1893 - Everyday Life

Everyday Life

Paris students witness the world's first striptease February 9 at the Bal des Quatre Arts. Gendarmes seize the artist's model who has disrobed for the art students, a court fines her 100 francs, the ruling provokes a riot in the Latin Quarter, students besiege the Prefecture of Police, and military intervention is required to restore order.

The Ferris Wheel at the Chicago fair has been designed by Illinois-born, Nevada-raised Pittsburgh bridge engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., 34, whose Midway amusement ride is a vertical power-driven steel wheel 250 feet in diameter with 36 passenger cars balanced at its rim. Each car seats 40 people and riders pay 50ยข each (as much as they paid for entrance to the fairgrounds) to enjoy the ride and see the unparalleled views it provides; the most spectacular attraction at the fair, it returns handsome profits to its investors (see 1897).

The "Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes" exhibited at the Chicago fair is the world's first slide fastener. Chicago inventor Whitcomb L. Judson patents the device and a machine to manufacture it August 29 (see Sundback, 1913).

Fels-Naphtha soap is introduced by Philadelphia soap maker Joseph Fels, 39, whose 17-year-old Fels & Company has just purchased a factory in which to apply the naphtha process to making laundry soap.

A new kind of floor mop patented by Kalamazoo, Michigan-born inventor Thomas Stewart can wring the water out of itself by means of a lever.

Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto, 35, pioneers cultured pearls. He has learned from a Tokyo University professor that if a foreign object enters a pearl oyster's shell and is not expelled the oyster will use it as the core of a pearl. Mikimoto 5 years ago established the first pearl farm in the Shinmei inlet, and when he pulls up a bamboo basket for routine inspection July 11 he finds a semispherical pearl, the world's first cultured pearl. The natural Oriental pearl business will fade in the next few decades, ruining the economies of some small countries such as Kuwait on the Persian Gulf (see energy, 1937).

Juicy Fruit chewing gum is introduced by William Wrigley Jr., who has been selling Lotta Gum and Vassar (see 1892). Wrigley's Spearmint chewing gum is introduced in the fall and will be the nation's leading brand by 1910 (see Wrigley Field, 1914).