Companies that Changed the World

Imagine – just for a minute – there are no smartphones, computers, social networks, cameras or cars in your life. Do you feel a panic attack is about to start? Indeed, no access to these devices and services in the modern life can lead to feelings of discomfort, depression or even fear.

Let's make a brief retrospective journey into the history and see what inventions and with whose help have found their way into the life of an average consumer and totally transformed it.

Kodak

Today, photography is a stand-alone art form. Lots of people enjoy taking pictures and having their pictures taken, regardless of whether it's a professional photo shoot or a selfie taken with a smartphone.

George Eastman (an inventor) and Henry Strong (a businessman) were the two pioneers who strived to make photography popular and succeeded in their endeavor. In 1888, they introduced a Kodak No. 1 camera with a 100-exposure roll of film. A year later, cameras with a roll of film enough for 48 exposures went on sale. After a while, there appeared a compact 6-exposures camera, which one could carry around virtually everywhere. These cameras became in great demand among tourists. What is more, it is thanks to Kodak that we now have color film and photography.

However, with the advent of digital photography the company failed to release its new product early enough and thus lost its market segment.

Thus in 2009, Kodak sold its entire business related to OLED production to LG.

Sony

Activities of Sony and the company products have transformed lives of entire generations. To begin with, they released the first portable radio. Color TVs also appeared thanks to the developers working for this company. Then in 1968, Sony engineers produced the Sony color television picture tube. The major hit among Sony products was the Walkman portable player. Another achievement was the CD. One more mega popular creation of the brand is a PlayStation Game console. Everyone knows that millions of children and adolescents around the world dreamed of having a Sony PlayStation. And guess who produced the well-known model of Sony Ericsson phone? Sony! Still a full list of their innovations that entered our life and became its integral part is much wider.

Atari

Thanks to Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, computing machines got a completely new area of application. These guys managed to create a coin-operating gaming machine that shortly became a leader in the field of entertainment. After their success with the gaming machine, Atari developers went on to a video game console with a replaceable cartridge. First using primitive analog designs, Atari managed to turn them into specialized gaming computers.

Motorola

Motorola started as a family company. Originally, it only had 5 employees. Then, thanks to the company developers, high-power germanium transistors came into existence. Later in 1956, the first pager was introduced, a device accepting only messages addressed to a particular subscriber. The pager instantly gained popularity among doctors and managers.

Motorola distinguished itself as the founder of modern mobile communication systems. Through this company, satellite communications became available not only for the military, but also for average consumers.

The Motorola major invention, the one that shook all established notions about communications, was a fully featured portable telephone.

IBM

In fact, an average consumer never had a chance to use IBM products, because the company was changing the world on a global scale. To begin with, engineers proposed the FORTRAN programming language, which soon received popularity and practical application in scientific and engineering calculations.

The first IBM transistorized computers were so reliable and fast that the US Air Force used them for air defense. Then in 1971, the corporation released a prototype of a famous floppy disk. The floppy disk was a basis for the next generations of media and portable storage devices.

The year of 1981 was the time when the life course totally changed. The humankind was introduced to an IBM personal computer (PC). It had 640 KB of RAM and a DOS operating system developed by Microsoft. In this way, IBM introduced not only a personal computer, but also brought out their future neighbor on our list of innovators.

Microsoft

It is probably fair to state that the Microsoft started with the Basic language. It was the joint work of two young students and friends, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Their achievement was successfully used as software for the Altair computers. Basic was followed by other projects, for example, MS DOS or PC DOS. However, the company's real achievement has always been the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Are you still wondering why IBM helped us to learn about Microsoft? The fact is that in 1980, a well known and a well-estabished IBM company started cooperating with a little-known but promising Microsoft company. Initially, the Gates and Allen team only worked on projects for IBM.

Windows OS made Gates well known, recognizable and wealthy. On our part, we have received an operating system, which has been controlling 90% of personal computers in the world until today. For example, I cannot imagine my work without Microsoft Word. Whatever you may say, these are the most convenient tools for office workers ever invented.

Xerox

The way it made our life easier – especially students' lives :-) – cannot be overestimated. Producing a paper copy of a document in just a few seconds is Xerox invention worthily called life changing and transformative. By the way, their lab gave Steve Jobs a chance to learn the principles of the graphical interface and later implement them in the Macintosh.

Apple

Finally, some words about iPhone. Not only did this device change the way a phone was conceived in general. It constantly continues to change our way of life. Steve Jobs, the company founder, is worthily called the person who changed the course of history. The Apple's major characteristics is that even though they have not created anything new, this corporation presented us with a "clear" and articulated personal computer that people could easily use without any special knowledge or skills. Thanks to the incredible managerial talent of Steve Jobs, we learned about a graphic user interface and a mouse. All these things were invented much earlier and in other companies or laboratories, but we learnt to use them with Apple.

However surprising it may sound, the "apple" corporation is not related to the appearance of a mobile phone, tablet or an MP3 player. However, the Jobs team has transformed and improved them so much that they became much more demanded and trendy. Do you remember the times when people's status was determined by whether they had an iPhone?

In this article, we have briefly mentioned only those companies that, in one way or another, were associated with the emergence of new technologies. You may be wondering why such leaders as Google, Facebook, Levi's, McDonald's, Starbucks, or Visa are not on our list. The fact is that to describe achievements of all these giants we will have to write an entire book. The tremendous work of each of these companies has left its mark in our world, making our life much easier and more exciting in one way or another, and boosting the quality of our life.