Historic Firsts in California

California has been a pioneer in many different areas. Interesting facts from the California Travel and Tourism Commission.

The Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka was the first brewery in the United States to be founded and operated by women.

The world's first laser was successfully operated by its inventor, Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu in the spring of 1960.

The Frisbee was invented in California.

The first television was invented by Philo T. Farnsworth, and transmitted its first successful electronic image in San Francisco on September 7, 1927.

California was the site of the first radio broadcast.

Fashion Fair Mall, in Fresno, was the nation's first enclosed shopping mall.

San Francisco's Genentech Inc. developed human insulin, the first product of recumbent DNA technology to reach the market.

The first seedless watermelon was developed in California.

The first node of the Internet (then known as ARPANET) was installed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in September 1969. The first host-to-host message was sent one month later from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute.

Around-the-clock satellite communications commenced with the successful launch of Syncom 2, a satellite built by Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles in the Summer of 1963.

The first ship-to-shore message in the U.S. occurred in August 1899 when a lightship near the Golden Gate sent a dot-and-dash message to a receiving unit on shore announcing the return of the first troops from the Spanish-American War.

The first vacuum tube was invented in the Silicon Valley and would later make possible talking movies, long distance telephones, radar, microwave communications and space flight . . . just to name a few.

Los Angeles is home to the first freeway gas station in the U.S., air passenger line in the world, supermarket, Barbie, B2 Bomber and F11-7 Stealth Fighter.

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