On June 19, 1846, Hoboken's Elysian Field was the site of the the first baseball game: the New York Nine beat the Knickerbockers, 23-1 .

Professional basketball began in Trenton in 1898.

In New Brunswick (1889), Rutgers College played Princeton in the first intercollegiate football game.

Camden was the location for the first Drive-in movie theater.

The tallest water-tower in the world is in New Jersey.

The Jersey City Medical Center was the first complex of its kind.

The first elevated highway was the Pulaski Sky Way that connects Jersey City and Newark.

The Holland Tunnel, running under the Hudson River from Jersey City to New York City, was the first tunnel under a river.

The first American brewery rolled out the barrels in Hoboken In 1642.

In Mahwah in 1940, Les Paul invented solid body electric guitar.

These firsts all happened in Paterson: water-powered cotton spinning mill in NJ (1793), continuous roll paper (1812), Colt revolver (1837), the Roger's Locomotive (1837), and the Holland Submarine (1878).

John P. Holland designed, had built, and tested the first submarine in New Jersey. Todd & Raftery’s shop, Paterson, built the 14 foot long. 4 h.p., one man experimental craft in 1877. The craft successfully cruised and dove in the Passaic River. Fifty years later the submarine was salvaged from the river. The vessel is on display in the Paterson Museum. Less than a mile from the location of the first submarine launch, Holland is buried in Totowa.

In 1879, in his Menlo Park laboratory, Thomas A. Edison made the first incandescent lamp. In Menlo Park Edison also invented the first phonograph in 1877. In West Orange, in 1889, Edison produced the first motion picture.

World's First City to Be Lit by Incandescent Light Bulbs
Roselle

The second radio station to regularly broadcast was WJZ of Newark. Alas, though you might read otherwise elsewhere, the first was not in Paterson, but in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

First American to Eat a Tomato
Robert Gibbon Johnson
Salem County Court House
September 15, 1820
Before this example of New Jersey courage, people believed tomatoes to be poisonous.

The first seaplane (Aeromarine all-metal flying boat launched at Keyport on November 23, 1923.

In Camden, Emile Berliner, a struggling inventor and an equally cash-strapped machine shop owner, Eldgridge Johnson formed the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901. first phonograph records were made .