1928: The New York Times begins flashing headlines to pedestrians outside its offices at 1 Times Square, using an electronic news strip that wraps around the fourth floor of the building.

The Motograph News Bulletin, or "zipper" as it was known informally, was a technological marvel of its day. It extended 380 feet around the Times Tower and, with a band 5-feet tall, the moving letters were visible from a distance of several city blocks.

A Times column from 2005 described how inventor Frank C. Reilly's remarkable sign worked:

Inside the control room, three cables poured energy into transformers. The hookup to all the bulbs totaled 88,000 soldered connections. Messages from a ticker came to a desk beside a cabinet like the case that contained type used by old-time compositors. The cabinet contained thin slabs called letter elements. An operator composed the message letter-by-letter in a frame.

The frame, when filled with the letters and spaces that spelled out a news item, was inserted in a magazine at one end of a track. A chain conveyor moved the track, and each letter in the frame brushed a number of contacts. Each contact set a light flashing on Broadway.

Reilly, the Times said, calculated that there were 261,925,664 flashes an hour from the zipper's 14,800 bulbs.

It was the first use anywhere of the zipper, which was itself big news on a big news day. A headline in the Nov. 6 edition of the Times declared: Huge Times Sign Will Flash News. It also happened to be election day, and the zipper's first streaming headline announced a new president: HERBERT HOOVER DEFEATS AL SMITH

Less than a year later, the zipper would be flashing the collapse of the stock market and the events that brought on the Great Depression.

Throughout the 20th century, historic moments became frozen as zipper headlines in the national consciousness:

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT IS DEAD

OFFICIAL: TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER

PRESIDENT KENNEDY SHOT DEAD IN DALLAS

MAN ON MOON

NIXON RESIGNS

In between monumental news events, the zipper kept churning out the headlines, which later included weather forecasts and sports scores.

Even before the advent of the zipper, Times Square was a mighty crossroads, home to theaters and restaurants that kept the district humming 24 hours a day. Illuminated signs began springing up with such profusion that even in the early 1900s Broadway and Times Square were referred to as The Great White Way. The first neon sign in Times Square -- advertising the automaker Willys-Overland -- appeared in 1924. But the zipper, with its streaming headlines, was something new and arresting.

When the Times left 1 Times Square in 1963 for its new building on West 43rd Street, New York Newsday took over running the zipper. But as modern Times Square gradually vanished into an orgy of commerce, punctuated by garish neon and LED displays that make midnight feel like high noon, technology had clearly passed the zipper by.

Newsday was ready to pull the plug in 1994, but the zipper was saved when a British company picked up the lease at the midnight hour. As 1 Times Square, like every other building in the area, was gradually buried in an avalanche of modern signage, the old zipper was acquired by Dow Jones and given a complete face lift.

What was once the Motograph News Bulletin is now one of several high-resolution displays on Times Square, distinguishable from the others only by the use of amber LEDs.

Source: Various

Industrial designer Raymond Loewy was a giant in his field. He produced innovative designs in every area from fashion to locomotives. If you admire the Streamlined Moderne style of Art Deco, you've probably admired a Loewy design. You like logos? Then, you like Loewy.

That's enough from us. Take a look for yourself.

Left: Loewy poses in a mocked-up designer's office with modern décor, around 1934. At his side is a model of his 1932 Hupmobile, one of the first streamlined automobiles.

Loewy made this preliminary sketch for the Cornell-Liberty Safety Car, designed for the Cornell Aeronautical Research Laboratory and the Liberty Mutual Life Insurance Company, in 1956.

Loewy designed the 1961 Avanti for Studebaker.

Loewy designed this car for Jaguar … or maybe a Mr. Bruce Wayne of Gotham City.

Loewy approached the Pennsylvania Railroad in the early 1930s and told railway execs he wanted to design locomotives. Loewy's T-1 steam engine was the Pennsy's last before switching to diesel.

Loewy poses with an early model of his GG1 electric locomotive for the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1935.

President John F. Kennedy thought the Air Force's paint scheme for the Boeing 707 Air Force One was too royal: He wanted a look that was appropriate for a president, not a king. On the advice of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, the White House contacted Loewy, who redesigned the exterior livery and the interior cabins.

Loewy played around with 18 design ideas for a new Standard Oil Company logo. Loewy OK'd a version only slightly different from the eventual, final version (next slide).

Loewy designed or redesigned well-known logos for scores of corporations.

Loewy modernized the traditional Coke bottle, as well as designed its new larger sizes and "no deposit, no return" bottles and cans. His countertop dispenser for restaurants and soda fountains is an icon of postwar Americana.

Loewy simplified the old Lucky Strike cigarette logo and changed the dark green pack to white. The underlying reasons for the change were the American Tobacco Company's desire to attract more women to the brand with a brighter package, and also that the green ink gave off an odor.

However, with the United States entering World War II, the company marketed the move as patriotism, claiming it was made to conserve the metals used make green ink. Advertisements trumpeted the slogan, "Lucky Strike Green has gone to war," and millions of packs were distributed to GIs. American Tobacco didn't forget its plan to market to women, as this ad in Ladies Home Journal makes evident.

With a hemline that low, you would guess this outfit has to be prewar or postwar, because the fashion industry conserved fabric with high hemlines during World War II. As a matter of fact, this Loewy modern black ensemble with matching accessories appeared in Vogue in 1939.

Loewy created this quasi-futuristic jukebox for United Music Corp. in 1958. You might have selected from a mixed-bag playlist of 45s like these 1958 hits:

"Don't" — Elvis Presley "Great Balls of Fire" — Jerry Lee Lewis "Johnny B. Goode" — Chuck Berry "Good Golly Miss Molly" — Little Richard "La Bamba" — Ritchie Valens "Fever" — Peggy Lee "Poor Little Fool" — Ricky Nelson "Rebel Rouser" — Duane Eddy "All the Way" — Frank Sinatra "26 Miles (Santa Catalina)" — The Four Preps "A Wonderful Time Up There" — Pat Boone "Tequila" — The Champs "Catch a Falling Star" — Perry Como "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" — Laurie London "Twilight Time" — The Platters "Witch Doctor" — David Seville "All I Have to Do Is Dream" — The Everly Brothers "Purple People Eater" — Sheb Wooley "Yakety Yak" — The Coasters "Splish Splash" — Bobby Darin "Volare (Nel Blu Dipinto Blu)" — Dominico Modugno "Rockin Robin" — Bobby Day "Tom Dooley" — The Kingston Trio "To Know Him Is to Love Him" — Teddy Bears "The Chipmunk Song" — The Chipmunks/David Seville "Jingle Bell Rock" — Bobby Helms

Loewy also created this 1950s Charcoal line china for Rosenthal.

Loewy designed this classic bedroom set for Mengel Furniture.

Loewy looks over a model of Imperial House in 1959, a planned apartment complex for Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Loewy created this prototype store for a bakery chain in New York in 1937. The white porcelain-covered steel siding and semicircular window endings gives it an air of "Radio Deco."

Earth was not room enough for Loewy: He created this model for the living quarters of the NASA Skylab space station.

Loewy's 1970 study for a NASA space station appears influenced by sets from the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, though it is a much smaller module.

Loewy sifts through his designs for NASA.

Raymond Loewy and his daughter Laurence enjoy a moment in 1982. Laurence was a prize-winning journalist who later headed the Raymond Loewy Foundation and served as CEO of Loewy Design. She died Oct 15, 2008, at age 55.

David Hagerman, the COO of Loewy Design says, "Laurence hoped RaymondLoewy.org would help introduce a new generation of design enthusiasts to her father."

1893: Raymond Loewy, one of the founders of modern industrial design, is born. His vision of streamlining will shape a century.

Loewy's classic designs include the Coca-Cola bottle, the sleek-sided 1929 Gestetner duplicating machine, the Pennsylvania Railroad's streamlined S-1 Locomotive, the World War II Lucky Strike cigarette package, the 1954 Greyhound Bus, JFK's Air Force One, and corporate logos for Exxon, Shell and dozens of other firms.

But wait, there is more: the 1947 line of Hallicrafter radio receivers that influenced home sound-system design through the 1970s, Studebaker's 1947 Starlight coupe, 1953 Starliner coupe and 1961 Avanti — the only auto exhibited in the Louvre — and the interiors of the Concorde and NASA's Sky Lab and Space Shuttle.

His client list is also astonishing: Revlon, Faberge, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Hanes, Levis, Butterick, Bulova, Omega, Mont Blanc, Seth Thomas, Rosenthal, Frigidaire, Formica, Koehler, IBM, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, BMW, Jaguar and even the government of the Soviet Union.

It's no wonder then Life magazine selected Loewy as one of the 20th century's 100 most influential Americans.

Loewy served in the French Army Corps in World War I, immigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a U.S. citizen in 1938. He started out as a fashion illustrator for national magazines and department stores, then started his own design firm. His motto: "Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other."

Loewy also originated the MAYA concept in industrial design: "Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable."

Loewy cut a dashing figure in the international set. He had country homes at one time or another outside Paris, in southern France, Mexico, Long Island, New York, and Palm Springs, California, plus posh pied-à-terre in Manhattan and Paris. His firm maintained design offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Loewy died in 1986 at age 92.

Source: Various