Articles in regional publications that pertain to a wide range of North Carolina-related topics.
Search Results
15 results
for Tar Heel Junior Historian Vol. 46 Issue 1, Fall 2006
Currently viewing results 1 - 15
|
PAGE
OF 1
|
Record #:
8284
Author(s):
Abstract:
Lunsford Richardson II, a native of Johnston County, invented Vicks Vapo-Rub. He taught school before becoming a pharmacist. His first drugstore was in Selma, which he sold before moving to Greensboro, where he opened another one. There he developed a number of home remedies under the name of Vicks. His most famous product was Vicks VapoRub, a balm which contained menthol, a little-known drug from Japan. Ninety years after his death, Vicks VapoRub is known around the world and continues to relieve the discomfort of sick people.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8285
Author(s):
Abstract:
In 1893, Caleb Bradham opened a drugstore in New Bern, where he concocted soft drinks. One was called Brad's Drink, and in 1898 it became Pepsi Cola. Although Bradham made millions, fluctuating sugar prices contributed to his bankruptcy in 1923.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8286
Author(s):
Abstract:
Richard Gordon Gatling was born in a log cabin at Maney's Neck in Hertford County on September 12, 1818. By the middle of the 19th-century, he was world-famous for his agricultural inventions. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he began work on a weapon that would bring him lasting fame -- the Gatling Gun, patented on November 4, 1862. Gatling felt that by building a weapon that was so destructive of human life, it would prevent wars.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8287
Author(s):
Abstract:
David Williams was born in Cumberland County on November 13, 1900. As a young man, he worked for a railroad company and supplemented his income by making moonshine. A confrontation with law officers led to a shootout in which an officer was killed. Although there is a dispute as to who shot the officer, Williams was charged and sentenced to thirty years in prison. He worked in the metal shop in prison, repairing guns of the guards and developing his own ideas about firearms. In 1929, after serving eight years, his case was reviewed, and he was pardoned. During World War II, Williams worked for the Winchester Repeating Firearms Company in Connecticut. While in prison he had invented the short-stroke piston and floating chamber principle that would revolutionize the small arms industry. This idea led to the development of the M1 carbine. Over six million were manufactured between 1941 and 1945 and gave him his famous nickname \"Carbine\" Williams.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8290
Author(s):
Abstract:
In 1865, after the end of the Civil War, large-scale tobacco manufacturing developed in Winston-Salem and Durham. Roberts discusses inventions that helped to change the industry. One was the Bull Jack, a machine that filled muslin bags about the size of a pack of playing cards with smoking tobacco and applied labels to the bags. Rufus Lenoir Patterson of Salem was the inventor. John Thomas Dalton invented a bow tier to automatically tie the strings on the muslin bags. James Bonsack, a Virginia teenager, invented the Bonsack machine for making cigarettes, a device that eliminated the need to roll cigarettes by hand.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8291
Author(s):
Abstract:
Numerous inventions and scientific breakthroughs have occurred in North Carolina. Many inventors are well-known, such as the Wright Brothers, Caleb Bradham, and Richard Gatling. Others may not be widely known for a number of reasons, such as being unable to secure a patent. In 1801, G. F. Saltonstall of Fayetteville was the first North Carolinian to receive a patent. He had invented a new method of processing grain. Davis provides a timeline of North Carolina inventors and their creations from 1801 to 2005.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8292
Author(s):
Abstract:
Scientists world-wide are continually searching for ways to fight diseases. Some of the most important work in that fight was carried on in the late 20th-century in North Carolina by Gertrude Elion and George Hitching. In 1988, they shared the Nobel Prize in medicine with England's Sir James Black. Their revolutionary discoveries led to drugs to fight leukemia, malaria, gout, organ rejection, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain bacterial infections, and laid the foundation for work leading to AZT, the first treatment for AIDS.
Source:
Record #:
8294
Author(s):
Abstract:
Farming was hard work in North Carolina during the 1800s, with all the work done by hand, aided by mules for extra power. During the latter part of the century, many people, including John Blue of Laurinburg, were inventing machines to make farm work easier. Among Blue's inventions were a cotton planter made of iron and a machine to spread fertilizer. Blue and his father went into the farm implement business together. This small business grew into a large plant where implements were made and a foundry where iron was melted and cast into the parts the company needed. The John Blue Company was sold in 1967 and now produces large sprayers for agriculture under the name of CDS-John Blue Company.
Source:
Record #:
8295
Author(s):
Abstract:
By the 1950s, Malcolm McLean of Robeson County had built one of the country's biggest transportation firms, the McLean Trucking Company. In 1956, he turned an idea he had been thinking about since 1937 into a reality. His invention 'containerized shipping' revolutionized the world of shipping. His idea was to build a tractor-trailer truck in which the trailer part could be lifted onto a ship or onto railroad cars, without anyone touching the contents, and transported to a particular destination, where it was loaded back onto a truck and delivered to the customers.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8296
Author(s):
Abstract:
During the 19th-century, many people believed that women's role was that of wives and mothers, however, there were some North Carolina women who channeled their creativity into inventions. In 1834, Ethel H. Porter, of Lincolnton, was the first North Carolina woman to receive a patent for her invention related to cutting feed for horses and cattle. Harriet Morrison Erwin, of Charlotte, designed a hexagonal house and in 1869, became the first woman in the country to patent an architectural innovation. The woman who invented more items than any other woman in the country was Raleigh native Beulah Louise Henry, a granddaughter of North Carolina Governor W.W. Holden. These women blazed trails for women who would follow in the 20th-century, such as Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner, who received five patents for household and personal items.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8297
Author(s):
Abstract:
African American inventors who have lived in North Carolina include two sisters, Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner and Mildred Davidson Austin Smith, who began inventing when they were little girls. Kenner held five patents and Smith received a patent for a game she developed. Alonzo Parker received his first patent in 1988 on a therapeutic exercise machine and chair. John S. Thurman received a patent in 1988 for a vehicle motion-signaling system.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8298
Author(s):
Abstract:
Dr. Mike Boyette, an agricultural engineer, has been on the faculty at North Carolina State University for twenty-three years. He is an inventor and designer who works to create better farm equipment, structures, and processes. Shore describes some of his inventions.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8299
Author(s):
Abstract:
Harriet Erwin of Charlotte was the daughter of Dr. Robert Morrison, the founder of Davidson College, and the sister-in-law of General Daniel Harvey Hill, an officer in the Confederate Army. Being sickly as a child, she spent her days in bed reading, while her brothers and sisters engaged in active play. In 1869, heavily influenced by her years of illness and readings in architecture, she set out to design a house that was both practical and economical for the invalid housekeeper. In that same year she received a patent for a hexagonal house design that emphasized more efficient lighting, better movement of air, and better use of space. At age forty-one, Irwin became the first woman in the United States to receive an architectural patent.
Source:
Record #:
8301
Author(s):
Abstract:
H. H. and C. S. Brimley, immigrant English boys, came to Raleigh in 1880. Herbert became an outstanding taxidermist and worked for the Museum of Natural Science for sixty years, fifty-one as curator and director. Clement was an entomologist for the Agriculture Department. He published over two hundred animal-related papers and two landmark books, The List of Insects of North Carolina and Birds of North Carolina. The Brimleys were the state's most influential naturalists, whose work left a lasting mark on the state.
Source:
Subject(s):
Record #:
8304
Author(s):
Abstract:
In December 2006, the world will mark the 100th anniversary of radio broadcasting. Inventor Reginald Fessenden, a radio pioneer, made the first broadcast. In 1900, he was hired by the U.S. Weather Bureau to solve one of its most serious problems - instant communication with remote observation stations on islands and ships. Frost describes how Fessenden and his team, working at Manteo, solved the problem.
Source:
Subject(s):