Philadelphia - where most of modern U.S. was created

Michael Zuckerman

is emeritus professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania

The Convention and Visitors Bureau touts Philadelphia as "a city of firsts." The Independence Hall Association lists five pages of "Philadelphia Firsts" on its website. A walking tour of the city links "Philadelphia Firsts" to its home page. George Morgan may have been the first to title a book on Philadelphia The City of Firsts, in 1926, but even he acknowledged the research of others who had been tracking those firsts for "many years past."

The firsts did not begin with Ben Franklin. Philadelphia was a vision before it was a city, and its grandest innovations were in place before Franklin was even born. The ideas that revolutionized the West, religious freedom and political democracy, were proclaimed by William Penn and put into practice by the first sturdy settlers of his colony.

Franklin did do mighty work. But he never did it alone, and the work went on after he left the city and even after he died. Together, in the years before 1800, Philadelphians organized almost all the essential institutions of modern America that emerged in the 19th century:

The first banks, insurance companies, and stock exchange.

The first daily newspaper, magazine, political cartoon, and public library.

The first patent and trade show.

The first turnpike and steamboat.

The first nonsectarian college, university, and night school.

The first hospital, medical school, and asylum for the insane.

The first law firm and formal teaching of the law.

The first labor organization and strike.

The first protest against slavery, antislavery society, and independent African American church.

The Army, the Navy, and the Marines.

The nation itself, and its first flag besides.

The pace of invention scarcely slowed after 1800. In the 19th century, Philadelphia claimed America's first automobile, electric car, advertising agency, collegiate school of business, museums of science and of art, telephone, photograph, professional schools for women, books and magazines for the blind, municipal waterworks, rabbinic college, religious newspaper, YMCA, and more. In the 20th century, it had the country's first radio license, television station, modern skyscraper, airmail delivery, scientific management, black-owned and -operated shopping center, computer, and more.