Today in History: March 7

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

U.S. Patent Number 174,465 was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell 140 years ago today. It carried the mundane title, “Improvement in telegraphy,” but for all intents and purposes the patent is for the telephone, and so is one of the most noteworthy patents in history.

One key description describes the intent of the invention: Bell’s “improved” technology provides a new “method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound.” On March 7, 1876, however, the intention was all Bell and his lab assistants had. He ha not developed an operational device. Three days later, on March 10, Bell’s assistant Thomas Watson heard his boss’ voice transmitted on the experimental apparatus in a legendary moment: “Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.”
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What Dreams Are Made Of

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Alfred Hitchcock is credited with coining the term “MacGuffin,” but not the thing itself, which has been around since people started telling stories to each other. In spy movies and thrillers, a MacGuffin is the object that sets the plot of the movie in motion; it’s usually a something people desire that the hero and his nemeses pursue, and that pursuit provides the film’s plot. The specific nature and form of the MacGuffin is usually unimportant to the overall plot. In plot terms, but not theological ones, the apple in Genesis is a MacGuffin.

Neither of the two most famous examples of a MacGuffin in film history appear in a Hitchcock film however, even though he used the device quite frequently in his many movies (he directed more than 50 films from the 1920s through the ’70s).
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Today in History: March 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Battle of the Alamo concluded 180 years ago today. The 13-day-long siege of the Alamo Mission near San Antonio, Texas, ended with the utter defeat of the Texas independence fighters (all but a handful of the Texian defenders died on this date, including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie), but an ironic, existential, conclusion: the fight for independence was now seen as something worth fighting and dying for, so enlistments in the Texas Army boomed, and the Texas army defeated Mexico in the Battle of San Jacinto just five weeks later.

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On March 6, 1899, a chemist named Felix Hoffmann received a patent for his new synthetic form of acetylsalicylic acid for his employer, Bayer AG. His new drug was trademarked under the name aspirin.
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