1903

First Trans-Atlantic Radio Broadcast

First Trans-Atlantic Radio Broadcast made by from Marconi Station at Wellfleet when President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII of Great Britain exchanged greetings.

1907

First Fire Truck

First Fire Truck

World's first motorized fire wagon developed by Knox Manufacturing Company.

1924

First Mutual Fund

L. Sherman Adams introduced the world's first mutual fund.

1925

First Woman U.S Legislator

Edith Nourse Rogers (Republican - Massachusetts) was the first woman to serve in the U. S. House of Representatives. She was the longest serving women in House and introduced the GI Bill of Rights among other major initiatives.

1926

First Liquid Fueled Rocket

First successful liquid fueled rocket launched by Dr. Robbert Goddard in Auburn.

1928

First Computer

The first computer, a non-electronic "differential analyzer," was developed by Dr. Vannevar Bush of M.I.T. in Cambridge.

1930s

First Chocolate Chip Cookie

Ruth Wakefield invented the first chocolate chip cookie at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Ma. by adding cut up pieces of chocolate to her butter drop cookies.

1944

First Digital Computer

Howard Aiken of Harvard developed the first automatic digital computer. The machine was 50 feet long, 8 feet tall, and weighed approximately 5 tons!

1947

First Microwave Oven

Percy Spencer of Raytheon Corp. invented the microwave oven, the Radarange. The first oven was 750 lb and 5-1/2 feet tall. Today over 200 million microwaves are in use.

1947

First Instant Camera

Edwin Land demonstrates "one-step photography system" - the first Polaroid Land Camera.

1947

First Use of Chemotherapy

Dr. Sidney Farber introduced chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer, achieving the first cases of remission of acute childhood leukemia.

1954

First Kidney Transplant

First successful Kidney transplant between twins at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

1961

First Nuclear Powered Surface Ship

The first nuclear powered surface vessel, USS Long Beach CG(N) 9, was launched at Quincy.

1969

First Beginnings of the Internet

Bolt Beranek & Newman deploys ARPANET, precursor to the Internet.

1971

First Email

Ray Tomlinson of Beranek & Newman sent the first email. The first email message was "QWERTYUIOP" and was sent between two side by side computers connected via ARPANET.

1976

First "First Night"

Boston was the first city in America to celebrate New Year's Eve with a "First Night" event.

1976

First Reading Machine

The Kurzweil Reading Machine is the first successful commercial product to incorporate artificial intelligence to create a print-to-speech reading machine for the blind.

1979

First Electronic Spreadsheet

The first PC-based electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc is developed by Daniel Brickman.

1980

DNA

First to Decode DNA

Walter Gilbert was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1980 for discovering a technique to decode DNA.