Two major birthdays
The world changed because of these two inventions.
Celebrating the 50th Birthday of the first successful copying machine. The Xerox 914.
From
CNN/Fortune:
The office copier turns 50!
Long before digital tools such as listservs, e-mail blasts, and even Facebook enabled us to easily broadcast messages, photocopies were the most efficient way to distribute information to groups of all sizes.
If the boss needed to discuss a new company policy, workers got memos in their (physical) in-boxes or slipped under their office doors. Community newsletters, fliers for parties, and the oft-maligned Christmas letters in holiday cards were all made possible by the automated copying machine, which made its commercial debut 50 years ago.
"It was a democratizing technology," says Stephen P. Hoover, vice president of global software solutions for Xerox. Xerox's 914 copier -- so named because it could copy a 9-by-14-inch document at a rate of seven copies per minute -- "gave people access to information and capabilities they just didn't have. It really changed how work was done."
Celebrating the 75th Birthday of the first Canned Beer.
From
Yahoo/Live Science:
Canned Beer Turns 75
Be sure to crack open a cold one on Jan. 24, the day canned beer celebrates its 75th birthday.
New Jersey's Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company churned out the world's first beer can in 1935, stocking select shelves in Richmond, Va., as a market test. The experiment took off and American drinkers haven't looked back since, nowadays choosing cans over bottles for the majority of the 22 gallons of beer they each drink per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Talk about the bedrock of civilization. These two inventions have rocked the world...
Posted by DaveH at January 23, 2010 11:44 PM