AUTOMOBILES

Automatic windshield wipers were introduced as standard equipment in 1923.

Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. Gottlieb Daimler in Germany beat him by about eighteen years in 1890, as did Karl Benz. Daimler named the car after his distributor's daughter. You may have heard of her, Mercedes. Later they got together.

In 1893 J. Frank and Charles E. Duryea produced the first successful gasoline-powered automobile in the United States. They began production of their Duryea in 1896, the same year Henry Ford started operations of his first successful car in Detroit.

A car's instrument panel is called a dashboard. The term dates back to horse-and-buggy days when dashing horses kicked up mud, splashing the passengers riding behind them. The dashboard was devised to protect them.

It was not Henry Ford. Ransom E. Olds, father of the Oldsmobile, introduced the assembly-line technique to the United States in 1901. In doing so, he increased automobile productions from 425 vehicles in 1901 to over 2,500 on 1902. Ford contributed modifications, including the conveyor belt system, which reduced the time it took to build a Model T from 1 1/2 days to 90 minutes.

MISCELLANEOUS

What did people use before lawn mowers?
Prior to the invention of lawn mowers, lawns were cut with scythes, but this operation was ineffective unless the lawn was wet. The sale of lawn mowers got a great boost when lawn tennis came into vogue in England in 1870.

Who built the first bathrooms, and where?
Bathrooms actually come from a place famous for its pipes, but of another kind: Scotland, known more for bagpipes than plumbing.  The place was the Orkney Islands, off the Scottish coast, ten millennia ago, where some nameless individuals finally took a stand for comfort. (Actually, I assume they took a seat.) They left their mark in the annals of latrinery by throwing together a primitive drain system that carried wastes directly from their huts to the local stream - the first in- house outhouse. It would take another 10,000 years for folks to notice that this created as many problems as it solved, waste-wise.
Source: EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINS OF EVERYDAY THINGS by Charles Panati

WHERE DID THE UMBRELLA ORIGINATE?
In Mesopotamia, in 1400 B.C. It was used for shade, which is why its name from the Latin word for a shade, umbra.

When were friction matches first invented?
The first friction matches were invented in England in the 1820s. To be lit, they had to be pulled through a folded strip of sandpaper. These early matches were less convenient and more dangerous than the ones we use today.
The modern safety match, which can be lit easily only when struck on a specific surface, was invented in Sweden in 1855 by J.E. Lundstrom. It works because one of the chemicals needed to start the fire is in the striking surface.
Another curious (and dangerous) early match consisted of a glass bulb wrapped in paper, filled with sulfuric acid. The user had to bite the paper, breaking the bulb and setting the paper on fire. Watch out!

Why was air-conditioning invented?
People in the past weren't as inclined to think they could change their living space environments as people today. While keeping warm in the winter was necessary to survival, keeping cool in the summer wasn't really a consideration - when it was hot people just bore with it.  So, when Willis Carrier designed his first air conditioning system in 1902, it wasn't for someone who wanted to keep cool, but for someone who wanted to keep his cool. His customer was a frustrated Brooklyn, N.Y. printer who couldn't print a decent color image because changes in heat and humidity kept changing the papers' dimensions and misaligning the colored inks. For nearly two decades, Carrier's invention was used more for the comfort of machines than people. It wasn't until 1924 that "comfort cooling" made its debut, at the J.L. Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Mich. From there, air conditioning made its way to office buildings, theaters, and finally homes. Today it's a rare home indeed that doesn't have some form of air conditioning system inherent in its structure.

WHO FIRST SUGGESTED THE USE OF A SWINGING PENDULUM TO RUN A CLOCK?
Galileo, the famous astronomer

TELEPHONES

Where was the first pay-phone?
In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost only 5 cents everywhere until 1951.

How did pay phones operate prior to the coin-op type?
When using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit his coins in the machine. He gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear until 1899.