5 ways Pitt people helped shape America

The radio in your car, the ambulance that arrives in minutes, the dance number you can’t get out of your head — most Americans go a full day without realizing how many ordinary moments trace back to the University of Pittsburgh.

On Feb. 28, 1787, less than three months before the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Academy opened its doors in a town of a few hundred residents on what was then the western edge of the country. That school would later be rechartered as Western University of Pennsylvania in 1819 and rename itself to the University of Pittsburgh we know today in 1908.

As the United States of America marks 250 years, Pittwire collected five moments — spanning engineering, medicine, civil rights and the arts — when Pitt people helped shape the country it became.

1893: The dawn of voice radio

George Westinghouse personally recruited Reginald Fessenden in 1893 to chair the new electrical engineering department at Western University of Pennsylvania. Within six years, Fessenden was transmitting wireless telegraph signals across the Allegheny River to what was then Allegheny City, today’s North Side of Pittsburgh.

After leaving Pitt in 1900, Fessenden made the first wireless transmission of the human voice in an era when long-distance signals were still limited to Morse-code clicks. The National Park Service today recognizes him as the “Father of Voice Radio.”

“Fessenden was one of the greatest engineers and inventors in history, truly a genius,” said Alan George, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Much of the research and education in my field, electrical and computer engineering, including my research on space systems, sensors and missions, wouldn’t exist without his pioneering work in radio communications.”

1933: A Hollywood star redefines dance

Gene Kelly (A&S ’33) arrived at the University after the 1929 stock market crash forced him home from Penn State and graduated with an economics degree in 1933. Already a working professional, Kelly was teaching at his family’s Squirrel Hill studio, leading Pitt’s Cap and Gown Club as director from 1934 to 1938, and staging productions at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and downtown’s Nixon Theater.

After a move to New York City, Kelly broke through in 1940 with the title role in the Broadway hit “Pal Joey.” A Hollywood contract followed, and his 1942 film debut opposite Judy Garland in “For Me and My Gal” launched a screen career built on a grounded, everyman style that set him apart from contemporaries like Fred Astaire.

Throughout Kelly’s Hollywood career, he was regarded for bringing an “energetically athletic, authentically American” dancing style to the screen and — particularly in “Singin’ in the Rain,” the 1952 classic about Hollywood’s rocky transition from silent films to talkies — reshaping the choreography of American film. In 1961, Pitt awarded him with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts. “Singin’ in the Rain” was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1989.

1955: A vaccine ends the polio epidemic

Jonas Salk and his team at Pitt’s School of Medicine developed and tested an inactivated-virus polio vaccine for seven years, inoculating Salk’s own wife and children before launching the largest medical field trial of its time in 1954. After evaluating data from more than 1.8 million children who received the shot, University of Michigan researchers found that the Pitt-developed vaccine was safe and effective.

American polio cases dropped 97% within seven years of the vaccine’s release. Salk refused to patent the vaccine; when asked who owned it, he famously answered, “Could you patent the sun?”