Timeline

The greatest inventions disappear from view because they become an integral part of the environment. Because we adapt to our environment, the greatest inventions end up inventing us.

On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Mormon religion, is murdered along with his brother Hyrum when an anti-Mormon mob breaks into a jail where they are being held in Carthage, IL.

Brunswick Corp. began life in 1845 as one of America’s first manufacturers of high-quality tables for playing pocket billiards, then an entertainment enjoyed exclusively by the upper class.

On June 30, 1859, Jean-Francois Gravelet, a Frenchman known as “The Great Blondin,” becomes the first dare-devil to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He later did tightrope walks across the falls blindfolded, with his manager on his back, sitting down midway to cook an omelet, and pushing a wheelbarrow across while dressed as an ape.

On July 2, 1881, just months into his administration, President James Garfield is shot and mortally wounded by a disgruntled office-seeker as he walks through a railroad waiting room in Washington, DC. Garfield died 80 days later of blood poisoning.

Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914) was the French inventor of the complicated system of measurement then used for identification of criminals and is often also credited with the invention of fingerprinting. NOT SO! Sir Francis Galton, the English physiologist, anthropologist, and psychologist, invented – or discovered – modern fingerprinting techniques about 1880. Bertillon, as a matter of fact, did not think much of fingerprinting as a positive means of identification; after Galton’s discovery, he adopted it only reluctantly, and even limited it to certain classes of individuals, notably women and children.

The 985-foot Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 for the International Exposition. It symbolizes Paris. Made almost entirely of open-lattice wrought iron and erected in only two years with a small labor force, the tower – Paris’ tallest structure – demonstrated advances in construction techniques but some initially criticized it as unaesthetic. When the Eiffel tower was built, sixteen 800-ton hydraulic jacks were used to position its base. Once it was in place, the jacks were removed as the solid masonry foundation was established. And this was in 1889.