Dayton History

The history of Dayton

Dayton was founded by a small group of settlers on April 1, 1796, seven years before the admission of Ohio to the Union in 1803. The town was incorporated in 1805 and named after Jonathan Dayton, a captain in the American Revolutionary War and signer of the U.S. Constitution. The city was the home of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright who, before their aviation success, ran a bicycle shop in Dayton. It was also the home of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and of John H. Patterson 1, who founded a successful cash register business in Dayton, National Cash Register Corporation, now diversified far beyond cash registers and known by its initials NCR.

The nickname of the city is the Gem City. No one appears to be sure of the reason for the name: either a famous racehorse named Gem hailed from Dayton, or the city was as pretty as a gem. The most likely story is that the nickname was spawned from an 1840s article in a Cincinnati newspaper, which said, "In a small bend of the Great Miami River, with canals on the east and south, it can be fairly said, without infringing on the rights of others, that Dayton is the gem of all our interior towns. It possesses wealth, refinement, enterprise, and a beautiful country, beautifully developed."

Dayton has a rich heritage of inventions and innovations, with more patents per capita than any other city in the nation. Some of these inventions include the stepladder, microfiche, cellophane tape, pop top beverage cans, the movie projector, space food, parking meters, the airplane supercharger, gas masks, and the parachute.
Due to it being the hometown of the Wright Brothers, and the fact that they assembled their planes there, Dayton is also known as the Birthplace of Aviation.