Pittsburgh Firsts:

1) 1881 Saturday is now a holiday. First Saturday half holiday was inaugurated in US by George Westinghouse, the inventor, who established this custom in his factory.
Source: A life of George Westinghouse, (r92 W568p), p. 294-295

2) 1904 The banana split was invented by Dr. David Strickler, a pharmacist, at Stickler’s Drug Store in Latrobe, PA.
Source: The Pittsburgh Press, 5 September 1986, p. B1

3) 1905 The First Theater in the world devoted exclusively to the exhibition of motion pictures was the “Nickelodeon,” which was opened by Harry Davis in an empty store at 433-435 Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh.
Source: Allegheny County: A Sesquicentennial Review, (r974.885 K17)

4) 1920 The world’ first broadcast by a commercially licensed radio station was the Harding-Cox presidential election returns of November 2, 1920, on KDKA Radio, Pittsburgh. Thus, KDKA is the world’s first commercial radio station.
Source: Undercover Club Newsletter, August 1993, p4

5) 1926 Ground was broken for the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, the first university skyscraper.
Source: Pittsburgh Gazette Times, 22 September 1926

6) 1953 Dr. Jonas Salk, a University of Pittsburgh researcher and professor reported success of a new polio vaccine tried on human beings; the vaccine was developed by him and his staff at Pitt.
Source: The Pittsburgh Press, 12 April 1955

7) 1962 Alcoa developed the pull-tab and Iron City Brewery was the first cannery to market it (1962); the first in the world to do so, for a long time, pull-tabs were used only in this area.
Source: Iron City Brewery, 8 March 1995

8) 1967 The Big Mac was created by M.J. “Jim” Delligatti at his Uniontown, Fayette County, McDonald’s. Thereafter, introduced to three of his other McDonald’s in Pittsburgh. After test marketing, the item began appearing on every McDonald’s menu nationwide by 1968.
Source: The Tribune-Review, 5 May 1993

9) 1989 The First heart, liver and kidney transplant done in simultaneous operations at Presbyterian-University Hospital
Source: The Pittsburgh Press 4 December 1989, p. A1

10) 1998 TracDat was commercially released. A client-server version, TracDat was delivered on a floppy disk!

11) 2008 Nuventive Users Conference. With the announcement of their 250th customer earlier in the year, Nuventive hosts TracDat, iWebfolio and Insight customers June 18-20th in the ‘burgh.