Technology has made life easy for humans. It has simplified the complicated things – making work and life more comfortable and enjoyable for us. In just one dial, we connect to a loved one, a business partner, or an acquaintance far away. By the tap of a keyboard, we get access to expand our knowledge. In fact, since its inception, technology has been outdoing itself, as it has helped us remain connected.
But although technology is the tool, some brands have leveraged it to bring us the benefits above. You see, every big tech brand has a success story, and it is these facts that we have put together for your reading pleasure.
Enjoy!
Meet the garage legends;
- Google started in a garage in 1998. The tech giant’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented a Menlo Park garage from Susan Wojcicki (YouTube’s CEO) for $1700 every month. They currently own the building.
- Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in the garage of Steve Jobs’ childhood Los Altos house.
- Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded HP in David’s garage in Palo Alto. HP later purchased the property for $1.7 million in 2000. It was in this garage that they developed the audio oscillator that gave them their big break.
- Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft worked in an Albuquerque garage in the company’s early days. But their temporary home base was the Sundowner Motel. In 2013, they refurbished the motel.
- Amazon started in a rented house. Yeah, you read right, Jeff Bezos started the e-commerce company in his Bellevue, Washington home in 1995. The $890 rented apartment later sold for $1.5 million in 2019.
More fun facts;
- The Firefox logo is not a Fox. It’s a Red Panda! Yeah, I know you probably think it’s a fox, well now you know.
- The first Apple logo featured Sir Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree, with an apple above his head.
- Did you know Samsung started as a grocery store? I bet you didn’t. The popular smartphone and electronics giant started as a grocery store in March 1938.
- It took the radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million! Can you beat that?
- Guess what? It took eight long hours to expose the first photograph in 1826. However, the camera maker, Louis Daguerre, reduced the time to 15 minutes in 1839.
- Did you know? Spam mail was named after the canned meat, Spam meat.
- Long before its Video game popularity, Nintendo was a playing card company. The company manufactured playing cards from 1889-1956.
- Amazon had 1,000 robots operating in its warehouses in 2013. The numbers grew to 45,000 in 2018 and 200,000 in 2019.
- Did you know that TGA’s (TechGist Africa) editorial and content team is an all women team? Now you know!
Innovation never ends. Whatever tech brand you resonate with, they have a fun fact!
Stay Safe!