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Tag Archives: Pittsburgh firsts

A 1960s era ambulance on a Hill District Pittsburgh street at night, emergency lights reflecting off wet pavement, crew preparing equipment at the rear doors, capturing the pioneering work of Freedom House Ambulance.

Freedom House Ambulance: Pittsburgh’s Forgotten EMS Pioneers

People & PersonalitiesBy userMay 11, 2026

Somewhere in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the late 1960s, a young man with no medical background beyond a demanding training course was doing things in the back of a moving ambulance that were then almost unheard of outside a hospital: managing airways, starting IV lines, monitoring cardiac rhythms and defibrillating. The Freedom House Ambulance Service,…

A recreated 1920s radio broadcasting studio with an early microphone, transmitter equipment, and period-era operator, evoking the first commercial broadcast made by KDKA Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920.

KDKA Radio History: How Pittsburgh Invented Broadcasting

Industry & InnovationBy userMarch 31, 2026

The night of November 2, 1920, was cold and clear in Pittsburgh, and somewhere on the roof of a Westinghouse factory in East Pittsburgh, a small group of men huddled around a transmitter inside a makeshift wooden shack and did something that had never been done before. They broadcast a radio program to the general…

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