Archives November 2014

"One day there will be a telephone In every major town in America." Alexander Graham Bell, inventor The invention of the telephone was a gigantic leap forward. However, early models were connected by a wire in pairs, meaning that you could only connect to one other telephone. This was not useful for keeping in contact with lots of different people. Early phones did not even use a ringing bell—you had to whistle into the speaker to get the other person's attention. The telephone had a long way to go, and it was Almon Strowger (1839-1902), a Missouri undertaker in the United States who devised a big improvement— the automatic telephone exchange. His local exchange operator was the wife of a rival undertaker and would divert calls away from Strowger's business. This motivated Strowger to invent an automated exchange that recognized the number dialed in by the caller. The earliest model more...

"Life is like a cash register, in that every thought, every deed, like every sale, is... recorded." Fulton J. Sheen, archbishop Before the cash register came into-being, short of sitting and watching every transaction taking place, there was no way for the boss or manager of a shop or other establishment to check exactly how much money was being taken over the counter each day. Sick of his light-fingered staff pilfering the takings from his saloon in Dayton, Ohio, proprietor James Ritty (1836-1918) decided that he would design a system to put a stop to employee embezzlement. The inspiration for the machine came to Ritty after he traveled by ship to Europe. While on board he became fascinated by a contraption that kept a record of how many rotations the ship's propeller had made. With this as inspiration, Ritty set to Work on the prototype for the first cash register. more...