2 January

1839 In France Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of the Moon, as below. His name gave us the Daguerreotype for a kind of photograph.

1890 In D.C. President Benjamin Harrison appointed Alice Sanger to be the first woman on the White House staff. He also appointed Frederick Douglass to be US ambassador to Haiti. I expect the White House cooking and cleaning staff had included women, but Sanger was an office worker of some sort. Little is available about her apart from the appointment. It was a time when agitation for the vote for women was high and perhaps the appointment was intended to mollify that constituency a little. Likewise the agitation for black rights was strong and perhaps Douglass’s appointment was a sop to that. No image of Alice Sanger could be found. Below is Frederick Douglass looking like an Old Testament prophet bringing the word from the wilderness.

1893 In Chicago the World’s Columbian Exposition opened. It was notable for the use of electricity for illumination whether in day or night to make it a White City in a second sense. All the buildings were painted white and at night it was illuminated by electric lights. A book about ‘Chicago’s Perfect Cities of 1893’ (1991) is discussed elsewhere on this blog.

1906 In Brooklyn Willis Carrier patented the world’s first air conditioner. Why did he not get a Nobel Prize? Peace, medicine, physics, or all of the above? That is a mystery to me. Have you heard people who say they have air conditioning in the home or office, but ‘try not to use it.’ I have. My reply is to say the same about the flush toilet. That stops the show.

1922 In D.C. Albert Fall, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, resigned in response to public outrage over the Teapot Dome scandal. Like many others in the administration of Warren Harding he had been selling public assets to cronies for enormous profits to himself. Has a contemporary ring to it does it not. Rumour has it that Albert Fall is one of President Tiny’s heroes.