Societal Needs

The messages in this area focus on the origins of aspects of society which have become essential to us today.

    • The Inventor of Opinion Surveys

      Rensis was born in 1903 in Wyoming. He started college thinking he would become an engineer like his father. However, a professor influenced him to pursue degrees in economics and sociology. Eventually, he would earn a PhD in Psychology at Columbia. His career focus...

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    • Insurance

      What do the owner of a coffee house in London, the developer of the first calculator, an early developer of the fundamental concept of calculus, and the namesake of Halley’s Comet have in common? Each of the above played pivotal roles in the beginnings of what we now...

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    • Mortgages

      We tend to think of mortgages as being something that originated in the last few centuries. Actually, the first mortgages began in Persia in the fifth century BC. The original purpose of a mortgage was quite different from today. The original mortgages were used as...

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    • Bot Prevention, Crowdsourcing, Language Learning

      Louis von Ahn was born in 1978 in Guatemala. Both of his parents were doctors, and he had privileges that others in his country did not have. His privileged background has helped shape his career. His experience in applying for college in the U.S. left him with a...

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    • The Purple Heart

      In 1782, George Washington commander of the Continental Army created the Badge of Military Merit. The original badge was a medal heart on a purple background. The award was discontinued in use until after World War I. In 1927, the Army Chief of Staff asked Congress to...

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    • Electronic Books

      Angela Ruiz Robles was born in Spain in 1895. Her family was wealthy so she was able to get a college education. She studied to be a teacher, preparing women for office jobs. Ruiz lived during the Spanish Civil War and became an advocate for female literacy. At the...

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    • Passports

      The concept of a passport has ancient origins. Documents were put together to grant safe passage from one country to another. Since travel between countries was so rare, the documents had limited value. It was Benjamin Franklin who created something like what we would...

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    • The Birth Control Pill: A Planned Beginning

      The birth control pill has been called the second-greatest pharmaceutical discovery after penicillin. Its discovery faced both scientific and political challenges. In the 1940s and 1950s Margaret Sanger, a leading women’s rights activist personally funded early...

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    • Credit Hours

      Some of our most accomplished leaders in a wide variety of areas were largely self-educated. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was a self-educated attorney. Over time post-secondary institutions began to become more valuable, but that created a problem. At the time, there...

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    • Sport

      Ollamaliztli is thought to be the first sport. It was played as early as 1650 BC by the pre-Columbian people in a region we now know as Central America. Little precise information is known about its rules or equipment, but we can speculate from the remains. It was...

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