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In 1833, Robert Busenbark deeded land to the directors of School District No. 6 for Busenbark School. Twenty years later, Robert and son David granted a right-of-way on their property for a station on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad (CH&D). One of eleven depots in Butler County, Busenbark station attracted the Kinsinger-Augspurger Warehouse and the Kennel Grain Elevator to the area in the 1860s. The railroad also enabled the cross-roads settlement to host an American championship prize fight in 1867. Fighting with bare knuckles in an outdoor ring, Mike McCoole bested Aaron Jones in a match seen by thousands. The Busenbark generating station supplied power to interurban lines until 1912 and later furnished electricity to local residents. Farmers and the Miami Poultry Yards depended on the trains and interurban to ship produce. The railroad depot disappeared between 1914 and 1916; the school closed after 1937; interurban service ended in 1939. All that remains of Busenbark is Busenbark Road, which was established in 1858.
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In April 1797, a committee of Marietta citizens, led by General Rufus Putnam, met to establish an academy suitable for preparatory instruction for their youth. Muskingum Academy, completed late that year, became the first institution of its kind in the Northwest Territory, providing “classical instruction… in the higher branches of an English education.” Its first instructor was David Putnam, a 1793 Yale graduate. The building also served as the home of the Congregationalist Church until 1808. Growing and expanding with Ohio’s first city, the academy served Marietta’s educational needs for more than thirty years as the forerunner of Marietta College.
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Prompted by response to his popular lectures, astronomer Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel (1809-1862) founded the Cincinnati Astronomical Society (CAS) in 1842. With CAS funding, Mitchel traveled to Munich, Bavaria, to acquire the optical elements for what became the world’s second largest refractor telescope. In 1843 former president John Quincy Adams laid the cornerstone of the observatory building, located upon the hill since known as Mount Adams. The Cincinnati Observatory was completed and opened for study in 1845. Mitchel, who died in service during the Civil War, was among the first to popularize astronomy in America. The telescope he brought to Cincinnati remains in daily use, the oldest such instrument in the United States.
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The Michelson-Morley Experiment, conducted at Western Reserve University in July 1887, provides the earliest direct evidence that would later support Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Albert A. Michelson, professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Sciences, and Edward Morley, professor of chemistry at Western Reserve University, tested the prevailing scientific theory that light waves travel faster downwind and slower against an upwind as they travel through a substance once thought to permeate space called aether. Finding no differences in the velocity of light waves traveling in different directions with respect to Earth’s motion around the sun, the experiment’s results baffled a generation of scientists until Einstein solved the riddle by formulating a new understanding of time and space. In 1907, Michelson, then head of the physics department at the University of Chicago, became the first American scientist to earn the Nobel Prize; he did so in physics.
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On June 26, 1974, the first retail scan of a product marked with a Universal Product Code (UPC or barcode) was made in the checkout line of Troy’s Marsh Supermarket located at 982 N. Market Street. A ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum was scanned to simulate the purchase of a product. The barcode was scanned on the NCR 255 computerized check-out system developed by National Cash Register (NCR). The system featured a Spectra Physics Model A scanner and an NCR 726 in-store computerized cash register. The Troy grocery store, considered a “typical” American grocery, was conveniently located near NCR and Hobart facilities. Spectra Physics and NCR later donated one of the original scanners and cash registers used at Marsh’s to the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian. (Continued on other side)
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Dr. Ronald A. Parise (1951-2008), from Warren, was a payload specialist for the Astro 1, Columbia, and Astro 2, Endeavour, space shuttle missions in 1990 and 1995. He logged in more than 614 hours in space. Among his scientific studies, Parise (WA4SIR) brought amateur radio equipment aboard the shuttle, enabling crew members to communicate with schools and others on Earth. Dr. Parise held planning and communications engineering support roles for human space flight projects, including the Russian space station Mir, the International Space Station and the X-38, a vehicle intended to return astronauts to earth from space. Dr. Parise was involved with many research projects, including the evolution of stars in globular clusters, which resulted in several publications. (Continued on other side)
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Marine Colonel Robert F. Overmyer was born July 14, 1936 in Lorain, but always considered Westlake, where his family had lived since 1941, to be his hometown. He graduated from Westlake High School in 1954. After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from Baldwin Wallace College in 1957, he entered active duty in the Marine Corps in 1958. He completed Navy flight training and was assigned to Marine Attack Squadron 214 in 1959. Overmyer logged over 7,500 flight hours, with more than 6,000 of those in jet aircraft. After earning a master’s degree in aeronautics from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1964, he was chosen as an astronaut for the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program in 1966. (Continued on other side)
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The house at this location, 110 South State Street, was the childhood home of Agnes Meyer Driscoll (1889-1971). Known as “the first lady of naval cryptology,” her career spanned from World War I to the Cold War. Driscoll attended Otterbein University before graduating from the Ohio State University, with majors in physics, math, music, and foreign languages. During World War I, she enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a chief yeoman, the highest rank possible for a woman at the time. After the war, Driscoll rose to become the chief civilian cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy, breaking major Imperial Japanese Navy codes prior to World War II. (Continued on other side)
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