Category: This Day in Business History

April 17, 1837: J.P. Morgan was a titan of American business. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his position and connections put him squarely in the middle of the development of American industry. Even today the name remains in the forefront of the global business financial world. John Pierpoint Morgan was born April Read More …

April 15, 1955: Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, having purchased the rights to franchise the restaurant across the country from the founders, Maurice and Richard McDonald.  To announce the grand opening, Kroc ran in add in the Des Plaines Journal, advertising “speedee service” and “plenty of free parking,” along with Read More …

April 6, 1992: This updated version of Windows established some features that are taken for granted today.  This includes the CTRL-ALT-DEL command to avoid rebooting your computer, and allowing you to cut and paste from one application to another.   As internet access moved forward, Windows 3.1 also supported modem speeds up to 9600 bps. To Read More …

April 1, 1976: College dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computers, Inc. The two wanted to make computers small enough for people to have in their homes and offices. Ever wondered how they came up with the company name? According to an interview that Wozniak did with Byte magazine in December 1984, he credited Jobs with Read More …

March 30, 1971: Well before Howard Schultz walked into the picture, a small coffee shop with a name inspired by Moby Dick opened its doors in Seattle’s Pike Place Market for the first time. What started as a humble coffee shop has boomed since then into a monolithic organization which leads the industry. Today, it Read More …

March 15, 1985:  The world’s first internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corporation of Massachusetts. The international private non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers  was created in 1998 to maintain domain name coordination; there are now  over 1 billion domains in existence.      Signposts in cyberspace the Domain Read More …

March 14, 1927: Initially designed to be just an air mail and passenger service operation between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba, Pan Am grew to be one of the most influential and innovative airline companies of the twentieth century. Within the same year of its launch as a mail carrier, the company was selected Read More …

March 1, 1873: While the history of the development of the typewriter dates back to the 16th century, in the U.S., production on one of the first commercially made typewriters began on March 1, 1873 by E. Remington & Sons, known for manufacturing sewing machines.  Initially marketed under the name Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer for the Read More …

February 22, 1878: The first F.W. Woolworth store was opened by Frank Winfield Woolworth on February 22, 1878 in Utica, NY. Marketed as “Woolworth’s Great Five Cent Store” it had a less than stellar beginning and the store soon closed. Frank brought his brother, Charles Sumner Woolworth, into the business and the next store, located Read More …