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Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Today is Wednesday - March 10th, 2010
On This Day In History:
1876 - The First Phone Call
On this day in 1876, the first discernible speech was transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summoned his assistant in another room by saying, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before.
Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, a leading authority in public speaking and speech correction. The young Bell was trained to take over the family business, and while still a teenager he became a voice teacher and began to experiment in sound. In 1870, his family moved to Ontario, Canada, and in 1871 Bell went to Boston to demonstrate his father's method of teaching speech to the deaf. The next year, he opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
In his free time, Bell experimented with sound waves and became convinced that it would be possible to transmit speech over a telegraph-like system. He enlisted the aid of a gifted mechanic, Thomas Watson, and together the two spent countless nights trying to convert Bell's ideas into practical form. In 1875, while working on his multiple harmonic telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. He designed a device to transmit speech vibrations electrically between two receivers and in June 1875 tested his invention. No intelligible words were transmitted, but sounds resembling human speech were heard at the receiving end.
On February 14, 1876, he filed a U.S. patent application for his telephone. Just a few hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office about his intent to seek a similar patent on a telephone transmitter and receiver. Bell filed first, so on March 7 he was awarded U.S. patent 174,465, which granted him ownership over both his telephone instruments and the concept of a telephone system.
Three days later, on March 10, Bell successfully tested his telephone for the first time in his Boston home. In May, he publicly demonstrated the invention before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and in June at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In October, he successfully tested his telephone over a two-mile distance between Boston and Cambridge port.
In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company with two investors, and the first commercial applications of the telephone took place. Within a few months, the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell's telephone patent began. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld Bell's claims, and the Bell Telephone Company enjoyed a monopoly on the telephone until the expiration of the patent in 1894. After 1878, however, the legal battles were out of Alexander Graham Bell's hands because he sold his company to a group of financiers. The company, which after 1899 was led by the parent American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), eventually grew into the largest corporation in the world.
Alexander Graham Bell continued his experiments in communication, inventing the graphophone, which transmitted speech by light rays, and the gramophone, which recorded sound. He continued to work with the deaf, including the educator Helen Keller, and used the royalties from his inventions to finance several organizations dedicated to the oral education of the deaf. He later served as president of the National Geographic Society. Beginning in 1895, he experimented with the possibility of flight and built giant man-carrying kites and a hydrofoil craft. He died in 1922 at his summer home and laboratory on Cape Breton Island, Canada.
1964 - The Ford Mustang
 The first Ford Mustang was produced on this day, although it wasn't released to the public until April 16, 1964. One journalist described its unveiling as "the most sensational introduction of modern times."
The Mustang was the result of Ford's desire to make a small, sporty car which was inexpensive enough to appeal to young car buyers, an increasingly important market. The Mustang was the brainchild, or at least the "mouthchild", of Ford executive Lee Iacocca. David Halberstam explained Iacocca's relationship to the Mustang: "Outside the industry, Iacocca, who controlled the publicity for the car, was always considered the father of the Mustang... Within Ford, however, Don Frey, the product manager, was seen as the brains behind it." But to sell short Iacocca's impact as a salesman would be a mistake.
The car's development never would have made it past the reluctant upper echelons of Ford management without Iacocca's push. The Mustang was not an entirely new line of car in the traditional sense. In fact, Iacocca's production team intended to make a car readily adaptable to existing Ford parts. By making the Mustang a Ford Falcon under the hood, Iacocca's team cut their costs dramatically. Iacocca called the Mustang a Ford Falcon with "a whole new skin and greenhouse." He would never have called it that during its development, however. Iacocca stressed the Mustang as a whole new breed of Ford: muscular, small, and young.
The base price of the car was only $2,368, but buyers averaged over $1,000 of extra features. Iacocca said, "People want economy so badly they don't care how much they pay for it." Over its first two years the Mustang earned $1.1 billion in profits for Ford.
Iacocca created an astounding media blitz surrounding the car's release. He and the Mustang made the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the car appeared in every major business and automotive publication. Historian Gary Witzenburg explained, "No new car in history had ever received the publicity and attention that the media lavished on Ford's sporty small car." One of America's most popular car models, then, is a testament to one of America's greatest salesman.
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Celebrating Birthdays Today:
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What Happened on Your Special Day?
I became a fan of "today in history" information when I was very young. My father had a calendar that he had put together of "reasons to celebrate". If anybody asked "what are we celebrating?" my father could check his book and come up with a reason to celebrate for any day of the year. Charlie Chaplin's birthday, Buster Keaton's birthday, the anniversary of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, for every day of the year, my father's calendar had some interesting historical event that had occurred.
With this page I have tried to continue the tradition. Generally, I prefer to include birthdays and anniversaries of positive, uplifting, life affirming people and events that have had particular significance in my life. It's here because it was important to me.
I am trying to continually update with links from stories to other relevant sites. Check back regularly for a story on something interesting that happened on this day in history.
There are many, many, sites out there that have a lot of "this day in history" information. Many are not so great, full of inaccurate information and "negative vibes". However, there are a few that are really fabulous. Here are links to a few of my favorites. These sites feature "Today in History" stories for today, and some include archives that will enable you to look up information for any other date in history that is special to you:
This Day in History
The History Channel tells you what happened in Automotive, Civil War, Cold War, Crime, Entertainment, General Interest, Literary, Old West, Vietnam War, Wall Street, and World War II history for today or any day.
Life Magazine Covers
Life offers a look at covers from this day in history.
New York Times: On This Day
Lists events which occurred on each month and day of the year throughout history. Links to New York Times articles on the events when available.
Today in History
Stories and pictures from the American Memory historical collections of the U.S. Library of Congress.
The Internet Movie Database
The Internet Movie Database claims itself to be the biggest, best, most award-winning movie site on the planet. I'm not sure if it really is, but it is huge and has TONS of info on even the most obscure films, movies stars, directors, producers, etc. If it is motion picture related, you can probably find out something about it at this site.
PBS | History
The PBS web site is a comprehensive companion to more than 1,300 PBS television programs and specials, as well as original Web content and real-time learning adventures. The site does not have a specific "Day in History" feature, but with more than 175,000 pages of historical and educational content, visitors can delve deeply into the subjects they most enjoy — history and news to arts, science, and technology.
Those Were the Days
The "Today in History" feature from 440 International.
Those Were the Days is a daily series of historic events that occured on each specific day. Each day contains events covering news, sports, entertainment, inventions, personalities, organizations, literature, etc. The years covered in these events span time from as far back as the 1700s (earlier when data is available) with primary concentration between 1900 and and 1990.
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