Unwilling to rest as a one-hit wonder when its first big hit, The
Monkees, went off the air in 1968, the television production
company Screen Gems wasted no time in trying to repeat its
success. On September 25, 1970, in the 8:30 p.m. time slot
immediately following The Brady Bunch, ABC premiered a
program that would give Screen Gems its second TV-to-pop-
chart smash: The Partridge Family.

The musical sitcom starred Shirley Jones and featured David
Cassidy. Jones plays a widowed mother, and Cassidy plays
the oldest of her five children, in a family who embarks on a
music career. It ran from September 25, 1970, until August 24,
1974, on the ABC network as part of a Friday-night lineup, and
had subsequent runs in syndication.

On September 21, 1942, the U.S. B-29 Superfortress made its
debut flight in Seattle, Washington. It was the largest bomber
used in the war by any nation.

The B-29 was conceived in 1939 by Gen. Hap Arnold, who was
afraid a German victory in Europe would mean the United States
would be devoid of bases on the eastern side of the Atlantic from
which to counterattack. A plane was needed that would travel
faster, farther, and higher than any then available, so Boeing set
to creating the four-engine heavy bomber.

The plane was extraordinary, able to carry loads almost equal to
its own weight at altitudes of 30,000 to 40,000 feet. It also sported
the first radar bombing system of any U.S. bomber.

The King of Rock and Roll teamed up with TV’s reigning variety
program, as Elvis Presley appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show”
for the first time on September 9, 1956.

After earning big ratings for “The Steve Allen Show,” the
Dorsey Brothers “Stage Show” and “The Milton Berle Show,”
Sullivan finally reneged on his Presley ban, signing the
controversial singing star to an unprecedented $50,000 contract
for three appearances.

With 60 million viewers—or 82.6 percent of TV viewers at the time—tuning in, the appearance garnered the show’s best
ratings in two years and became the most-watched TV
broadcast of the 1950s.

   Ed Sullivan

WW1 British first prototype tank called Little Willie. It was an
Armored Personnel Carrier. It can be found at the Tank
Museum, Bovington, Wareham, United Kingdom.

On September 6, 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie
rolled off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from
an overnight success. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches
and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour.

However, improvements were made to the original prototype
and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.

The British developed the tank in response to the trench
warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named
Ernest  Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee
for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armored vehicle   
with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break 
through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory.        

The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill,
who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organized a
Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype. To keep
the project secret from enemies, production workers were
reportedly told the vehicles they were building would be used
to carry water on the battlefield (alternate theories suggest the
shells of the new vehicles resembled water tanks). Either  
way, the new vehicles were shipped in crates labeled “tank”
and the name stuck.

On September 2, 1969, America’s first automatic teller
machine (ATM) makes its public debut, dispensing
cash to customers at Chemical Bank in Rockville
Centre, New York. ATMs went on to revolutionize the
banking industry, eliminating the need to visit a bank
to conduct basic financial transactions.  

By the 1980s, these money machines had become
widely popular and handled many of the functions
previously performed by human tellers, such as
check deposits and  money transfers between
accounts. 

Today, ATMs are as indispensable to most people
as cell phones and e-mail.

Donald C. Wetzel (93) is an American businessman known
for holding the USA patent to the automatic teller machine.