Bridgeport

Inhabited by the Paugussett Native American tribe until English colonisation in the 1600s, Bridgeport was incorporated as a town in 1821 and as a city in 1836. Showman P. T. Barnum was a resident of the city and served as the town's mayor in 1871. Barnum built four houses in Bridgeport and housed his circus in town during winter. In the early 20th century, the city saw an economic and population boom, becoming by all measures Connecticut's chief manufacturing city by 1905.

Bridgeport was the site of the world's first mutual telephone exchange (1877), the first dental hygiene school (1949), and the first bank telephone bill service in the US (1981). Inventor Harvey Hubbell II invented the first American electric plug outlet in Bridgeport in 1912.