A thousand pioneers head West 

as part of the Great Emigration  

The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.

Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and missionary groups had been living in the region for decades, to say nothing of the Native Americans who had settled the land centuries earlier. Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed Oregon’s agricultural potential, piquing the interest of white American farmers. The first overland migrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm, came in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri. They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River. In the years to come, pioneers came to call the route the Oregon Trail.

In 1842, a slightly larger group of 100 pioneers made the 2,000-mile journey to Oregon. The next year, however, the number of emigrants skyrocketed to 1,000. The sudden increase was a product of a severe depression in the Midwest combined with a flood of propaganda from fur traders, missionaries, and government officials extolling the virtues of the land. Farmers dissatisfied with their prospects in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, hoped to find better lives in the supposed paradise of Oregon.

On this day in 1843, some 1,000 men, women, and children climbed aboard their wagons and steered their horses west out of the small town of Elm Grove, Missouri. The train comprised more than 100 wagons with a herd of 5,000 oxen and cattle trailing behind. Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who had made the trip the year before, served as a guide.

The first section of the Oregon Trail ran through the relatively flat country of the Great Plains. Obstacles were few, though the river crossings could be dangerous for wagons. As they traversed through Native American territories, the danger of attacks was a small but genuine risk. To be on the safe side, the pioneers drew their wagons into a circle at night to create a makeshift stockade. If they feared Native Americans might raid their livestock—the Plains tribes valued the horses, though generally ignored the oxen—they would drive the animals into the enclosure.

The pioneers quickly learned that they were more likely to be injured or killed by a host of other causes. Obstacles included accidental discharge of firearms, falling off mules or horses, drowning in river crossings, and disease. After entering the mountains, the trail also became much more difficult, with steep ascents and descents over rocky terrain. The pioneers risked injury from overturned and runaway wagons.

Yet, as with the 1,000-person party that made the journey in 1843, the vast majority of pioneers on the trail survived to reach their destination in the fertile, well-watered land of western Oregon. The migration of 1844 was smaller than that of the previous season, but in 1845 it jumped to nearly 3,000. Thereafter, migration on the Oregon Trail was an annual event, although the practice of traveling in giant convoys of wagons gave way to many smaller bands of one or two-dozen wagons. The trail was heavily traveled until 1884, when the Union Pacific constructed a railway along the route.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, is born

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes was born on this day in 1859.  He would be 165 years old.

Doyle was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher with extraordinary deductive reasoning power. Bell partly inspired Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes years later.

After medical school, Doyle moved to London, where his slow medical practice left him ample free time to write. His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in The Strand magazine. Holmes enabled Doyle to leave his medical practice in 1891 and devote himself to writing, but the author soon grew weary of his creation. In The Final Problem, he killed off both Holmes and his nemesis, Dr. Moriarty, only to resuscitate Holmes later due to popular demand. 

In 1902, Doyle was knighted for his work with a field hospital in South Africa. In addition to dozens of Sherlock Holmes stories and several novels, Doyle wrote history, pursued whaling, and engaged in many adventures and athletic endeavors. After his son died in World War I, Doyle became a dedicated spiritualist. He died in 1930.

Net Discussion Questions

1. How are west have you been?

2. Have you ever driven across the US continent?

3. Have you read any Sherlock Holmes mysteries?

May 8, 1878 – The Microphone is introduced

David Edward Hughes' paper on the idea for a microphone is read before the Royal Society of London by Thomas Henry Huxley 

David Edward Hughes was a British-American inventor and musician. His most celebrated invention is the printing telegraph, which significantly enhanced the speed and efficiency of telecommunication during the late 19th century. The device used a keyboard that punched Morse Code onto paper tape, which could then be sent over the telegraph line at a pace much faster than handwriting.

Hughes' contributions to telecommunication also extend to the field of wireless transmission. In the late 1870s, he built an apparatus to investigate the behavior of "spark discharges" in telegraph equipment. This led to the discovery of radio waves, a significant milestone in the evolution of wireless communication. However, due to his modest nature, Hughes did not patent his discovery, and the credit went to Heinrich Hertz, who made similar discoveries a decade later.

Aside from his telecommunication innovations, Hughes was also a skilled musician. He patented an automatic mechanism for a harp which allowed for a broader range of notes than was typically achievable. Music and invention were synergistic in Hughes' life, as his musical knowledge often informed his scientific work.

The first microphone that enabled proper voice telephony was the (loose-contact) carbon microphone (then called transmitter). This was independently developed around 1878 by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US. Although Edison was awarded the first patent in mid-1877, Hughes had demonstrated his working device in front of many witnesses some years earlier, and most historians credit him with its invention.

Hughes' device used loosely packed carbon granules - the varying pressure exerted on the granules by the diaphragm from the acoustic waves caused the resistance of the carbon to vary proportionally, allowing a relatively accurate electrical reproduction of the sound signal. Hughes also coined the word microphone. He demonstrated his apparatus to the Royal Society by magnifying the sound of insects scratching through a sound box. Contrary to Edison, Hughes decided not to take out a patent; instead, he made his invention a gift to the world.

In America, Edison and Berliner fought a long legal battle over patent rights. Ultimately a federal court awarded Edison full rights to the invention, stating "Edison preceded Berliner in the transmission of speech...The use of carbon in a transmitter is, beyond controversy, the invention of Edison" and the Berliner patent was ruled invalid.

The carbon microphone is the direct prototype of today's microphones and was critical in the development of telephony, broadcasting, and the recording industries. Later, carbon granules were used between carbon buttons. Carbon microphones were widely used in telephones from 1890 until the 1980s. 

The first glass of Coca-Cola 

is served in Atlanta 

On May 8, 1886, pharmacist John Stith Pemberton hauled a jug of his latest patent medicine—a tonic he called Coca-Cola—over to Jacob’s Pharmacy on Peachtree Street. The syrup was mixed with soda water, deemed tasty, and sold for a nickel a glass. Coca-Cola was billed as a versatile drug that could “cure all nervous afflictions—Sick Headache, Neuralgia, Hysteria, Melancholy, Etc. …”

During the first year the beverage was on the market, Pemberton sold about nine glasses a day. The product name was coined by Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, whose elegant penmanship is responsible for the company’s flourish-filled logo, which began to appear in Atlanta newspaper ads as well as on pharmacy awnings.

When Pemberton died in August 1888, Coca-Cola was not even mentioned in the Atlanta Constitution’s story about his passing. What was mentioned, however, was the relationship between Coca-Cola’s inventor and fellow pharmacist Asa Griggs Candler, who summoned Atlanta’s druggists to his own shop to craft a tribute to Pemberton. “Our profession has lost a good and active member,” Candler told the newspaper. The pharmacists published a resolution honoring Pemberton, and they decided to attend his funeral services en masse, shuttering all Atlanta drug stores for the day in tribute to one of their own. Candler served as one of the “gentleman pallbearers.”

In the three years after Pemberton’s death, Candler would prove to be more shrewd than congenial, buying up all the interests in Coca-Cola for a total investment of $2,300. With a flair for advertising and marketing, Candler turned Pemberton’s health tonic into an iconic global brand. In 1919, the Candler family sold Coke for $25 million to a group of investors organized by Ernest Woodruff. Asa Candler, who served as mayor of Atlanta, was an influential civic leader and philanthropic benefactor, bankrolling the founding of Emory University and what became Emory Hospital and helping to develop Druid Hills.

The secret formula for Pemberton’s concoction (which, urban myths notwithstanding, Coca-Cola staunchly claims never contained cocaine, or at least not more than a “trivial” amount in the early days) had been kept in a SunTrust bank vault since 1925. In late 2011, the formula was transferred to a new vault that is now part of the World of Coca-Cola museum. 

Net Discussion Topics

1. What type of microphone are you using right now?

• Desk mic

• Handheld

• Headset

• Other?

2. Are you a Coke or Pepsi person?

• Do you mix it with anything else or add any other ingredients?