Tech history lesson: Pittsburghers invented the polio vaccine, retractable roof and modern baseball stadium

Pittsburgh has more bridges than Venice. It’s the birthplace of Joe Manganiello of “True Blood.” And it’s the home of the Andy Warhol Museum, which is the largest museum dedicated to a single artist in North America.

But if you keep up with our newsletters (and we really hope you do), you’ll also note that many indispensable modern inventions have been made in the Steel City.

Here’s our latest roundup of Tech Throwback Tuesday editions from the Technical.ly newsletter. While it might not be Tuesday, is it ever too late for a history lesson?

The polio vaccine

Although many of the people reading this have likely never experienced polio outside of a US history textbook, there was a time when poliomyelitis, a spinal cord motor neuron disease caused by the poliovirus, paralyzed and killed children in the thousands at its peak. Then along came Jonas Salk.

As the National Library of Medicine tells it, Salk was a New Yorker who moved to the Mitten State to complete a research fellowship at the University of Michigan. There, Salk worked with mentor Dr. Thomas Francis toward the development of an effective influenza vaccine fit for the US military while World War II was raging. Once said fellowship was complete, Salk became interested in the poliovirus. As with the flu, he wanted to be involved in finding a safe vaccine to prevent it.

That’s where the Steel City comes in. Salk left the Mitten State for the University of Pittsburgh, where he’d begin working on what’s considered one of the most notable breakthroughs in the 20th century. In 1947, Salk became the director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the Pitt School of Medicine. During this time, the standard practice for crafting vaccines was to expose patients to a live virus to provide immunity for the patient. Salk, however, thought that the approach of using non-infectious killed viruses could provide a different path toward immunity.

This was a tough sell among his colleagues, but after writing a host of articles on the potential benefits of this approach, he got the attention of the FDR-founded National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes. This org ultimately became Salk’s financial benefactor. After years of work, Salk used formaldehyde to kill the poliovirus and began testing the vaccine on volunteers, which included himself as well as members of his own family. In 1954, the first large-scale national study was conducted. The vaccine was found to be safe and effective.

By 1959, the vaccine went international and was distributed to 90 different countries. While Salk died in 1995, he lived just long enough to see polio eliminated in North America.

The retractable roof

Have you ever been to the Civic Arena? If not, that’s likely because it closed in 2010. But before then, it was the place to go if you wanted to take in a hockey game at the oldest and third-smallest arena in the NHL. Another claim to fame is that when it opened in 1961, the Civic Arena was the first sports venue in the world with a retractable roof.

For the uninitiated, a retractable roof goes back so that the outside can be seen from inside the facilities. It took eight years and $22 million to make that magic happen.

The facility was built at the behest of then-Mayor David L. Lawrence (you’ll recognize his name from the convention center) under pressure from department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann. At the time, Lawrence wanted a civic theater that could be open to the public within a year; ultimately, the construction took much longer. The funding was provided by the city, Allegheny County and Kaufmann. It also came at the cost of 8,000 residents and 400 businesses from the lower Hill District, a predominantly Black neighborhood and center of many cultural events, being displaced to make room for the arena.

The arena’s roof first opened to the public in 1962, roughly a year after it began hosting political rallies and musicians. Later, it started to hold Pittsburgh Penguins games. The first time the audiences saw the sky from inside the arena was July 4, 1962, during a Carol Burnett show.

Although the arena was beloved by hockey fans, in the end, it was torn down to make room to build the PPG Paints Arena, where music and sports fans alike can take in a hockey game or see a concert.

The modern baseball stadium

Did you know the modern baseball stadium of the National League originated in the Steel City? Nowadays if you want to see a Pirates game, you have to head to the North Side. But from 1909 until 1970, there was a ballpark right in Oakland.

The stadium was called Forbes Field, named after British general John Forbes, and was funded by then-Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss, who needed a replacement for his franchise’s second home, the now-defunct Exposition Park. What made Forbes Field unique was that it was made of steel and concrete as opposed to standard wood, the idea being that wood would be more durable. Forbes Field also included elements such as ramps to take attendees to their seats, luxury suites, and even a three-tier grandstand that hadn’t been previously seen elsewhere.

Through the years, a series of extensions were made to the stadium, and many a game was played there. Yet by the 1960s, the stadium was beginning to show its age. After the University of Pittsburgh purchased the ballpark in 1958 to expand its campus, and with the city’s purchase of Three Rivers Stadium, Forbes Field saw its final game on June 28, 1970.