iPod History from 2001 to Present
And who haven’t heard of iPod iPhone, touchscreen iPod Touch or Apple’s iTunes? Since the start of the millennium, the young genaration of users have made it their in-thing. The iPod is Apple’s. The company designed, marketed and launched it sometime end of year 2001.
Here’s a brief biography of the iPod and its product-lines. Designed by Apple, Inc., iPod is a portable media player (PMP) for storing and playing audio files encoded by MP3 or AAC compression algorithms. It can hold anywhere from a few hundred to ten thousand of songs, perhaps more. Selling by millions, it has surpassed mere popularity worldwide.
Apple, Inc. began looking at the range of digital devices since they had missed competing on video and still cameras, and hand-held organizers. As they have produced software for storing and playing digital music, they also realized the players of the digital music were not user-friendly.
MP3 players of the time were disappointing, flash memory chips had limited tracks hard drives were too big to store music on. Aside from difficulty in navigating the player menus, the process for transferring songs from computer to players was slow.
The story goes that a computer engineer, Tony Fadell, had an idea for a new style of MP3 player, which could be linked to its own digital music store. He promoted his idea to some manufacturers, one of them, Apple, Inc.
Read the full article — iPod History: 2001 to Present
(Image is Apple’s iPod Shufle.)
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History of Ice-Cream
Ice-cream (originally, iced cream) or gelato in Italy, is a frozen dessert made from dairy products, like milk and cream, combined with sugars, flavorings and other ingredients. The mixture is stirred slowly while cooling to prevent ice crystals from forming. Result is a smoothly textured ice cream. Here is ice-cream’s early history.
Water-ices
Ice-cream started around the time as the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Fruit juices were kept cold by being packed with snow but they were really ‘water-ices’ rather than the real ice-cream that we know.
First Frozen Creamy Mixture
In 1550 Blasius Villefranca found that freezing-point could be reached if salt were added to snow, and so he managed to produce a creamy, frozen mixture.
Ice-Cream in Europe
In England during the 17th century, it’s been said that King James II in 1686, was served with something like ice-cream, while his exiled brother, Charles II, earlier in 1660, was known to have eaten ice-cream in Paris.
Ice-Cream in the US
In the United States, the first president, George Washington, was said to be keen on ice-cream in 1790.
In 1832, Augustus Jackson, a confectioner from Philadelphia, created new recipes for making ice-cream, and in 1846, Nancy Johnson patented a hand-cranked freezer that established the basic method of making ice cream still used today. William Young patented the similar “Johnson Patent Ice-Cream Freezer” in 1848.
In 1851, Jacob Fussell, a milk supplier of Baltimore, USA, set himself up as a supplier of ice-cream to other milkman, establishing the world’s first ice-cream factory.
Ice-Cream Factory in London
Around twenty years later, in 1870, an ice-cream factory was set up in London for the benefit of a large number of Italian immigrants who arrived about that time.
Ice-cream is said to have become really popular in 1922, when British Thomas Wall, a sausage manufacturer in Acton, was worried that fewer sausages will be sold during the summer months, so he began to manufacture the first wrapped blocks of ice-cream as an alternative. It was an instant success.
Note: My sources are varied, from library reference materials down to smaller light reading science and invention books. Among my entertaining short readings, I like Ken Ireland’s Who Invented, Discovered, Made the First..? (Ravette Books, 1988)
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History of the Supermarket
My knowledge of the supermarket beginnings is rather brief but I hope still informative.
It begins in 1912, and in the US of A. Although assistants served their customers in all the shops, in this particular year it was told that two self-service stores were opened in California, US.
This was followed by a chain of self-service grocery store
In 1916, the first stores to have a check-out counters was the Piggly Wiggly Stores located in Memphis, Tennessee This was owned by Clarence Saunders. Apparently, this shop was fairly small by today’s standard.
From the size’s perspective, the first store regarded as the real supermarket was in 1930, one located in Long Island, US, owned by Michael Cullen. It was called King Kullen Food Store.
Source:
Kenneth Ireland’s Who Invented, Discovered, Made the First..?, Ravette Books, 1988, UK
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Invention of the Alphabet
Did you know?
The first alphabet, which was invented by the Phoenicians around the period 3000 B.C.E. read from right to left.
The story goes that prejudices about “going left” grew so strong that the Greeks changed the direction around 500 B.C.E. .
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