The First Apartment Building in America (A Stuyvesant Story)
Apartment living is something we take for granted today, the option for those who can't afford or don't desire a private home. But how did t...
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The First: Stories of Inventions and their Consequences
The history of inventions and their consequences.
Episodes
20 of 25 episodesThe Lost Highway: America's First Cross Country Road
In 1900, there were about 8,000 registered automobiles in the United States. They were a genuine novelty. Those that attempted to go on 'roa...
How Electric Light Changed Christmas Forever
That string of multi-colored Christmas lights wrapped around your tree (or your house) is far more influential to American history than you...
The Plant Doctor: The Extraordinary George Washington Carver
How much do you know about George Washington Carver, the man born into slavery who became America's most famous botanist in the first half o...
The Real Housewives of Early America: The Story of the First American Cookbook
"Over the river and through the woods" into the history of early American cuisine. The first published European cookbooks in the world weren...
The Rebel: America's Founding Inventor
Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American in the world by the time of the Revolutionary War, known as a writer, inventor and philosophe...
Lightning Strikes: Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Experiment
How much do you know about one of the most famous scientific experiments in American history? In 1752 Benjamin Franklin and his son William...
Franklin Gothic: The Invention of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin did more in his first forty years than most people do in an entire lifetime. Had he not played a pivotal role in the creat...
The Secret History of Soft Drinks: A Tale In Four Flavors
There is something very, very bizarre about a can of soda. How did this sugary, bubbly beverage – dark brown, or neon orange, or grape, or w...
The Devil and The First Broadway Musical
The Black Crook is considered the first-ever Broadway musical, a dizzying, epic-length extravaganza of ballerinas, mechanical sets, lavish c...
The Bowery Wizards: A History of Early American Tattoos
The art of tattooing is as old as written language but it would require the contributions of a few 19th century New York tattoo artists -- a...
The First Song Ever Recorded
Imagine if we could hear the voices of Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria or Frederick Douglass? Believe it or not, somebody was making audio r...
Josephine and the Dish-Washing Machine
Of the tens of thousands of U.S. patents granted in the 19th century, only a small fraction were held by women. One of those women -- Joseph...
Nikola Tesla and the Wireless World
The Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla is known as one of the fathers of electricity, the curious genius behind alternating current (AC), the vic...
The Big Story of Old Bet: The First Circus Elephant
This year marks the end to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and, with it, the end of the traditional American circus. Once at the c...
Unimate and the Rise of the Robots
Robots conjure up thoughts of distant technological landscapes and even apocalyptic scenarios, but the truth is, robots are a very old creat...
The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Revolution: The Story of the First Bikini
In 1907, the professional swimmer Annette Kellerman was arrested on a Massachusetts beach for wearing a revealing bathing suit -- a skin-tig...
This Morbid Invention: The First Electric Chair
The harnessing of electricity by the great inventors of the Gilded Age introduced the world to the miracle of light at all hours of the day....
The Cow and The Country Boy (The First Vaccine)
This is the story of the first vaccine, perhaps one of the greatest inventions in modern human history. Starring -- a country doctor with a...
Making the Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance feels like an American tradition that traces itself back to the Founding Fathers, but, in fact, it's turning 125 ye...