FIRST MAN TO FLY IN AN AIRPLANE?
Always interested in mechanics and inventing, Jacob Brodbeck tried––apparently without success––to build a self-winding clock while he was teaching school in his native Württemberg, Germany. In 1847 he arrived in Fredericksburg to serve as the second teacher at the Vereins Kirche and then taught at other schools in Gillespie County. He married one of his […]
Texas’ Pioneer Inventor
A brilliant eccentric—Gail Borden reportedly rode about Galveston on a pet bull. He invented a “locomotive bath house,” a portable affair that allowed women to bathe privately in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico before he was “discouraged” by the city authorities. While he worked for the Galveston City Company laying out the streets, […]