mrs. Wilhelm Roentgen: the first X-ray image - 1895 (- 8/25/03)

First Traffic Accident - 1896 (- 9/14/03)

Official Land Speed Record Set - 1898 (- 1/3/04)

First Flight - 1903

First Trans-continental Crossing by car - 1903

First Photograph Ever Taken From the Clouds - 1907 (- 8/5/03)

Roald Amundsen reaches the South Pole - 1911

Brief history of the Lincoln Highway, America's original transcontinental highway, 1912 (- 11/15/03)

First Crossword Puzzle - 1913

Piggly Wiggly, America's first self-service supermarket - 1916 - (9/24/03)

First World War - 1914-1918

The First Mobile Home - 1923 (- 11/7/03)

Roosevelt's First Fireside Chat - March 12, 1933

I'm sure you too have always wondered: Who was the genius who came up with the concept: "Why don't we charge people to have their cars parked in the streets?" Now you know, Carl C. Magee, of Oklahoma City - 1935 (10/28/03)

Action Comics, Superman # 1 - June 1938

Who's on First - 1945

The First Atomic Bomb Blast - July 16, 1945

First Bikini unveiled - July 5th, 1946

Jackie Robinson - 1947

First Mcdonald's restaurant, San Bernardino, CA - 1948

What was First Personal Computer ? - 1949 (from "Metafilter") - 8/29/03

First ascent of Mount Everest - 1953 (from "Portage")

Bannister breaks four-minute mile - 1954

First Satelite in Space - October 5, 1957 (- 10/29/03)

First woman in Space - 1963 (from "Presurfer")

Super Bowl 1 - January 15, 1967