invention Archives - Page 9 of 9 - Worldwide Weird Holidays

December 7 is National Cotton Candy Day

December 7, 2016/0 Comments/in December

Today is National Cotton Candy Day. The confection dates back to the 1400s, when it was called “spun sugar.” Producing it by hand was a costly and laborious task, making it unavailable to the general public. Four men—two of them dentists—helped usher in the modern process that would make it a summertime favorite at carnivals, fairs and the circus. So why isn’t National Cotton Candy Day celebrated in July or August? We have no idea.

Here’s what we do know. Dentist William Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton invented the first electric spinning machine in 1897 and were granted a patent two years later.

They introduced “fairy floss” at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Curious visitors bought more than 68,000 boxes at 25 cents apiece, spending a total of over $17,000.

In 1900, Thomas Patton patented a gas-fired rotating plate that allowed him to form threads of caramelizing sugar on a fork. It debuted at the Ringling Bros. Circus and was an instant hit with children, if not their mothers, who had to clean up the sticky mess left behind on hands, hair and clothes.

Although he never received a patent, dentist Josef Delarose Lascaux built his own machine and sold it to patients at his Louisiana office, where he could cater to sweet tooths and the inevitable cavities that followed. He is widely credited with changing the name to “cotton candy” in 1921.

In 1949, Gold Medal Products launched a version with a spring base. It improved upon its predecessors by being more reliable, less likely to break down or overheat. Variations of this device are used to this day.

The next time you buy cotton candy, which starts out three times the size of your head but condenses seemingly instantaneously to a gritty coating on the roof of your mouth and a pastel crust in your hair, you can thank these four men for making us crave this diabolically delicious treat.

December 6 is Microwave Oven Day

December 6, 2016/0 Comments/in December

Today is Microwave Oven Day. We don’t know who created it or why they chose December 6th over any other day of the year. Our theory? Since it falls between Thanksgiving and Christmas, two holidays filled with labor-intensive meal preparation, maybe it’s supposed to remind us to take a break from complicated cuisine. So relax and take a bite of history about the accidental invention that changed the way the world cooks.

During World War II, Percy Spencer was testing magnetrons for use in Allied radar sets when he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had begun to melt. A lesser man might have been alarmed, invested in lead-lined britches and called it a day.

But Spencer’s innate curiosity drove him to conduct a series of tests using, among other things, popcorn and eggs. He concluded that the energy of electromagnetic waves produces heat by agitating water, fat and sugar molecules, causing food to cook more quickly and evenly than by other means.

Spencer’s employer, Raytheon, filed a patent on October 8, 1945, for the “high-frequency dielectric heating apparatus.” In 1947, it introduced the first commercially available microwave oven, which stood almost six feet tall, weighed 750 pounds and cost $3,000. It was mainly used by ships and hotels.

In 1955, Raytheon and a company called Tappan collaborated on the RL-1, the first microwave oven designed for home use. At $1,295, it was out of reach of most consumers. Only 34 were manufactured the first year; a total of 1,396 were sold by the time production of the model ended in 1964.

Raytheon acquired Amana Refrigeration in 1965. Two years later, Amana launched the first countertop oven, called the Radarange, retailing at $495. Its compact size was made possible by the development in Japan of smaller, more efficient electron tubes that improved upon the magnetron design.In response to a 1968 study which found microwaves sometimes leaked out of ovens, federal safety standards were set in 1971. According to the FDA, microwave ovens must meet a requirement limiting maximum radiation leakage to 5 milliwatts per square centimeter at a distance of 5 centimeters (1.97 inches) from the external surface of the oven.

Per a New York Times article on the subject:

Manufacturers are also required to line the doors of ovens with metal mesh that prevents microwaves from escaping, and to use a type of door latch that stops the production of microwaves whenever the latch is released.

Those features greatly limit exposure to levels of radiation that are already low. And since the radiation levels drop sharply with increasing distance, the levels two feet away are about one-hundredth the amount at two inches.

Over ninety percent of all U.S. homes now own a microwave oven. There have been no confirmed injuries. In fact, despite his cooked huevos, Percy Spencer fathered three children and died of natural causes in 1970 at the age of 76. (By the way, Spencer received a one-time payment of $2 for the patent to his invention, the same amount Raytheon paid all its inventors.)

So make a bowl of popcorn and celebrate Microwave Oven Day. Still, when you do, you might want to stand back and make sure you close the door. It’s the only way to be sure.

November 18 is Pushbutton Phone Day

November 18, 2016/0 Comments/in November

On November 18, 1963, the first pushbutton telephone went on sale to the public. It may seem quaint now in the age of mobile phones when many of us don’t even have landlines anymore. But this was cutting-edge technology in its day and remains an integral part of the history of telecommunications.

Industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, working under contract to Bell Systems, devised the form of the Touch Tone™ Model 1500 telephone with the help of wooden models like this one.

Tone dialing had been in use within Bell Systems’ switching network for several years. With the introduction of the Model 1500, tone dialing was made available to the general public. It featured the same footprint and handset as its predecessor but replaced the rotary dial with a 10-button keypad. (It had no # and * buttons; those keys were added in 1968 with the Model 2500.)

Bell set the stage for the rotary dial phone’s replacement when it showcased the new pushbutton phone’s speed and convenience at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, Washington.

The Model 1500 was a natural evolution of the rotary dial telephone, which had represented a transformational piece of technology when it supplanted the old switchboard method of placing calls 44 years earlier. Prior to 1919, operators at centrally-located switchboards manually connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks.

A phone subscriber lifted the receiver off the hook and asked the operator to place a call. If the requested number was located on the operator’s switchboard, she would connect the call by plugging the ringing cord into the jack corresponding to the called customer’s line. If that line was on a different switchboard or in a different central office, the operator plugged into the trunk for the destination switchboard or office and asked the operator who answered (known as the “B” operator) to connect the call.

Operators were in the perfect position to listen in on conversations. Their assistance was required for anything other than calling telephones across a common party line. Back then, “party line” did not refer to one of the infamous 900 numbers that pegged credit card limits in the 1980s: compilation here. Party lines were shared by residents, especially in rural areas, where demand outstripped supply, and were notorious for neighbors monitoring each others’ conversations for gossip fodder.

First dial phone–1919

Rotary dial service eliminated the need for human switchboard operators. An “off-hook condition” was immediately detected when a caller lifted the handset. The sound of the dial tone signaled that the automatic exchange was ready to receive dialed digits. Pulse tones defined by the length of each rotation of the dial were processed and a connection established to the destination telephone.

The touch tone system introduced in 1963 greatly improved upon the speed of the rotary dial’s pulse method of routing calls. It also entertained teenagers who enjoyed keying songs into their parents’ phones using its musical notes. This sometimes resulted in huge phone bills when one of those tunes happened to begin with a 1 or a number within a local area code that incurred long-distance charges.

The Pushbutton Telephone Songbook was published in 1971 to address the problem with instructions about how to safely play songs without running up long distance charges. The book sold more than 500,000 copies.

Today’s cellular phones don’t need a dial tone because they parse and send whole phone numbers at once. Some include a simulated dial tone as a familiar aural cue to the owner that a “line” is available. Jitterbug phones, marketed directly to seniors, incorporate this comforting feature.

For the most part, these technologies are rapidly fading from memory. The phone is more ubiquitous than ever, having made the leap from our homes to our pockets. Many young people have never touched a rotary phone or heard a dial tone. So today we take time to remember the innovations that brought us to this moment in time.

Happy Pushbutton Phone Day!

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