Business Birthdays and Anniversaries in January

BIRTHDAYS

• Jan 1*, 1872 -  Leon L. Bean: Beginning with a self-made rubber boot, he created a retailing giant famous for its catalog and focus on customer service

• Jan 1*, 1873 -  John T. Dorrance: Founder of Campbell Soup Company, he invented the process for condensing soup, reducing canning and shipping costs by two-thirds and allowing his company to distribute soup nationwide.

• Jan 1*, 1873 -  Daniel E. Gerber: Founder of Gerber Baby Foods and creator of the baby food market. The “Gerber Baby” symbol became famous worldwide.

• Jan 1*, 1874 -  James L. Kraft:  The creator of Kraft Foods, he was instrumental in perfecting the process of preserving cheese so that it could be stored for a long time in various climates. Consumption of cheese in the U.S. increased 50% between 1918 and 1945 due in large part to his efforts.

• Jan 3, 1929 -  Gordon E. Moore: Co-founder with Robert Noyce, of Intel. Current chairman emeritus of Intel. He is widely known for "Moore's Law," in which in 1965 he predicted that the number of transistors the industry would be able to place on a computer chip would double every year. In 1975, he updated his prediction to once every two years.

• Jan 4, 1809 -  Louis Braille: Inventor of the Braille system of reading for the blind.

• Jan 7, 1706 -  Benjamin Franklin: Prolific inventor and printer

• Jan 12, 1964 -  Jeff Bezos: Founder of Amazon.com, creator of the world’s largest online bookstore and one of the Internet’s most popular shopping portals.

• Jan 14, 1914 -  Thomas Watson Jr.: Built IBM into a computer giant

• Jan 18, 1779 -  Peter Mark Roget: Roget's Thesaurus, also invented log-log slide rule

• Jan 18, 1933 -  Ray Dolby: Inventor of Dolby sound system for sound recording

• Jan 18, 1963 Theodore Waitt: Founder of Gateway Computers

• Jan 19, 1736 -  James Watt: The modern steam engine grew out of his efficiency-improving inventions

• Jan 21, 1855 -  John Moses Browning: Invented machine gun and automatic pistol. Founder of Browning Arms Company.

• Jan 21, 1921 -  Akio Morita: Co-founder of Sony Corporation. Under his leadership the company developed magnetic recording tape, the pocket transistor radio and the Walkman. 

• Jan 29, 1954 -  Oprah Winfrey: She has created a multi-media empire through her production company, Harpo Productions. She has won numerous awards for her work and is considered one of the most influential media personalities today.

*exact day is unknown

ANNIVERSARIES IN JANUARY

• 1 - 1994: North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect

• 1 - 1939: Hewlett-Packard Co. is founded to make electronic equipment

• 1 - 2006: Oldest baby boomers begin turning 60

• 2 - 1974: President Richard Nixon signs a law establishing a national 55 mph speed limit. The fuel-saving measure would be repealed in 1995 and responsibility for setting speed limits returned to the states.

• 2 - 1979: VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet software, is introduced. Developed by Harvard Business School student Dan Bricklin and MIT student Bob Frankston, the interactive visible calculator is the first “killer” application for personal computers

• 3 - 1977: Apple Computer is founded and introduces the Apple II personal computer

• 6 - 1942: First around-the-world trip is completed by Pan American plane landing in New York

• 7 - 1830: Baltimore & Ohio, first U.S. passenger railroad, opens to the public

• 7 - 1839: Louis Daguerre presents his photographic process to the French Academy of Science, a process that permits a photographic image to be chemically fixed to provide a permanent picture.

• 7 - 1980: U.S. Government bails out Chrysler

• 8 - 1982: American Telephone and Telegraph company (AT&T) sells off its 20 “baby bells” which ends its virtual monopoly on US telephone service

• 10 - 1901: The oil gusher Spindletop blasts near Beaumont, Texas, establishing the petroleum industry in Texas

• 11 - 1964: The Surgeon General reports that smoking causes lung cancer in men

• 13 - 1910: First radio broadcast to the public in New York, NY by radio pioneer and electron tube inventor Lee De Forest

• 17 - 1871: First cable car patent is granted to Andrew Hallikie for cable cars that would begin service in San Francisco in 1873

• 19 - 1825: Tin can food storage process patent obtained by Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett

• 20 - 1982: Camcorder is developed by the cooperative efforts of Hitachi, JVC, Philips, Matsushita and Sony.

• 22 - 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh computer with a 60-second commercial during halftime of the Super Bowl. The commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, cost $1.6 million to produce, and Apple Corporation paid $500,000 for the one-minute time slot. The ad ran once. In 1995, Ad Age named it the best ad of the last 50 years.

• 25 - 1959: First scheduled transcontinental flight (nonstop on American Airlines Boeing 707)

• 26 - 1983: Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software released; drives demand for IBM PC

• 28 - 1878: First commercial telephone exchange opens in New Haven, Connecticut. It has 21 subscribers

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