A Sweet Baltimore Discovery at Johns Hopkins University (1879)

  In 1877, the H.W. Perot Import Firm, largest supplier of sugar in Baltimore at the time, had a large shipment impounded by the U.S. Government, which questioned its purity. The company hired Constantin Fahlberg (born in Tambov, Russia in 1850), an expert on sugar, to run tests and requested Johns Hopkins University Professor Ira Remsen (born in Harlem, NY in 1846) for use of the chemistry lab he managed.  H.W. Perot also hired Remsen, asking him to provide a laboratory for Fahlberg’s tests.

Constantin Fahlberg

  Dr. Ira Remsen founded the nation’s first journal of chemical research, and is considered the father of American chemistry. According to the book, "Sweet and low: A Family Story” by Rich Cohen, he had began tinkering with sulfobenzoic acids as a student in Germany eventually publishing 75 papers on these and related compounds, work that would be the research basis for what was to come – “saccharin”.

Ira Remsen,
Johns Hopkins Professor
and President

  In 1878, he became the second president of Johns Hopkins University and was less directly involved with the lab.  One day in June 1878, Professor Remsen suggested to his colleague, Fahlberg, that he experiment on testing substitution products of coal tar.  He had become so intensely interested and eventually forgot about supper until it was quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash his hands.

  Fahlberg sat down to dinner, picked up a roll with his hand and bit into a remarkably sweet crust – the result of having spilled an experimental compound over his hands from earlier that day. Realizing that it had to have come from the laboratory, according to his statement in a Baltimore Sun article he rushed back to it and “proceeded to taste the contents of every beaker and evaporating dish on the lab table.  Luckily for me, none contained any corrosive or poisonous liquid.”  Finally, he found the source:  an overboiled beaker in which sulfobenzoic acid had reacted to ultimately produce benzoic sulfinide which, to the taste, outsugared sugar.

Seal of the Fahlberg, List & Co.

  Remsen and Fahlberg jointly published an article describing the method of saccharin synthesis in February 1879, though initially neither discoverer seemed interested in its commercial use.  That would change in 1884 when, after Falhberg left Remsen’s lab and without notifying his co-discoverer, he applied for a German patent (which later transferred to an American patent) on a new method for cheaply producing greater quantities. By 1886, it was introduced to the public through a company he started the world’s first saccharin factory known as the Fahlberg, List & Co.

Chandler's Saccharin Pellets

  He then likewise quickly returned to the U.S. and set up shop in New York City, where he opened America’s first factory. Patent medicine companies like Chandler’s Distributors of St. Louis, MO, distributed saccharin in the United States as early as 1888 (see photo, left).  “Don’t Miss Your Sugar” was advertising headline.
  

 "Concentrated sweetness in handy form.  One pellet equals one teaspoon of sugar. Dissolves instantly – No bitter after-taste; which is experienced from the user of cheaper, inferior brands. Prescribed by doctors for persons unable to use sugar, also for reducing purposes.  A non-fattening, non-nutritive sweetening agent."

  By 1901, Monsanto was founded by John Francis Queeny, a 30-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, who gave the company his wife’s maiden name.  Oddly enough, the company’s first product was saccharin (in 1902) despite his father-in-law being a wealthy financier of a sugar company based in St. Thomas - this became the first commercial production of saccharin in the United States.   During the periods 1903 to 1905, Monsanto’s entire saccharin output was shipped (and later sold) to the growing soft drink company in Georgia, called Coca-Cola.  Its use became widespread especially during World War I due to sugar shortages.

Monsanto-brand Saccharin

  As early as 1907, the USDA investigated saccharin for being contradictory to the Pure Food and Drug Act, which had been enacted during President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.  Teddy Roosevelt (being a consumer of saccharin) opposed the investigation and was stated saying, “Anyone who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot” when people questioned its use as a sweetener.  By 1917, the U.S. government filed suit over the safety of saccharin. 

  The safety of this now world-famous Baltimore-based discovery has been studied and written in volumes of literature and research.  Interestingly enough, it was one of the co-founders himself (Ira Remsen was the Johns Hopkins University acting president) who was quoted by the Baltimore Sun as he lectured before the Public School Teacher’s Association on an evening in February 1890, “It may interest you to learn that saccharin was discovered about ten years ago in the chemical laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, and that it is now manufactured on the large scale in Germany.  It is an open question whether its side effects upon the system are injurious or not.” 

Remsen Hall, Johns Hopkins
(Courtesy: JHU)

  Although it was possibly stated with vengeance over not being credited for its discovery within patent or public venues, perhaps this forewarning by the true co-inventor might be the best input in determining your own opinion about its safeness

  Here in Baltimore, after his death in 1927, Dr. Ira Remsen’s ashes were placed behind a plaque in Remsen Hall on the Homewood Campus of saccharin’s discovery location at Johns Hopkins University.  Dr. Constantine Fahlberg died in Aug 1910 and is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, Russia.

(Other Sources for this blogpost courtesy of: Chemical Heritage Magazine, Wikipedia, and Baltimore Sun articles)

Early Baltimore "Wireless Telephone" (Radio) Stations

War Questionnaire,
Calman J. Zamoiski

  Calman J. Zamoiski, Sr. was born in Baltimore (1896) to Joseph M. and Tena Zamoiski.  (An interesting side note: His father was nursed while wounded in the Crimean War by Florence Nightingale, and later supervised the construction of the Baltimore Belt Tunnel). Prior to World War I, he worked at his father’s electric supply and construction company, “Joseph M. Zamoiski Co. The Electrifiers.” Following his return from the war, he became interested in radio, the company began stocking Philco radio parts, and after received a radio operator’s license, he founded the Baltimore’s first commercial radio station.  According to published obituaries, Calman first began broadcasting in Baltimore from the bedroom of his home at 2527 Madison Avenue (across from Druid Lake) in November, 1921, under the call letters 3RM - initially featuring sermons by local clergymen but later included concerts and non-religious talks. 

  At that time, the term “wireless telephone” was used synonymously with the term “radio,” and as Baltimore's pioneer in radio, Zamoiski received a license on March 26, 1922, to operate a new station (call sign WKC), from the top floor of his radio and electronics store at 19 North Liberty street (currently at the location of the downtown Sheraton hotel).  The Evening Sun first public announced on March 30, 1922, that a “new broadcasting station of Baltimore … would give a concert” (the eight-piece Century Roof Dance Orchestra) that evening. One could imagine the local neighborhood crowd and spectacle on evenings when these performances would air. The WKC radio station would last until 1924.

  WEAR, owned by the Baltimore American was the second radio station on air by becoming operational on June 8, 1922. Frank Munsey was the owner of the Baltimore American at that time their studios were run from the 18th floor of the Munsey Building (7 N. Calvert Street).

Early WCAO, S&N Katz
Radio Advertisement

  Three months later, on September 4, 1922, WCAO, owned by Sanders and Stayman Piano Co (a musical instrument and phonograph store later to be known as Kranz-Smith) became the third on air radio station (at 600 kHz) by originally broadcasting from the piano company at 319 N. Charles Street.  It moved to Lehman Hall (852 N. Howard Street) and then to its last downtown location at Brager’s Department Store (corner of Eutaw and Saratoga Streets). The Upton Mansion, at 811 W. Lanvale Street, ended up being the residence of its big studio, radio offices, and transmitter location.  WCAO was one of the 16 original stations making up the United Broadcasting System, later renamed as the Columbia Broadcasting System, the network now known as CBS.  In the early 1930s, WCAO became the first national broadcast from a moving train (the B&O) by rebroadcasting the feed to CBS transmitters.

WCBM 1957 Postcard,
(Courtesy: dcrtv.com)

 "Where Christ Blesses Multitudes” became the moniker to represent Baltimore’s first religious radio station (at 1370 kHz, in 1941 at 1400 kHz and finally 680 kHz), call sign WCBM, which, according to a Jan 1949 Broadcasting magazine, began operating after its license was issued in May 1924 by the Seventh Baptist Church (30 E. North Avenue) at the corner of St. Paul Street.  In 1926, it then moved to its first formal studios in the Hotel Chateau (2-4 W. North Avenue, northwest corner of Charles Street).

Early WBAL Radio ad

  In late 1925, WBAL (1090 kHz) radio was advertising to find any man that felt they could qualify as a radio announcer and they began broadcasting of that year as a subsidiary of the Consolidated Gas Electric and Power Company on November 2 from their studio that existed in the 39 Lexington St Building, the location of the utility offices.   Though the name of the company’s owners was not broadcast or exploited in any way, the announcers quite often stated, “This is BALtimore.”  In its early days, (according to the Baltimore Broadcasting, From A to Z, by Thomas O’Connor) the first letters of each of the last names of the announcing staff coincidentally spelled out the station’s call sign (WBAL) – John Wilborne, Stanley Barnett, Delano Ames, and Walter Linthicum. 

Early WFBR Radio Ad

  Originally owned and operated by the Fifth Maryland Regiment having studios at the Armory on Preston Street, WFBR Baltimore (an NBC network) was at 1180kHz, and it was a station that expanded the limits of mobility.  Its call sign was an an acronym for "World’s First Broadcasting Regiment.”  While it had offices on St. Paul Street, it operated Baltimore’s first mobile news truck, known as “Unit 2.” An October 4, 1925 Baltimore Sun article reported that it claimed to be the first station in the United States to successfully rebroadcast a program sent from a moving airplane. For a while it operated at 13 E. 20th Street and above the Center movie theatre (10 E. North Avenue).

WEBB Radio Announcer, Late 1950s

  By 1955, radio was in full bloom in Baltimore.  WEBB was established that year and named for the
legendary Baltimore-born and raised swing and jazz musician, William Henry “Chick” Webb.  From it’s beginnings, it was planned to serve Baltimore’s African-American community. Interestingly, Chuck Richards, one of WEBB radio’s best-known performers began his career as a vocalist with Chick Webb’s band, singing with Ella Fitzgerald. In 1969, soul singer James Brown purchased WEBB and owned it for 10 years.  Dorothy E. Brunson, a prominent local businesswoman, purchased it during bankruptcy proceedings in 1979 thereby becoming the first African-American woman in the country to own a radio station – it was later sold in 1990. 

  Baltimore’s first FM station was an experimental station designated as W3XMB, and later began licensed operation as WITH-FM, later known as WBSB (B104 FM).

(Sources: “The Free State of Maryland,” Kummer-Latrobe, Baltimore Broadcasting-From A to Z, Baltimore Sun newspaper, and Wikipedia)