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Show AMERICANA Cities To Se Historic Dayton, Ohio ifliffi ii- niniitisiwi iniii rniiswM y,iniis,iiiiiiifii iMn M m j trf -i rVv r iin--rh-'-L irfr-'-ifti Twenty years after the United States had declared its independence, pioneers moved Westward and settled on the "fertile and well-watered land" of the Miami Valley, and before a decade had passed the settlers had organized Montgomery County and Dayton as its county seat. Dayton, Ohio, thirty years younger than the United States, has felt the impact of all national movements. The War of 1812 boomed the village on the Miami River. By 1840 it was a town of 6,000 Inhabitants. In-habitants. Dayton early became an industrial indus-trial city and its factories have long made contributions to the improvement of living conditions of the people of the nation. The story of the invention and development devel-opment of the cash register is almost al-most the story of Dayton itself. An early center for the manufacture manufac-ture of automobile parts, bookkeeping book-keeping devices and machine tools, the city has become one of ' the foremost manufacturers of precision products in the world. Dayton's great contribution to the world came with the success of the Wright brothers, in proving a hcavier-than-air machine could be constructed that would fly and Carry a passenger. The birth place of Aviation, Dayton Is still the center of aeronautical research re-search In America. The Air Material Ma-terial Command, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, is the research and procurement center for the U. 3. Air Force. Today, 296,000 people live within with-in the city of Dayton and the metropolitan area boasts a population pop-ulation of 612,500. The Dayton area is 44th in size among the major cities in America, but ranks 17th in Income, 32nd in general gen-eral merchandise sales. Dayton is well ahead of the national average av-erage in home owing, with 65 per cent of Daytonians owning their own homes, against a national average of 57 per cent. Some 49 per cent of the working people are employed in manufacturing, 19 per cent are employed by government. |