Date | Text | |
---|---|---|
29 Jul 1914
Transcontinental phone call |
Transcontinental phone call In 1914, transcontinental telephone service began. It was celebrated with a telephone conversation between Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco and Alexander Graham Bell in New York City repeating their historic conversation from 1876. Wendover, Utah, was the site of the completion of the first transcontinental telephone line in 1914. The day's state-of-the-art in signal transmission technology, loading coils, had reached its limit, barely able to deliver a faint voice from New York to Denver until Western Electric's high-vacuum tube for amplifying sound in telephone cables was developed in 1913. |
|
29 Jul 1914
Baron Marcel Bich |
birth Baron Marcel Bich Born 29 Jul 1914; died 30 May 1994 at age 79. French inventor who built his business empire by creating throwaway Bic pens, razors and lighters. In 1945, Marcel Bich and his friend, Edouard Buffard, acquired an empty factory shell near Paris, France, and soon developed a thriving business, producing parts for fountain pens and mechanical lead pencils. Later, Bich spent two years developing his ballpoint pen design, and in 1949, he was able to produce a reliable, low cost ballpoint pen. In 1973 the Bic Lighter was introduced in the U.S., followed by Bic Shavers, first introduced in 1976 |