1876: First telephone conversation in America

The father of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, brought his invention to Cambridge and conducted the first telephone converstation in the United States. New England Telephone Co. immediately sought patent rights.

circa 1920: First atom split

Professor Theodore Richards of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told his colleagues he split the atom. Twenty years later, many of the men responsible for the Manhattan Project left Cambridge for Los Alamos, N.M.

1924: First radio tubes

MIT scientists foreshadowed their later discoveries of radar and the micro computer (1948) by developing the first radio tubes. Willie Marconi was not present.

1940: First commercial varnish

People had to use home-mixed brews until inventors at the Blacksmith Shop--near the present site of the coffee shop--mixed the first batch.

1947: First automatic camera developed

After formulating his ideas on the camera as a Harvard student, Edwin Land '26 opened a research laboratory in Cambridge. In late 1947 or early 1948, the instant camera was developed. Several months later, in November 1948, the first Polaroid cameras went on sale at the retail counters of Jordan Marsh.

1971: First frozen yogurt

Until it closed, the Spa of Harvard Square proudly proclaimed in its windows that on Feb. 13, 1971, the first frozen yogurt cone was served right there.

1977: First DNA regulations

After a long battle, City Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci saw his dreams come true when the Cambridge city council voted to limit recombinant DNA research within the city limits. Certain experiments would be allowed, the council told a shocked and angry audience from MIT and Harvard, but only under the strictest laboratory conditions.