Who would have thought.
Time not only changes the appearance and habits of the people, but also force us to drastically change some things. To them includes products of famous brands. How was born and how “grown up” LEGO sets and Levi’s jeans? View journey products of world famous companies, before they were all the usual car tyres, a games console or a chocolate egg with a toy inside.
Coca-Cola: from medications to the most famous soda on the planet
Coca-Cola was born in 1886: chemist-pharmacist John stith Pemberton created the syrup-a sedative, which included Coca leaves and nuts of the tree Cola. Drink tried friend of the inventor, accountant Frank Robinson, he came up with the name and logo. But the real success came to Coca-Cola when the pharmacist Willie Venable mixed the syrup with soda water and received a truly magical “pop”, and then created the enterprise for the production of soda. The famous bottle shape Coca-Cola was invented in 1915: following women’s fashion, she was proportioned skirts with intercept below the waist.
In the summer of 1928, the American team brought 1,000 boxes of Coca-Cola in the Olympic games in Amsterdam. Since that time the company has become a regular sponsor of the Olympic games, world Cup and other sporting events.
Today Coca-Cola is the most famous company on earth: a brand you know 98% of the total population of the globe, every day in nearly 200 countries around the world sold about a billion bottles of soda.
Michelin: from Bicycle to automobile tires
Michelin owns a lot of unique developments and innovations in tire production — for example, radial and airless tires. But it began in 1891 as a manufacturer of tires for bicycles. The first version of such tyres has suffered from the nails — they can be easily pierced. However, riding on wheels, clad in the tire, a carriage with a horse and a bike was much more comfortable. With the help of Michelin rider Charles Terron won the marathon Paris — Brest — Paris. This event was the first ad about the company, and its revenues had increased 4 times.
Later, Michelin began to produce tires for automobiles. Today the factories of Michelin located in many countries around the world, including in Russia, and the number of produced tires have already crossed the 100 million a year.
Kinder surprise egg from Easter eggs to chocolate dessert with toy
One of the first toys kinder surprise 1974 — ballerina (Tänzerinnen)
Idea kinder surprise came from the Italian tradition of baking children Easter cakes and put inside a toy or a coin. This idea has taken the head of the company, Michele Ferrero. Mass production of chocolate eggs launched in 1974. They were prepared from a double layer of chocolate “Kinder”, and inside was a small empty plastic capsule orange.
First, in kinder had no toys. The idea is to add something inside the capsule originated from Swiss designer Henry Roth. He proposed to put in the “yolk” of small figures of different professions. The first batch sold out in just over an hour. Today, the company creates more than 100 different toys year: plastic, metal and wood. More than 30 years of existence, it sold 30 billion chocolate eggs.
BIC: from the ballpoint pen to the exhibit Museum of modern art
Model Bic Cristal, is now a Museum of modern art
The development of the first ballpoint pen Bic took its Creator Marcel Bika four years. He pored over the form, improved your product, attain maximum functional reliability. “Disposable pen should not be polubesova”, — joked the BIC. The pen body was made from almost never known then plastic: Biku had to create our own production of raw materials. By 1953, there appeared the first disposable Bic pen, and after 4 years they wrote all of Europe. To conquer the American market Marseille did their “beaky” portable: users can change the web.
The businessman conducted a massive advertising campaign for his pen he arranged tests to prove its reliability. Bic was glaring at the wall, exasperated the letters on the ice, burned in a fire, trampled on her flamenco dancers, pen shot from a gun. After these tests “biki” continued to work.
Today Bic is the first in the world in the production of ballpoint pens. Corporation Marcel Bika sells nearly 4 billion sticks per year, and the model Bic Cristal has become a classic of modern design and exhibit of the Museum of modern art in new York.
ABBYY FineReader: software to OCR to versatile solutions for office tasks
ABBYY FineReader — a program for text recognition, known to many from his student days. Initially, the software was conceived as an auxiliary tool for digitizing texts in foreign languages. With it, people can scan a text in one language, run it through the program and get the translation — true, rough, but to understand the meaning of it was enough. In this system the weak link was the character recognition from a third party, and in 1992 ABBYY began to create its own program.
The first version of the technology supported only the most basic image formats, but almost immediately revealed two important benefits: the program worked with all types of fonts, and can recognize data in different languages. FineReader soon became popular at all, someone had to digitize and edit any text information from paper documents. The first edition ABBYY FineReader was 500 copies, and in the first month the company sold more than a hundred copies at the time a huge amount.
FineReader was the first product with which ABBYY entered the international market. In addition, with this program, began the development of the company in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The technology used in ABBYY FineReader, served as the basis for many company decisions in the field of intelligent information processing. Software used for business and social projects — for example, to digitize and preserve the cultural heritage of different countries. In Russia — in the project “All Tolstoy in one click” and “Discover the story”. In 2017, the company introduced a new FineReader 14, which allowed users not just to recognize the texts but also to work with PDFs and documents in other formats: create, view, annotate, edit, approve, compare and protect them. Today ABBYY FineReader are used by more than 20 million people. And recognition technology texts underlying the FineReader license the world’s largest companies — Microsoft, Samsung, Fujitsu, Panasonic and many others.
LEGO: from wooden toys to designers with augmented reality
The name LEGO comes from the phrase LEg GОdt, which means “play well” in Danish. The company started as a manufacturer of wooden toys, for example, ducks on wheels. And the prototype of the famous designer began automatically connecting cubes, who came up with the businessman and inventor OLE kirk Christiansen in 1949. Famous plastic parts with round buttons-projections appeared in 1958. Later, the cubes were added to the cars, figures of people, animals and many other elements.
LEGO recently demonstrated a mobile application that allows you to simultaneously play designer not only in the room, but also in augmented reality. With this program, men and machines come to life, communicate with each other, build or destroy buildings. Every second in the world for sale seven sets of LEGO. Danish sets visited even in space — astronauts took 13 sets on the ISS.
Levi’s: canvas pants to jeans
Levi’s founder Levi Strauss sold fabrics and haberdashery goods. Once the entrepreneur is left one roll of canvas from which Levi made very durable pants. Later, the canvas was replaced by a softer fabric, which levy was ordered from Nimes in France. In honor of the city this material, which was dyed blue with Indigo, became known as “denim”. For greater reliability the most vulnerable areas of tissue secured with metal rivets.
According to one legend, Levi’s was so strong that the driver who had broken the trailer, tied them two carriages of the train and thus drove them by rail to the desired station. The extraordinary strength of the jeans highlighted on the company logo where two horses unsuccessfully try to rip a pair of pants.
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