In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 121: BONUS - New England's Greatest Inventions(11-22-2023)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 121

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New Englanders it's time to pat ourselves on the back and humble-brag a little.
Episode 121 of the podcast is chock full of some of the greatest inventions to ever be developed within the borders of the six New England states.
This special bonus episode includes hugely important inventions like the sport of basketball, the telephone, the helicopter, and...coffee milk.
Each state gets its own Top 5 list with honorable mentions for good measure. How many of these inventions did you know were created in New England?
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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 121. It is the special monthly bonus episode of the podcast where we dive deep into one particular topic. That topic will not be how terrible my voice sounds due to me being sick. It will be all of the famous inventions that came from the New England states. It's going to be a time for all of you that grew up in New England or who live in New England to pat yourselves on the back, do a little humble bragging as what we're going to do is basically top five lists for all six New England states of the inventions that came from that state. There will likely be things that you knew came from New England, some things you probably never had an idea came from this region, but it's going to be a lot of fun to dive into as it's a race to see if I can get through all six top fives before my voice gives way right now on episode 121 of the In My Footsteps podcast. I guess you could call this part stupidity or part dedication to the craft, but I have a certain window where I record these podcasts, and this episode happens to fall in the window where my voice is just shattered and destroyed. This is where the miracles of editing will come in to try to make me sound as normal as possible, although that's never going to happen ever in life. One interesting thing for you longtime podcast listeners, you may have noticed that these bonus episodes have crept up and gotten longer as we've gone along. So to pull back the curtain a little bit, when I do the subscriber-only content on Buzzsprout and Patreon, the ones I put on Buzzsprout actually use some of the allotted minutes I get monthly in my plan. So I end up having to buy more minutes. but that allows me to make these bonus episodes longer. So where they used to be 20 to 25 minutes, you've probably noticed they've crept up closer to 40 minutes, which it's pretty much a normal length episode now. Thank you to everyone who has been tuning into the podcast. This month marks the third anniversary of the podcast itself. So I appreciate those who have been listening, sharing. If you want to go and become a subscriber on Patreon or Buzzsprout, there are links in the description of the podcast. And of course, I share it all over social media like there's no tomorrow. It's been a slower month this month in terms of book events, but that's going to change in December. I'll dive deeper into that, sharing where I'm going to be in December on next week's podcast. But you may have heard me mention in last week's episode that I'm trying to dabble in audiobooks. I'm going to try to record the very first short story that I ever wrote entitled Eight Hours. It's 11,000 words, so that's kind of a... I also plan to do the intro and the first couple of chapters of my Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book, likely for my Patreon subscribers. But the thing about that is I might end up recording the entire book but in little bite-sized pieces and eventually at the end stitching it together into one full audiobook that will likely be about eight hours of my voice. I wanted to start recording both of those. around this same time period today, tomorrow. But as you can hear, my voice is going to struggle getting through 35 to 40 minutes of this show, let alone trying to record two to three hours of just me talking nonstop. So yeah, I'm not really that sick. It's just my voice is a dumpster fire, but it's dedication to the craft. I want to keep these podcasts on time. So sometimes you got to just power through. So let's jump right into it. We New Englanders, It's time to pat ourselves on the back as we look at some of the famous inventions from each of the six New England states. These are going to be all in top five form, which will make them easy to make segments on YouTube later on. As with the top five segments I do on the podcast, these won't be in any particular order, and where applicable, there will be some honorable mentions. So let's kick it off with my home state, the state of Massachusetts, top five inventions. Honorable mentions include the modern day fire truck, instant camera film, disposable razors, and of course, the legendary marshmallow fluff. That's some good stuff right there. But let's get into the actual top five, starting with number one, the sport of basketball. This beloved sport was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in Springfield, who was a graduate of Springfield College. Back then when it started, it was a peach basket instead of the hoop with a net that you would see today. So it went from peach baskets to the NBA, which in the 2022-23 season grossed a total of $10.58 billion. Number two is the dictionary. This is the famous Merriam-Webster Company's dictionary, which was originally compiled by Connecticut resident Noah Webster, but it wasn't successful. And when he died in 1843, Springfield, Massachusetts company G&C Merriam bought the rights to it and all the unsold copies. And that's where Merriam-Webster came from, with the book first being sold in 1847. Number three is the envelope. More specifically, a machine that could automatically fold envelopes. It was patented by Massachusetts physician Russell Hawes. When the invention was perfected in the 1850s, the workers who operated Hawes' envelope folding machine could produce up to 2,500 envelopes per hour. Number four is the telephone. Patented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, the very first phone call was made in the city of Boston. By 1920, 35% of U.S. homes had telephones, with that number reaching 98.2% of homes in the U.S. by 2008. I'm more surprised that by 2008 there was 1.8% of homes in the country didn't have telephones. And obviously today, so many people have their own phone in their pocket, which is such a long road to come from that first phone call by Alexander Graham Bell. And finally, number five on the top five Massachusetts inventions is the match. Matches were patented in Massachusetts in 1836 by English inventor John Walker. Walker wanted to create a means of obtaining fire easily. So these friction matches were wooden sticks coated with sulfur and dipped in a few other chemicals that Walker wouldn't reveal. And when rubbed upon sandpaper, the friction would cause fire. When it came to the top five for Massachusetts, it was a toss up for number five between matches and instant film. And I chose fire over photos. So that wraps up the top five from Massachusetts. Let's now move north to the state of New Hampshire and see what their top five inventions were. There are a couple of honorable mentions. They include the snowmobile and the old farmer's almanac, which some of you from my generation and a little older will remember from it predicting how bad winters would be in New England. My Nana would get it every year. And I always remember her flipping right to that part about how bad winter would be. It looks like it's going to be bad this year. We'd all be happy because we'd get to miss school. But the actual top five New Hampshire inventions start with number one, the alarm clock. This is specifically the first American alarm clock as Leonardo da Vinci had crafted his own centuries earlier. But the first American one was developed in Concord, New Hampshire. in 1787 by a man named Levi Hutchins. This was a 29-inch by 14-inch timepiece that came in a pinewood cabinet, but the clock's alarm would only go off at a certain time, and you could not reset it. So, for example, if you wanted to get up at 5 a.m. and set the alarm, that was it. You were stuck with that. No hitting snooze. Although, according to articles... When this alarm clock first came out, it wasn't really used much because most people still got up with the sunrise. But when you set your alarm on your phone to get up for work or school tomorrow, you have Levi Hutchins in 1787 to thank. Number two is Tupperware. These hard plastic containers were huge in the 70s and 80s. I know they're still around now, but back then there were Tupperware parties where you'd go and people would buy different sets of Tupperware. The product itself, Tupperware, was invented by a man named Earl Tupper of Berlin, New Hampshire. He founded the Tupper Plastics Company in 1938. And from there, eventually, countless thousands and millions of families had their leftovers saved in his products. Who knows? Maybe some of you right now are opening Tupperware to get food out to warm up, to serve. But did any of you go to Tupperware parties back in the day? Or do you still now? I don't know if they're still around. Number three is the snow shovel. Right in time for the impending winter storms that are probably going to be coming soon. The modern snow shovel was invented by a man named Charles Way of North Charlestown, New Hampshire in 1877. In my research, it seems to be that Charles Way added the metal clasp that held the snow shovel to the handle. So think of it as the modern snow shovel with that metal bottom that you can scrape and get the snow off the driveway. And then the full handle. I guess those were two separate things. And Charles Way said, let's put them together and make a nice snow shovel with it. Number four is the lottery. Yes, that's right. The state of New Hampshire established the first legal state lottery. And that was in 1963. Back then it was called the sweepstakes program with the first ever state lottery ticket being purchased by then governor John King at Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire. No word on who won that first lottery that they held. And number five on the top five New Hampshire inventions is the modern kitchen stove. This was invented in Concord, New Hampshire. by Sir Benjamin Thompson. His modern stove was invented in the late 1790s. It was made of brick with a cylindrical oven and holes at the top for pots. And when not in use, the opening could be covered over, leaving the fire to smolder. So it could also be used to heat the kitchen and probably the rest of the house. And this is considered the forefather of all the modern kitchen stoves and ovens that are out there now. How's my voice sound? I'm hanging in there. We're two states in. Now we're going to start the third. Let's jump over to the state of Vermont and see what was invented there. Honorable mentions include laughing gas and the globe, which has probably been seen by everyone that went to school in the 80s and 90s. Do they still have globes in school? I don't know. I haven't been there in 25 years. Yeesh. As far as Vermont's actual top five, let's start with number one, the Copper Penny. Today, these are pretty useless. You see them left in the change dispensers at all the self-checkouts of supermarkets. The first copper penny was authorized by the Vermont General Assembly in 1785, and this is before they were a state admitted to the Union. They continued to make these coins until 1791 when Vermont was admitted to the United States, but the copper pennies they had showed a plow on the penny and the sun rising over the Green Mountains. Number two is the internal combustion engine. This was patented by a man named Samuel Morey, who lived in Fairleigh, Vermont. This patent came in the mid-1820s and came from experiments that Morey held where he discovered that the vapors of turpentine when mixed with air would become explosive. Naturally, he had to noodle that a little bit so that the internal combustion engine wasn't just a bomb that went off. Number three is the electric motor. This was invented by a man named Thomas Davenport, who lived in Williamstown, Vermont. It was patented in 1837, and that was after three years of him demonstrating his invention to people, including inventing a model electric train in 1835. Number four is the snowboard. Way more appropriate for the state of Vermont. This was invented in 1977. in Londonderry, Vermont, by a man named Jake Burton Carpenter. Essentially a skateboard without wheels that you strap your feet into. It seems like such a simple, basic, and obvious invention. I'm surprised it took until 1977. But today, snowboarding is an Olympic sport, X Games sport. It's done all over the world. And yet it was only invented less than 50 years ago, the snowboard itself. And number five on the top five Vermont inventions is the postage stamp. The very first postage stamp is credited to the town of Brattleboro, Vermont, and dates back to 1846. Within the same year of 1846, ten other cities produced their own provisional postage stamps before the first national postage stamp was released the following year in 1847. So we're halfway through New England. Are any of these inventions surprising to you? I figure at some point I will do deeper dives into these inventions, more specific ones on future podcasts. But I thought this was such a fun topic to go into, things that were invented here in New England where I grew up, and where I'm sure a lot of you who listen grew up, because I know where my audience is from. But let's move on to the state of Maine and their top five inventions. Honorable mention includes the donut hole, which came from someone being so upset that regular donuts would be undercooked in the middle that they would cut the centers out of them so they would cook better. But the actual top five starts off with number one, ear muffs. Another one that's highly appropriate for the state that invented it. Earmuffs as we know them today were invented by a man named Chester Greenwood, who was born and raised in Farmington, Maine. To be honest, there were kind of earmuffs around at the time, but Greenwood did not like the way that they fit to his head. So he came up with the two pieces of fabric secured together by a piece of flexible metal that fit closely over the top of the head. These were patented in 1877. and were called at the time Greenwood's Champion Ear Protectors. Number two is the microwave oven. This was invented by a man named Perry Spencer from Howland, Maine, who also went to MIT. He also worked for the Raytheon Company, the defense company, during World War II, and that's where he did a lot of work on microwaves. It came from a high-powered vacuum tube called the Compact Cavity Magnetron that produced microwaves. And the story was that Spencer got too close to one of these and noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. And after performing some more experiments, including popping popcorn next to these microwaves, he was awarded a patent for the microwave oven in 1950. Number three... is the sealed dive suit. This was invented by a man named Leonard Norcross from Dixfield, Maine in June 1834, and it consisted of a rubber diving suit with a metal helmet attached to it and a watertight seal. He called it diving armor at the time, but it was seen as the first practical diving suit as we know them today. Number four is chewing gum. John Bacon Curtis of Hampton, Maine is the inventor of chewing gum. It was invented in the late 1840s and originally consisted of boiling spruce tree sap, which Curtis cleaned, cut into strips and wrapped and then sold. They named the invention State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. And all the chewing gum, all the bubble gum, all of that started with boiled spruce sap from a tree. And number five on Maine's inventions is the toothpick. For a period of time, the town of Strong, Maine was considered the toothpick capital of the world in the years in and around World War II. It was Bostonian Charles Forster who set up his toothpick factory in the town of Strong, Maine in 1887. So I was divided on this. The product was made in Maine, but the man who kind of spearheaded it was born in Boston. But at its peak, the town of Strong that had 1,000 people in it was producing up to 75 billion toothpicks per year. Billion. But in the years after World War II, cheaper imports from foreign countries came in, as did nylon dental floss, and that spelled the end of strong Maine as the toothpick capital of the world. Next, let's move on to the tiny state of Rhode Island and see what they added to the world with their top five inventions. An honorable mention is Costume Jewelry. which likely a lot of you parents bought for your kids during Halloween last month. Plastic knockoffs of the real thing. Let's kick off their top five with number one, Mr. Potato Head. How could I not put this beloved toy in there? It was a combination of Brooklyn inventor George Lerner and the Rhode Island-based Hasbro Toy Company. Lerner initially sold his idea of the accessories to put on a real potato to a cereal company. It was eyes, nose, mouth, glasses, ears, a hat. Hasbro liked it so much that they paid the cereal company to stop production of it in 1951 and bought the rights. And the initial Mr. Potato Heads did come with a styrofoam head you could put the stuff on, although it said that any... Vegetable or potato would work just as well. And it was said by the end of 2021 that more than 100 million Mr. Potato Head toys had been sold. Number two is the Diner Restaurant. This was invented by Providence man Walter Scott in 1872. He opened it to help nighttime workers in town have a quick meal while they were on the job. This was more of a mobile lunch wagon, lunch cart, but Scott's invention was quickly copied all over the country, and now diners are still a staple of America, and his invention even led to fast food restaurants in general. Number three is the modern fire safety sprinkler. You likely see these overhead in every building you go into. This was invented by... Frederick Grinnell, who was president of the Providence Steam and Gas Pipe Company. It was in 1881 that he patented the automatic sprinkler that would go on to be in so many buildings throughout the decades and centuries since. This is one of those inventions that has saved probably thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives. Number four is coffee milk. So when researching inventions for each of these states, there were certain ones that popped up in every article I read. Earmuffs in Maine, basketball in Massachusetts. And when looking up Rhode Island, coffee milk was number one in a lot of these articles. The invention of the coffee milk drink goes back to the 1930s, and a soda jerk, as they were called at the time, working at a pharmacy and experimenting with different flavors of drinks for kids. And as the kids got bored with regular drinks and they wanted to feel like adults who were always drinking coffee, a drink was made that mixed strong coffee with a ton of sugar and then milk. Warwick, Rhode Island-based Eclipse Company made their own coffee milk syrup And then Autocrat came along a few years later in the early 1940s and made their own. And apparently Rhode Islanders are obsessed with coffee milk, so that's why I needed to put this in the countdown. And finally for Rhode Island, number five on their top five inventions is the spork. Yes, the spoon and fork combined utensil seen at many beachfront fried seafood establishments. Interestingly, this spork was invented in 1874 by Rhode Island doctor Samuel Francis, and actually his spork was a spoon, fork, and knife, so it had a blade attached to it as well, which I'm sure was fun to grab onto to use, just slice yourself open. But for as much as I laugh, the spork is a really ingenious invention, even though they typically are plastic utensils. If you go into any stores to buy silverware, do they have sporks? This is something I never thought of until right now. I don't think I've ever seen a spork that's not plastic. Well, that gives me something to look for next time I'm in Target or Walmart. Actual metal sporks. While we're in the homestretch, my voice has held up. I had actually tried to record this podcast a few hours ago earlier in the day, and my voice was so mad I got so frustrated. I deleted several minutes worth of content because my voice was cracking and I was terrible. I sounded worse than that squeaky voice teen kid on The Simpsons. But here we are on the sixth and final New England state for their top five, the state of Connecticut. What did they bring to the table? Their honorable mentions include the Frisbee, FM radio, wiffle ball and speed limit laws, which I'm sure a lot of you are groaning at. I was when I saw that. Thanks a lot. And their top five starts off with number one, the hamburger, the linchpin of every restaurant going. Well, at least most of them. A man named Louis Lassen from New Haven is credited with inventing the hamburger in 1900. Customers wanted something quick and delicious at his Louie's Lunch restaurant, and he used what he had on hand. Broiled ground beef sandwiched between two pieces of bread. And the rest is history. How many billions and billions of burgers have been sold in different restaurants all over the world? But the best part is, Louie's Lunch, where that was invented, is still open. At 263 Crown Street in New Haven, Connecticut, you can go to Louie's Lunch and have a hamburger at the place where the hamburger was invented. Number two is the submarine. No, not the submarine sandwich, the actual vessel. The original submarine idea was invented in the early 1780s by Westbrook, Connecticut native David Bushnell. He was also a Yale University graduate who was looking to invent an explosive weapon to use against the British who were occupying New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War. The submarine was said to look like a turtle. and it made three attempts to blow up a British ship in 1785, and they all failed. And submarines were a part of the Civil War. They were a part of World War I. Naturally, they weren't as successful as they would become in World War II and beyond. Number three is the helicopter. The first practical helicopter launched in September 1939. Dubbed the VS-300, it was invented by Igor Sarkoski and took flight in Stratford, Connecticut. This helicopter was the first vehicle to incorporate a single main rotor and a tail rotor. In the photos, it looks not too different from what you would see today as far as helicopters go. Number four was anesthesia, i.e. being put under when you go in for surgery. In 1847, a man named Horace Wells of the city of Hartford, Connecticut, was declared by Connecticut legislature to be the discoverer of anesthesia. Being a dentist, Wells used nitrous oxide to help with tooth extraction and noted how it had painkilling effects that his patients wouldn't feel anything after having the nitrous oxide given to them. And it's amazing to think before then and even a long time after then, people that would go in and have surgery with no anesthetic, they'd probably be given a shot of some kind of alcohol and maybe a towel to bite on. As much as I like history and am fascinated by the past times and such, I would never want to go back to those days and need surgery for something where they'd hand me a shot glass and say, good luck. And finally, to wrap up Connecticut and wrap up the region of New England as a whole, is number five, the can opener. This was invented in 1858 by Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut. Interestingly, this original can opener had a curved handle, a long bayonet blade, and interchangeable sliding shoe. Now, if this sounds more like a weapon than a can opener, well, guess what? It was actually used as a weapon by the Northern Army in the Civil War. And once people saw that this can opener was used to kill people during war, it was deemed too dangerous for commercial and domestic use, and its production was halted. But whether it was a killing machine or not, Ezra Warner does get credit with the first patent for a can opener. And that wraps up our trip around New England, the top five inventions from each of the six New England states. Which of the states did you think had the most really neat and really impactful inventions? I tried my best not to show favoritism towards my home state of Massachusetts. If there are any of these that you want me to do deeper dives into in future episodes, just let me know. The can opener one that I ended with, that's a funny one that may be ending up as a at least this week in history segment in the future. My voice has survived. I think it sounds better than it did during the first few minutes. That's what tea and throat drops will do for you. And a lot of pausing my recording to cough and clear my throat. I don't want you guys to have to hear that. For next week's episode, I'll be all back to 100% my normal self, if there is a such thing as normal self. It'll be a full-length regular episode, episode 122. Even though this bonus episode is not as short as the bonus episodes of a few years ago, we're going to take a fun trip back and look at shopping at Angelo's Supermarket in the history of Angelo's. We're going to take a road trip to Middletown, Rhode Island. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some 1990s internet trends and fads. Boy, these are going to bring some flashbacks to people my age and a little younger. There's going to be a brand new Top 5 and it's a little variation on it that I'm really excited to try. We're calling it Me vs. AI Top 5. The gist of it is picking a subject that I have my top fives, and then I ask ChatGPT, the AI service, what their top five is. I won't be doing it all the time, but we'll see what the reaction is to it, what you think. Because next week's top five, the debut of me versus AI, is best 1980s professional wrestlers. And this list is really good. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule coming up next week on episode 122 of the In My Footsteps podcast. When this podcast goes live, Thanksgiving will be tomorrow. It will also be the birthday of my sister, Kate. I wanted to make sure that I wish her happy birthday on the podcast. She has done such an amazing job. and is such an amazing person, mother, business owner, where your wish. She's inspirational and motivational for me. She's dealt with a lot and gone through a lot over the last several years. I won't go into that stuff because that's her business, personal business. But she inspires me to keep chasing my dreams because if she can do it as a single mother of three who is now in her 40s, what excuse do I have? Because I don't have any of the real life responsibilities that she does. And there will be way more to come about Where Your Wish as she's relaunching it. And I'm so excited to get to share all that with you. Maybe I'll have her on the podcast in the future to talk about where she's been in the journey to get this back up and running. So happy birthday tomorrow to my sister Kate, which will also be Thanksgiving. And we're also doing a birthday celebration for my niece Emma on the same day. So it'll be a fun day tomorrow slash Thanksgiving if you're listening to this in the future. Find me all over social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I have gone in and I'm starting to do a lot more work customizing my channel content. creating new playlists, kind of editing them, making my homepage there look better. I've got full-length audio episodes of the podcast up there. I do usually two segments from each podcast as their own standalone video. It's a way to get more eyes and ears on the podcast. Follow me on Instagram, on X, on Threads. I have noticed that I get a whole lot more engagement on my work on threads than I do on X or Instagram, where I have 10 to 12 times more followers. So if you're not on threads, go check it out. It's really good and worth it to get on there for photography and sharing anything you've got. And as I said, this podcast will be dropping live the day before Thanksgiving. So I wanted to just say how thankful I am for everyone that takes time out of their day to listen to these episodes or reach out through social media or become subscribers or share the podcast. I work really, really hard on these and my content creation and my books. It's a lot of time and effort. So when I get people that are strangers that don't know me, I don't know them that make this appointment listening for them. It really is humbling in a way. And it keeps me going. So thank you so much. And I'm so thankful to have such a great family and friends that are always so supportive. The ones that have had my back from so long ago. The ones that keep me motivated. That tell me to not give up on my dreams. I can only hope that you have people like that in your life as well. Because whatever your dreams are... There should be no expiration date on you chasing them. Trying to achieve them. It doesn't matter when you achieve your goal. It only matters that you do achieve them. And remember... In this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you again for tuning in. Thank you for putting up with my destroyed voice. Enjoy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the holidays. I'll be back next week. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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