Niagara Frontier Heritage Project

12/19/2025

https://www.btpm.org/heritage-moments/2016-03-28/heritage-moments-a-clarence-engineer-and-the-invention-that-saved-millions-of-lives
Another one from the NFHP archives: something upbeat and inspirational for this time of year -- the story of Wilson Greatbatch and the creation of the pacemaker!

One day in 1956, Wilson Greatbatch, a 37-year-old assistant professor of electrical engineering at UB, was working on an oscilloscope at a chronic disease…

12/19/2025

Best wishes for the holiday season and a happy and healthy New Year, to our radio audience and our page visitors, from your NFHP crew and contributors!

11/25/2025

https://www.btpm.org/heritage-moments/2018-08-13/heritage-moments-frederick-law-olmsted-and-the-stroll-that-saved-niagara
Another favourite from the NFHP archives -- landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, architect H H Richardson, and parks commissioner William Dorsheimer visit Niagara Falls in 1869 and are appalled at the nature-obscuring commercialization of the great cataract, and so begin the "Free Niagara" movement, involving a Who's Who of 19th-century writers, artists, and scientists. Listen and read more at the link!

Niagara Falls in the 1800s was an industrialist’s dreamland and a huckster’s paradise. Cheap waterpower abounded — all you had to do was build a channel…

11/07/2025

https://www.btpm.org/heritage-moments/2018-08-27/heritage-moments-marilyn-bell-the-teenager-who-conquered-eels-exhaustion-and-lake-ontario
On an equally wet but much happier note, another one from the NFHP archives...

Overnight sensation — that term gets bandied about from time to time. But Marilyn Bell literally was one. At 11:07 p.m. on Sept. 8, 1954, when she dove…