... ...... Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL; formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) is an American multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products are the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Its software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; Logic Studio, a suite of music production tools; the Safari web browser; and iOS, a mobile operating system. As of July 2011, Apple has 364 retail stores in thirteen countries,[5] and an online store.[6] It is the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization [7] [8] , as well as the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit, more than Google and Microsoft combined.[9][10] As of September 24, 2011, the company had 60,400 permanent full-time employees and 2,900 temporary full-time employees worldwide;[4] its worldwide annual revenue in 2010 totalled $65 billion, growing to $108 billion in 2011.[3] Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012.[11][12][13][14][15] However, the company has received widespread criticism for its contractors' labor, and for its environmental and business practices.[16][17] Established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3, 1977,[18] the company was named Apple Computer, Inc. for its first 30 years. The word "Computer" was removed from its name on January 9, 2007,[19] as its traditional focus on personal computers shifted towards consumer electronics.[20] Main article: History of Apple Inc. 1976–1980: The early years Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne,[1] to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built by Wozniak[21][22] and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.[23] The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips)—less than what is today considered a complete personal computer.[24] The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66 ($2,723 in 2012 dollars, adjusted for inflation.) The Apple I, Apple's first product, was sold as an assembled circuit board and lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. The owner of this unit added a keyboard and a wooden case. Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977[18] without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple.[31][32] The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because it came with character cell based color graphics and an open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II.[33] The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world—the VisiCalc spreadsheet program.[34] VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II, and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II—compatibility with the office.[34] According to Brian Bagnall, Apple exaggerated its sales figures and was a distant third place to Commodore and Tandy until VisiCalc came along.[35][36] By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The company introduced the ill-fated Apple III in May 1980 in an attempt to compete with IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market.[37] Jobs and several Apple employees including Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the Xerox Alto. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (800,000 split-adjusted shares) of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share.[38] Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface (GUI), and development of a GUI began for the Apple Lisa.[39] In 1980, Apple went public, generating more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.[40] 1981–1985: Lisa and Macintosh The Model from Apple's "1984" ad, set in a dystopian future modeled after the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, set the tone for the introduction of the Macintosh. Steve Jobs began working on the Apple Lisa in 1978 but in 1982 he was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting, and took over Jef Raskin's low-cost-computer project, the Macintosh. A turf war broke out between Lisa's "corporate shirts" and Jobs' "pirates" over which product would ship first and save Apple. Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software titles.[41] The first Macintosh, released in 1984 In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1.5 million television commercial "1984". It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984,[42] and is now considered a watershed event for Apple's success[43] and a "masterpiece".[44][45] The Macintosh initially sold well, but follow-up sales were not strong[46] due to its high price and limited range of software titles. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first PostScript laser printer to be offered at a reasonable price, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing package. The Mac was particularly powerful in this market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, which had necessarily been built in to create the intuitive Macintosh GUI. It has been suggested that the combination of these three products was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market.[47] In 1985 a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier.[48] The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a putsch and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties.[46] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.[49] 1986–1993: Rise and fall See also: Timeline of Apple II family and Timeline of Macintosh models The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first "portable" Macintosh computer, released in 1989. Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple introduced the PowerBook in 1991. The Macintosh Portable was designed to be just as powerful as a desktop Macintosh, but weighed 7.5 kilograms (17 lb) with a 12-hour battery life. The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the operating system, which added color to the interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the architectural basis for Mac OS until 2001. The success of the PowerBook and other products brought increasing revenue.[48] For some time, it appeared that Apple could do no wrong, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh. Following the success of the Macintosh LC, Apple introduced the Centris line, a low-end Quadra offering, and the ill-fated Performa line that was sold in several confusing configurations and software bundles to avoid competing with the various consumer outlets such as Sears, Price Club, and Wal-Mart, who were the primary dealers for these models. The result was disastrous for Apple as consumers did not understand the difference between models.[50] During this time Apple experimented with a number of other failed consumer targeted products including digital cameras, portable CD audio players, speakers, video consoles, and TV appliances. Enormous resources were also invested in the problem-plagued Newton division based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts.[citation needed] Ultimately, all this proved too-little-too-late, as Apple's market share and stock prices continued to slide.[citation needed] Apple saw the Apple II series as too expensive to produce, while taking away sales from the low end Macintosh.[51] In 1990, Apple released the Macintosh LC with a single expansion slot for the Apple IIe Card to migrate Apple II users to the Macintosh platform.[51] Apple stopped selling the Apple IIe in 1993. Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows, focusing on delivering software to cheap commodity personal computers while Apple was delivering a richly engineered, but expensive, experience.[52] Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response. Instead they sued Microsoft for using a graphical user interface similar to the Apple Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation.[53] The lawsuit dragged on for years before it was finally dismissed. At the same time, a series of major product flops and missed deadlines sullied Apple's reputation, and Sculley was replaced by Michael Spindler.[54] 1994–1997: Attempts at reinvention The Newton was Apple's first foray into the PDA markets, as well as one of the first in the industry. Despite being a financial flop at the time of its release, it helped pave the way for the Palm Pilot and Apple's own iPhone and iPad in the future. By the early 1990s, Apple was developing alternative platforms to the Macintosh, such as the A/UX. Apple had also begun to experiment in providing a Mac-only online portal which they called eWorld, developed in collaboration with America Online and designed as a Mac-friendly alternative to other online services such as CompuServe. The Macintosh platform was itself becoming outdated because it was not built for multitasking, and several important software routines were programmed directly into the hardware. In addition, Apple was facing competition from OS/2 and UNIX vendors like Sun Microsystems. The Macintosh would need to be replaced by a new platform, or reworked to run on more powerful hardware.[55] In 1994, Apple allied with IBM and Motorola in the AIM alliance. The goal was to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple's software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft. The same year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many Apple computers to use IBM's PowerPC processor.[56] In 1996, Michael Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO. Gil Amelio made many changes at Apple, including extensive layoffs.[57] After multiple failed attempts to improve Mac OS, first with the Taligent project, then later with Copland and Gershwin, Amelio chose to purchase NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple as an advisor.[58] On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted by the board of directors after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs became the interim CEO and began restructuring the company's product line. At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, and that Microsoft made a $150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock.[59] On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Online Store, tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy.[60][61] 1998–2005: Return to profitability On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the Macintosh 128K: the iMac. The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive, who would later design the iPod and the iPhone.[62][63] The iMac featured modern technology and a unique design, and sold almost 800,000 units in its first five months.[64] Through this period, Apple purchased several companies to create a portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production software. In 1998, Apple announced the purchase of Macromedia's Final Cut software, signaling its expansion into the digital video editing market.[65] The following year, Apple released two video editing products: iMovie for consumers and, for professionals, Final Cut Pro, which has gone on to be a significant video-editing program, with 800,000 registered users in early 2007.[66] In 2002 Apple purchased Nothing Real for their advanced digital compositing application Shake,[67] as well as Emagic for their music productivity application Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level GarageBand application.[68][69] iPhoto's release the same year completed the iLife suite.[70] Apple retail stores allow potential customers to use floor models without making a purchase. Mac OS X, based on NeXT's OPENSTEP and BSD Unix was released on March 24, 2001, after several years of development. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X aimed to combine the stability, reliability and security of Unix with the ease of use afforded by an overhauled user interface. To aid users in migrating from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications through Mac OS X's Classic environment.[71] On May 19, 2001, Apple opened the first official Apple Retail Stores in Virginia and California.[72] Later on July 9 they bought Spruce Technologies, a DVD authoring company. On October 23 of the same year, Apple announced the iPod portable digital audio player, and started selling it on November 10. The product was phenomenally successful — over 100 million units were sold within six years.[73][74] In 2003, Apple's iTunes Store was introduced, offering online music downloads for $0.99 a song and integration with the iPod. The service quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion downloads by June 19, 2008.[75] Since 2001 Apple's design team has progressively abandoned the use of translucent colored plastics first used in the iMac G3. This began with the titanium PowerBook and was followed by the white polycarbonate iBook and the flat-panel iMac.[76][77] 2005–2007: The Intel transition Main article: Apple's transition to Intel processors The MacBook Pro (15.4" widescreen) was Apple's first laptop with an Intel microprocessor. It was announced in January 2006 and is aimed at the professional market. At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Mac computers in 2006.[78] On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006 Apple had transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, over one year sooner than announced.[78] The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors.[79][80] On April 29, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was building its own team of engineers to design microchips.[81] Apple also introduced Boot Camp to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.[82] Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price. Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $6 per share (split-adjusted) to over $80. In January 2006, Apple's market cap surpassed that of Dell.[83] Nine years prior, Dell's CEO Michael Dell said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[84] Although Apple's market share in computers had grown, it remained far behind competitors using Microsoft Windows, with only about 8% of desktops and laptops in the U.S.[85] 2007–2011: Widespread success Apple achieved widespread success with consumer electronics that refer to Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that introduced innovations in respective devices: mobile phones, portable music players and personal computers. The business model of offering a store for applications to be purchased was an innovation from a business point of view. Touch screens had been invented and seen in mobile devices before, but Apple was the first to achieve mass market adoption of a touch screen based user interface that included particular pre-programmed touch gestures. The widespread success was continuing when Apple's co-founder and chief executive officer Steve Jobs passed away, but some speculated that this would lead to Apple's days of technological innovation and compelling product design to become things of the past. Delivering his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would from that point on be known as Apple Inc., because computers were no longer the main focus of the company, which had shifted its emphasis to mobile electronic devices. The event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV.[86] The following day, Apple shares hit $97.80, an all-time high at that point. In May, Apple's share price passed the $100 mark.[87] In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Steve Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without DRM (which would allow tracks to be played on third-party players) if record labels would agree to drop the technology.[88] On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May.[89] Other record labels followed later that year. In July of the following year, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.[90] Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and brought in $1 million daily on average, with Jobs speculating that the App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple.[91] Three months later, it was announced that Apple had become the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.[92] On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that after over 20 years of attending Macworld, 2009 would be the last year Apple would be attending the Macworld Expo, and that Phil Schiller would deliver the 2009 keynote in lieu of the expected Jobs.[93] Almost exactly one month later, on January 14, 2009, an internal Apple memo from Jobs announced that he would be taking a six-month leave of absence, until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health and to allow the company to better focus on its products without having the rampant media speculating about his health.[94] Despite Jobs' absence, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the recession with a revenue of $8.16 billion and a profit of $1.21 billion.[95] Wikinews has related news: Apple unveils iPhone 4, iOS 4 at Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 Apple to give free cases, refunds to iPhone 4 owners Apple unveils new iPods, Apple TV; updates iOS, iTunes Apple unveils new MacBook Air laptops, iLife '11 software suite After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks" Apple announced a large screen, tablet-like media device known as the iPad on January 27, 2010. The iPad runs the same touch based operating system that the iPhone uses and many of the same iPhone apps are compatible with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch even with very little development time before the release. Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the US and sold more than 300,000 units on that day and reaching 500,000 by the end of the first week.[96] In May of the same year, Apple's market cap exceeded that of competitor Microsoft for the first time since 1989.[97] Apple released the fourth generation iPhone, which introduced video calling, multitasking, and a new uninsulated stainless steel design, which acts as the phone's antenna. Because of this antenna implementation, some iPhone 4 users reported a reduction in signal strength when the phone is held in specific ways. After a large amount of media coverage including mainstream news organizations, Apple held a press conference where they offered buyers a free rubber 'bumper' case, which had been proven to eliminate the signal reduction issue. Later that year Apple again refreshed its iPod line of MP3 players which introduced a multi-touch iPod Nano, iPod Touch with FaceTime, and iPod Shuffle with buttons which brought back the buttons of earlier generations.[98][99][100] In October 2010, Apple shares hit an all-time high, eclipsing $300.[101] Additionally, on October 20, Apple updated their MacBook Air laptop, iLife suite of applications, and unveiled Mac OS X Lion, the latest installment in their Mac OS X operating system.[102] On January 6, 2011, the company opened their Mac App Store, a digital software distribution platform, similar to the existing iOS App Store.[103] Apple was featured in the documentary Something Ventured which premiered in 2011. 2011–present: Post–Steve Jobs era On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence, for an indefinite period, to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook took up Jobs' day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain "involved in major strategic decisions for the company."[104] Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world.[105] In June 2011, Steve Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud. iCloud is an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files and software which replaced MobileMe, Apple's previous attempt at content syncing.[106] This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death. It has been argued that Apple has achieved such efficiency in its supply chain[107] that the company operates as a monopsony (one buyer, many sellers), in that it can dictate terms to its suppliers.[108][109] Briefly in July 2011, due to the debt-ceiling crisis, Apple's financial reserves were greater than those of the US Government.[110] On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple.[111] He was replaced by Tim Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Prior to this, Apple did not have a chairman and instead had two co-lead directors, Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson, who continued with those titles until Levinson became Chairman of the Board in November.[112] On October 4, 2011, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which includes an improved camera with 1080p video recording, a dual core A5 chip capable of 7 times faster graphics than the A4, an "intelligent software assistant" named Siri, and cloud-sourced data with iCloud.[113][114] One day later, on October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died, marking the end of an era for Apple Inc.[115][116] The iPhone 4S was officially released on October 14, 2011. On October 29, 2011, Apple purchased C3 Technologies, a mapping company, for $240 million. C3 is the third mapping company Apple has purchased so far.[117] On January 10, 2012, Apple acquired Anobit, an Israeli hardware company that developed and supplies a proprietary memory signal processing technology that improves the performance of flash-memory used in iPhones and iPads for $390 million.[118] On January 19, 2012, Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York.[119] This was the first major announcement by Apple since the passing of Steve Jobs, who stated in his biography that he wanted to reinvent the textbook and education. The 3rd generation iPad was announced on March 7, 2012. It includes a Retina display, a new CPU, a five megapixel camera, and 1080p video recording.[120][121] Products and marketing Current products See also: Timeline of Apple products and List of products discontinued by Apple Inc. Mac and accessories See also: Timeline of Macintosh models, List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type, and List of Macintosh models by case type Mac Mini, consumer sub-desktop computer and server introduced in 2005. iMac, consumer all-in-one desktop computer introduced in 1998. Mac Pro, workstation-class desktop computer introduced in 2006, replacing the Power Macintosh. MacBook Pro, professional notebook introduced in 2006, replacing the PowerBook. MacBook Air, ultra-thin, ultra-portable notebook introduced in 2008. Apple also sells a variety of computer accessories for Mac computers including the AirPort wireless networking products, Time Capsule, Thunderbolt Display, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Wireless Keyboard, and the Apple Battery Charger. iPad Main article: iPad The Apple website home page, featuring The new iPad. On January 27, 2010, Apple introduced their much-anticipated media tablet, the iPad running a modified version of iOS. It offers multi-touch interaction with multimedia formats including newspapers, magazines, ebooks, textbooks, photos, movies, TV shows videos, music, word processing documents, spreadsheets, video games, and most existing iPhone apps.[122] It also includes a mobile version of Safari for web browsing, as well as access to the App Store, iTunes Library, iBooks Store, contacts, and notepad. Content is downloadable via Wi-Fi and optional 3G service or synced through the user's computer.[123] AT&T was initially the sole US provider of 3G wireless access for the iPad.[124] On March 2, 2011, Apple introduced an updated iPad model which had a faster processor and two cameras on the front and back respectively. The iPad 2 also added support for optional 3G service provided by Verizon in addition to the existing offering by AT&T.[125] However, the availability of the iPad 2 has been limited as a result of the devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan in March 2011.[126] On March 7, 2012, Apple introduced the iPad 3, aka, "The New iPad". The iPad 3 added LTE service from AT&T or Verizon and an upgraded processor, the A5X. It also added the "Retina" display (2048 by 1536 resolution) originally found on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. The dimensions and form factor remained relatively unchanged, with "The New iPad" being a fraction thicker and heavier than the previous version, and minor positioning changes.[127] Since the tablet launched in 2010, iPad users have downloaded 3 billion apps, while the total App Store downloads is up to over 25 billion downloads.[128] iPod Main article: iPod The current iPod family, featuring the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Classic, and iPod Touch On October 23, 2001, Apple introduced the iPod digital music player. It has evolved to include various models targeting the wants of different users. The iPod is the market leader in portable music players by a significant margin, with more than 220 million units shipped as of September 2009.[129] Apple has partnered with Nike to offer the Nike+iPod Sports Kit enabling runners to synchronize and monitor their runs with iTunes and the Nike+ website. Apple currently sells four variants of the iPod. iPod Shuffle, ultraportable digital audio player first introduced in 2005, currently available in a 2 GB model. iPod Nano, portable media player first introduced in 2005, currently available in 8 and 16 GB models. The latest generation has a FM radio, a pedometer, and a new multi-touch interface that replaced the traditional iPod click wheel. iPod Classic (previously named iPod from 2001 to 2007), portable media player first introduced in 2001, currently available in a 160 GB model.[130] iPod Touch, portable media player that runs iOS, first introduced in September 2007 after the iPhone went on sale. Currently available in 8, 32, and 64 GB models. The latest generation features the Apple A4 processor, a Retina Display, and dual cameras on the front and back. The back camera allows for HD video recording at 720p.[131] At the Macworld Conference & Expo in January 2007, Steve Jobs revealed the long anticipated[132] iPhone, a convergence of an Internet-enabled smartphone and iPod.[133] The original iPhone combined a 2.5G quad band GSM and EDGE cellular phone with features found in hand held devices, running scaled-down versions of Apple's Mac OS X (dubbed iOS, formerly iPhone OS), with various Mac OS X applications such as Safari and Mail. It also includes web-based and Dashboard apps such as Google Maps and Weather. The iPhone features a 3.5-inch (89 mm) touch screen display, 4, 8, or 16 GB of memory, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi (both "b" and "g").[133] The iPhone first became available on June 29, 2007 for $499 (4 GB) and $599 (8 GB) with an AT&T contract.[134] On February 5, 2008, Apple updated the original iPhone to have 16 GB of memory, in addition to the 8 GB and 4 GB models.[135] On June 9, 2008, at WWDC 2008, Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone 3G would be available on July 11, 2008.[136] This version added support for 3G networking, assisted-GPS navigation, and a price cut to $199 for the 8 GB version, and $299 for the 16 GB version, which was available in both black and white. The new version was visually different from its predecessor in that it eliminated the flat silver back, and large antenna square for a curved glossy black or white back. Following complaints from many people, the headphone jack was changed from a recessed jack to a flush jack to be compatible with more styles of headphones. The software capabilities changed as well, with the release of the new iPhone came the release of Apple's App Store; the store provided applications for download that were compatible with the iPhone. On April 24, 2009, the App Store surpassed one billion downloads.[137] On June 8, 2009, at Apple's annual worldwide developers conference, the iPhone 3GS was announced, providing an incremental update to the device including faster internal components, support for faster 3G speeds, video recording capability, and voice control. On June 7, 2010, at WWDC 2010, the iPhone 4 was announced, which Apple says is its "'biggest leap we've taken" since the original iPhone.[138] The phone includes an all-new design, 960x640 display, Apple's A4 processor used in the iPad, a gyroscope for enhanced gaming, 5MP camera with LED flash, front-facing VGA camera and FaceTime video calling. Shortly after the release of the iPhone 4, it was realized by consumers that the new iPhone had reception issues. This is due to the stainless steel band around the edge of the device, which also serves as the phone's cellular signal and Wi-Fi antenna. The current fix for this issue was a "Bumper Case" for the phone distributed for free to all iPhone 4 owners for a few months. In June 2011, Apple overtook Nokia to become the world's biggest smartphone maker by volume.[139] On October 4, 2011, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S, which was released in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan on October 14, 2011, with other countries set to follow later in the year.[140] This was the first iPhone model to feature the Apple A5 chip, as well as the first offered on the Sprint network (joining AT&T and Verizon Wireless as the United States carriers offering iPhone models). On October 19, 2011, Apple announced an agreement with C Spire Wireless to sell the iPhone 4S with that carrier in the near future, marking the first time the iPhone was officially supported on a regional carrier's network.[141] Another notable feature of the iPhone 4S was Siri voice assistant technology, which Apple had acquired in 2010,[142] as well as other features, including an updated 8 megapixel camera with new optics. Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4S phones in the first three days after its release, which made it not only the best iPhone launch in Apple's history, but the most-successful launch of any mobile phone ever.[143] Apple TV Main article: Apple TV The Apple TV, in its most recent revision At the 2007 Macworld conference, Jobs demonstrated the Apple TV, (previously known as the iTV),[144] a set-top video device intended to bridge the sale of content from iTunes with high-definition televisions. The device links up to a user's TV and syncs, either via Wi-Fi or a wired network, with one computer's iTunes library and streams from an additional four. The Apple TV originally incorporated a 40 GB hard drive for storage, includes outputs for HDMI and component video, and plays video at a maximum resolution of 720p.[145] On May 31, 2007 a 160 GB drive was released alongside the existing 40 GB model[146] and on January 15, 2008 a software update was released, which allowed media to be purchased directly from the Apple TV.[147] In September 2009, Apple discontinued the original 40 GB Apple TV and now continues to produce and sell the 160 GB Apple TV. On September 1, 2010, alongside the release of the new line of iPod devices for the year, Apple released a completely redesigned Apple TV. The new device is 1/4 the size, runs quieter, and replaces the need for a hard drive with media streaming from any iTunes library on the network along with 8 GB of flash memory to cache media downloaded. Apple with the Apple TV has added another device to its portfolio that runs on its A4 processor along with the iPad and the iPhone. The memory included in the device is the half of the iPhone 4 at 256 MB; the same as the iPad, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3G, and iPod touch 4G.[148] It has HDMI out as the only video out source. Features include access to the iTunes Store to rent movies and TV shows (purchasing has been discontinued), streaming from internet video sources, including YouTube and Netflix, and media streaming from an iTunes library. Apple also reduced the price of the device to $99. Software See also: List of Macintosh software Apple develops its own operating system to run on Macs, OS X, the latest version being OS X Lion (version 10.7). Apple also independently develops computer software titles for its OS X operating system. Much of the software Apple develops is bundled with its computers. An example of this is the consumer-oriented iLife software package that bundles iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand. For presentation, page layout and word processing, iWork is available, which includes Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. iTunes, QuickTime media player, Safari web browser, and Software Update are available as free downloads for both Mac OS X and Windows. Apple also offers a range of professional software titles. Their range of server software includes the operating system OS X Server; Apple Remote Desktop, a remote systems management application; and Xsan, a Storage Area Network file system. For the professional creative market, there is Aperture for professional RAW-format photo processing; Final Cut Pro, a video production suite; Logic Pro, a comprehensive music toolkit; and Motion, an advanced effects composition program. Apple also offers online services with iCloud, which provides cloud storage and syncing for a wide range of data, including email, contacts, calendars, photos and documents. It also offers iOS device backup, and is able to integrate directly with third-party apps for even greater functionality. iCloud is the fourth generation of online services provided by Apple, and was preceded by MobileMe, .Mac and iTools, all which met varying degrees of success. Marketing See also: Criticism of Apple Inc.#Comparison with a cult/religion Apple aficionados wait in line around an Apple retail store in anticipation of a new product. This branch is located on Fifth Avenue in New York City, with a glass cube housing a cylindrical elevator and a spiral staircase that lead into the subterranean store. "The scenes I witnessed at the opening of the new Apple store in London's Covent Garden were more like an evangelical prayer meeting than a chance to buy a phone or a laptop. " – Alex Riley, writing for the BBC[149] Apple' brand and brand community. Apple's brand's loyalty is considered unusual for any product. At one time, Apple evangelists were actively engaged by the company, but this was after the phenomenon was already firmly established. Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki has called the brand fanaticism "something that was stumbled upon".[150] Apple has, however, supported the continuing existence of a network of Mac User Groups in most major and many minor centers of population where Mac computers are available. Mac users would meet at the European Apple Expo and the San Francisco Macworld Conference & Expo trade shows where Apple traditionally introduced new products each year to the industry and public until Apple pulled out of both events. While the conferences continue, Apple does not have official representation there. Mac developers, in turn, continue to gather at the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple Store openings can draw crowds of thousands, with some waiting in line as much as a day before the opening or flying in from other countries for the event.[151] The New York City Fifth Avenue "Cube" store had a line as long as half a mile; a few Mac fans took the opportunity of the setting to propose marriage.[152] The Ginza opening in Tokyo was estimated in the thousands with a line exceeding eight city blocks.[153] John Sculley told The Guardian newspaper in 1997: "People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company. It was the marketing company of the decade."[154] Research in 2002 by NetRatings indicate that the average Apple consumer was usually more affluent and better educated than other PC company consumers. The research indicated that this correlation could stem from the fact that on average Apple Inc. products are more expensive than other PC products.[155][156] Name According to Steve Jobs, Apple was so named because Jobs was coming back from an apple farm, and he was on a fruitarian diet. He thought the name was "fun, spirited and not intimidating".[157] Logos See also: U+F8FF and Typography of Apple Inc. The original logo, featuring Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree The original logo with Isaac Newton under an apple tree The rainbow logo, featuring a bitten apple in rainbow colors The rainbow "bitten" logo, used from late 1976 to 1998 The monochrome logo, featuring a bitten apple in monochrome The monochrome logo, used since 1998 Apple's first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. Almost immediately, though, this was replaced by Rob Janoff's "rainbow Apple", the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Janoff presented Jobs with several different monochromatic themes for the "bitten" logo, and Jobs immediately took a liking to it. While Jobs liked the logo, he insisted it be in color to humanize the company.[158][159] The Apple logo was designed with a bite so that it would not be recognized as another fruit. The colored stripes were conceived to make the logo more accessible, and to represent the fact the Apple II could generate graphics in color.[160] This logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide.[161][162] Both the designer of the logo and the company deny that there is any homage to Turing in the design of the logo.[160][163] In 1998, with the roll-out of the new iMac, Apple discontinued the rainbow theme and began to use monochromatic themes, nearly identical in shape to its previous rainbow incarnation, on various products, packaging and advertising. An Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was used from 2001–2003, and a Glass-themed version has been used since 2003. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were Beatles fans,[164][165] but Apple Inc. had trademark issues with Apple Corps Ltd., a multimedia company started by The Beatles in 1967, involving their name and logo. This resulted in a series of lawsuits and tension between the two companies. These issues ended with settling of their most recent lawsuit in 2007. Slogans Main article: List of Apple Inc. slogans Apple's first slogan, "Byte into an Apple", was coined in the late 1970s.[166] From 1997–2002, Apple used the slogan "Think Different" in advertising campaigns. Although the slogan has been retired, it is still closely associated with Apple.[167] Apple also has slogans for specific product lines — for example, "iThink, therefore iMac" was used in 1998 to promote the iMac,[168] and "Say hello to iPhone" has been used in iPhone advertisements.[169] "Hello" was also used to introduce the original Macintosh, Newton, iMac ("hello (again)"), and iPod.[170] Advertising Main article: Apple Inc. advertising See also: 1984 (advertisement), Lemmings (advertisement), iPod advertising, and music used by Apple Inc. Further information: Think Different, Get a Mac, and Apple Switch ad campaign Since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 with the 1984 Super Bowl commercial to the more modern 'Get a Mac' adverts, Apple has been recognized in the past for its efforts towards effective advertising and marketing for its products, though its advertising has been criticized for the claims of some more recent campaigns, particularly 2005 Power Mac ads[171][172][173] and iPhone ads in Britain. Apple's product commercials gained fame for launching musicians into stardom as a result of their eye-popping graphics and catchy tunes.[174] First, the company popularized Canadian singer Feist's "1234" song in its ad campaign.[174] Later, Apple used the song "New Soul" by French-Israeli singer-songwriter Yael Naïm to promote the MacBook Air.[174] The debut single shot to the top of the charts and sold hundreds of thousands of copies in a span of weeks.[174] Corporate affairs See also: List of mergers and acquisitions by Apple, Braeburn Capital, and FileMaker Inc. During the Mac's early history Apple generally refused to adopt prevailing industry standards for hardware, instead creating their own.[175] This trend was largely reversed in the late 1990s beginning with Apple's adoption of the PCI bus in the 7500/8500/9500 Power Macs. Apple has since adopted USB, AGP, HyperTransport, Wi-Fi, and other industry standards in its computers and was in some cases a leader in the adoption of standards such as USB.[176] FireWire is an Apple-originated standard that has seen widespread industry adoption after it was standardized as IEEE 1394.[177] Ever since the first Apple Store opened, Apple has sold third party accessories.[178] For instance, at one point Nikon and Canon digital cameras were sold inside the store. Adobe, one of Apple's oldest software partners,[179] also sells its Mac-compatible software, as does Microsoft, who sells Microsoft Office for the Mac. Books from John Wiley & Sons, who publishes the For Dummies series of instructional books, are a notable exception, however. The publisher's line of books were banned from Apple Stores in 2005 because Steve Jobs disagreed with their decision to publish an unauthorized Jobs biography, iCon.[180] After the launch of the iBookstore, Apple stopped selling physical books, both online and at the Apple Retail Stores. Headquarters Worldwide Main article: Apple Campus Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California Apple Inc.'s world corporate headquarters are located in the middle of Silicon Valley, at 1–6 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California. This Apple campus has six buildings that total 850,000 square feet (79,000 m2) and was built in 1993 by Sobrato Development Cos.[181] Apple created subsidiaries in low-tax places such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands to cut the taxes it pays around the world. According to the New York Times, Apple was among the first tech companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed the company to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes. Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the "Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich," which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean.[182] In 2006, Apple announced its intention to build a second campus on 50 acres (200,000 m2) assembled from various contiguous plots (east of N Wolfe Road between Pruneridge Avenue and Vallco Parkway). Later acquisitions increased this to 175 acres. The new campus, also in Cupertino, will be about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the current campus.[183] The new campus building will be designed by Norman Foster.[184] On June 7, 2011, Steve Jobs gave a presentation to Cupertino City Council, detailing the architectural design of the new building and its environs. The new campus is planned to house up to 13,000 employees in one central four-storied circular building (with a café for 3,000 sitting people integrated) surrounded by extensive landscape (with parking mainly underground and the rest centralized in a parking structure). There will be additional buildings such as an auditorium, R&D facilities, a fitness center and a dedicated generating plant as primary source of electricity (powered by natural gas and other more environmentally sound means). Headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa Apple's headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are located in Cork in the south of Ireland.[185][186][187][188][189][190][191] The facility, which opened in 1980, was Apple's first location outside of the United States.[192] Apple Sales International, which deals with all of Apple's international sales outside of the USA, is located at Apple's campus in Cork[193] along with Apple Distribution International, which similarly deals with Apple's international distribution network.[194] On April 20, 2012, Apple announced the addition of 500 new jobs to its European headquarters. This will bring the total workforce from around 2,800 to 3,300 employees.[195][196][197] The company will build a new office block on its Hollyhill Campus to accommodate the additional staff. [198] Corporate culture Apple was one of several highly successful companies founded in the 1970s that bucked the traditional notions of what a corporate culture should look like in organizational hierarchy (flat versus tall, casual versus formal attire, etc.). Other highly successful firms with similar cultural aspects from the same period include Southwest Airlines and Microsoft. Originally, the company stood in opposition to staid competitors like IBM by default, thanks to the influence of its founders; Steve Jobs often walked around the office barefoot even after Apple was a Fortune 500 company. By the time of the "1984" TV ad, this trait had become a key way the company attempted to differentiate itself from its competitors.[199] As the company has grown and been led by a series of chief executives, each with his own idea of what Apple should be, some of its original character has arguably been lost, but Apple still has a reputation for fostering individuality and excellence that reliably draws talented people into its employ, especially after Jobs' return. To recognize the best of its employees, Apple created the Apple Fellows program, awarding individuals who made extraordinary technical or leadership contributions to personal computing while at the company. The Apple Fellowship has so far been awarded to a few individuals including Bill Atkinson,[200] Steve Capps,[201] Rod Holt,[200] Alan Kay,[202][203] Guy Kawasaki,[202][204] Al Alcorn,[205] Don Norman,[202] Rich Page,[200] and Steve Wozniak.[200] Numerous employees of Apple have cited that projects without Jobs' involvement often take longer than projects with his involvement.[206] Another presents the image of Jobs "wandering the hall with a flame thrower in hand, asking random people 'do you work on MobileMe?'".[207] At Apple, employees are specialists who are not exposed to functions outside their area of expertise. Jobs saw this as a means of having best-in-class employees in every role. For instance, Ron Johnson who was Senior Vice President of Retail Operations until November 1, 2011, was responsible for site selection, in-store service, and store layout, yet he had no control of the inventory in his stores (which is done company wide by then-COO and now CEO Tim Cook who has a background in supply-chain management). This is the opposite of General Electric's corporate culture which has created well-rounded managers.[208] [208] Under the leadership of Tim Cook who joined the company in 1998 and ascended to his present position as CEO, Apple has developed an extremely efficient and effective supply chain which has been ranked as the world's best for the four years 2007–2010[citation needed]. The company's manufacturing, procurement and logistics enables it to execute massive product launches without having to maintain large, profit-sapping inventories; Apple's profit margins have been 40 percent compared with 10–20 percent for most other hardware companies in 2011. Cook's catchphrase to describe his focus on the company's operational edge is “Nobody wants to buy sour milk”. [109] [209] The company previously advertised its products as being made in America up to the late 1990s, however as a result of outsourcing initiatives in the 2000s almost all of its manufacturing is now done abroad. According to a report by the New York Times, Apple insiders "believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products".[210] Finance In its fiscal year ending in September 2011, Apple Inc. hit new heights financially with $108 billion in revenues (increased significantly from $65 billion in 2010) and nearly $82 billion in cash reserves. Apple achieved these results while losing market share in certain product categories.[211] On March 19, 2012, Apple announced plans for a $2.65 per share dividend beginning in fourth quarter of 2012, per approval by their board of directors.[212] Environmental record Greenpeace has campaigned against Apple on various environmental issues, including a global end-of-life take-back plan, non-recyclable hardware components and toxins within iPhone hardware.[213][214] Since 2003 Greenpeace has campaigned against Apple's use of particular chemicals in its products, more specifically, the inclusion of PVC and BFRs in their products.[213] On May 2, 2007, Steve Jobs released a report announcing plans to eliminate PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008.[215][216] Apple has since eliminated PVC and BFRs across its product range,[217] becoming the first laptop maker to do so.[218] In the first edition, released in August 2006, Apple scored 2.7/10.[219] The Environmental Protection Agency rates Apple highest amongst producers of notebook computers, and fairly well compared to producers of desktop computers and LCD displays. In June 2007, Apple upgraded the MacBook Pro, replacing cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlit LCD displays with mercury-free LED backlit LCD displays and arsenic-free glass,[222] and has since done this for all notebooks. Apple has also phased out BFRs and PVCs from various internal components.[215][223][224] Apple offers information about the emissions, materials, and electrical usage of each product.[225] In June 2009, Apple's iPhone 3GS was free of PVC, arsenic, BFRs and had an efficient power adapter.[222] In October 2009, Apple upgraded the iMac and MacBook, replacing the cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlit LCD displays with mercury-free LED backlit LCD displays and arsenic-free glass.[226] This means all Apple computers have mercury free LED backlit displays, arsenic-free glass and are without PVC cables. All Apple computers also have EPEAT Gold status. In 2010, Climate Counts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to directing consumers toward the greenest companies, gave Apple a score of 52 points out of a possible 100, which puts Apple in their top category "Striding".[227] This was an increase from May 2008, when Climate Counts only gave Apple 11 points out of 100, which placed the company last among electronics companies, at which time Climate Counts also labeled Apple with a "stuck icon", adding that Apple at the time was "a choice to avoid for the climate conscious consumer". In October 2011 Chinese authorities have ordered an Apple supplier to close part of its plant in Suzhou after residents living nearby raised significant environmental concerns. In November 2011 Apple featured in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers on sustainability, climate and energy and how green their products are. The company ranked 4th out of 15 electronics companies (moving up five places from the previous year) with a score of 4.6/10 down from 4.9.[229] Greenpeace praises Apple's sustainability, noting that the company exceeded its 70% global recycling goal in 2010. It continues to score well on the products rating with all Apple products now being free of PVC vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants. However, the guide criticizes Apple on the Energy criteria for not seeking external verification of its greenhouse gas emissions data and for not setting out any targets to reduce emissions.[229] In January 2012, Apple announced plans and requested that their cable maker Volex begin producing halogen-free USB and power cables.[230] Labor practices Further information: Apple labor practices In 2006, the Mail on Sunday reported on working conditions existed at factories in China where the contract manufacturers Foxconn and Inventec produced the iPod.[231] The article stated that one complex of factories that assembles the iPod (among other items) had over 200,000 workers that lived and worked in the factory, with employees regularly working more than 60 hours per week. The article also reported that workers made around $100 per month and were required to live pay for rent and food from the company, which generally amounted to a little over half of workers' earnings.[16][232][233][234] Apple immediately launched an investigation and worked with their manufacturers to ensure acceptable working conditions.[235] In 2007, Apple started yearly audits of all its suppliers regarding worker's rights, slowly raising standards and pruning suppliers that did not comply. Yearly progress reports have been published since 2008.[236] In 2010, workers in China planned to sue iPhone contractors over poisoning by a cleaner used to clean LCD screens. One worker claimed that he and his coworkers had not been informed of possible occupational illnesses.[237] After a spate of suicides in a Foxconn facility in China making iPads and iPhones, albeit at a lower rate than in China as a whole,[238] workers were forced to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing that they would not kill themselves.[239] In 2011 Apple admitted that its suppliers' child labor practices in China had worsened.[240] Workers in factories producing Apple products have also been exposed to n-Hexane, a neurotoxin that is a cheaper alternative than alcohol for cleaning the products. ... ...... William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955)[4] is an American business magnate, computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people[5] and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third;[6] in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person.[7][8] During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock.[9] He has also authored or co-authored several books. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts.[10][11] In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.[12] Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman. Bill Gates was photographed by the Albuquerque, New Mexico police in 1977 after a traffic violation (details of which have been lost over time). Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His parents are of English, German, and Scots-Irish descent.[13][14] His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix.[15] Early on in his life, Gates's parents had a law career in mind for him.[16] When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a Congregational church.[17][18][19] At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school.[20] When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students.[21] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine."[22] After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.[23] At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students. He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success."[22] At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.[24] In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives.[25] Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT[26] and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.[27] While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft. The Poker Room in Currier House at Harvard University, in which Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer formed Microsoft In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems[28] presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates's solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years;[28][29] its successor is faster by only one percent.[28] His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.[30] Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard[31] and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.[32] The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company.[33] He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.[31] After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.[34] In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS,[35] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque.[35] Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.[35] Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.[36] This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.[35] The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979, after the former rejected his loan application.[34] During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.[37] IBM approached Microsoft in July 1980 regarding its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC.[38] The computer company first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.[39] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000.[40] Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system.[40] They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.[41] Despite IBM's name on the operating system the press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the new computer, with PC Magazine asking if Gates were "The Man Behind The Machine?"[38] He oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board.[34] Windows Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences caused the partnership to deteriorate. It ended in 1991, when Gates led Microsoft to develop a version of OS/2 independently from IBM.[42] Management style From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it. He gained a reputation for being distant to others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."[43] As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.[44][45] He often interrupted presentations with such comments as, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"[46] and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?"[47] The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced.[46] When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."[48][49][50] Gates's role at Microsoft for most of its history was primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100,[51] but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products.[49] On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.[52] Further information: United States Microsoft antitrust case and European Union Microsoft competition case Bill Gates giving his deposition at Microsoft on August 27, 1998 Many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gates's approval. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as, "compete", "concerned", and "we".[53] BusinessWeek reported: Gates later said he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said, "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree."[55] Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, and blocking competition, both in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.[55] Appearance in ads Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation.[56] As they are walking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after getting a yes, he then asks if they are working on a way to make computers edible, again getting a yes. Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's own show about "nothing" (Seinfeld).[57] In a second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people. Post-Microsoft Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft (where he remains Chairman[58]), Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the video rights to the Messenger Lectures series called The Character of Physical Law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. The videos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva.[59][60] In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures.[61][62] Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have two daughters, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996) and Phoebe Adele (2002), and one son, Rory John (1999). The Gates's home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000. His 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m2) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500 sq ft (230 m2) gym and a 1,000 sq ft (93 m2) dining room.[63] Also among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.[64] Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.[65] He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.[66][67] Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire".[68] Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought.[69] Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667.[70] He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.[71] In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the second wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim. Gates (second from right) with Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Umaru Yar'Adua of Nigeria and other participants in a 'Call to Action on the Millennium Development Goals' during the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Further information: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Gates began to appreciate the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted suggesting that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.[72] The foundation allows benefactors access to information regarding how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.[73][74] The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.[75] As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.[76] They plan to eventually give 95% of their wealth to charity.[77] The foundation was at the same time criticized because it invests assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been charged with worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.[78] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments, to assess social responsibility.[79] It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.[80] The Gates Millennium Scholars program has been criticized for its exclusion of Caucasian students.[81][82] Gates's wife urged people to learn a lesson from the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in The Power of Half.[83] Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) signed a promise they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time.[84][85][86] In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in the pages of Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.[87] Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007 Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts.[88] In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[89] Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.[90] In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000;[91] the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002;[92] Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007;[93] Harvard University in June 2007;[94] the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in January 2008,[95] and Cambridge University in June 2009.[96] He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.[97] Gates was also made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005,[98] in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.[99] In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".[100] In October 2009, it was announced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work. In 2010 he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.[101] In 2011, Bill Gates was ranked as the fifth most powerful person in the world, according to rankings by Forbes magazine.[102] Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, Washington. bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates. Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company. TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company. To date, Bill Gates has authored two books. The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995, and it summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. Business @ the Speed of Thought was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help getting an edge on the competition. Gates has appeared in a number of documentaries, including the 2010 documentary film Waiting for "Superman",[103] and the BBC documentary series The Virtual Revolution. Gates was prominently featured in Pirates of Silicon Valley, a 1999 film which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. He was portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall. ... ...... General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States.[1][4] The company operates through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance and Consumer & Industrial.[5][6] In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 6th largest firm in the U.S. by gross revenue,[7] as well as the 14th most profitable.[8] However, the company is currently listed the 3rd largest in the world among the Forbes Global 2000, further metrics being taken into account.[9] Other rankings for 2011/2012 include No. 7 company for leaders (Fortune), No. 5 best global brand (Interbrand), No. 63 green company (Newsweek), No. 15 most admired company (Fortune), and No. 19 most innovative company (Fast Company).[10] By 1890, Thomas Alva Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric. At about the same time, Thomson-Houston Electric Company, under the leadership of Charles Coffin, gained access to a number of key patents through the acquisition of a number of competitors. Subsequently, General Electric was formed by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric of Schenectady, New York and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts and both plants remain in operation under the GE banner to this day.[11] The company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric's Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed. Public company In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average and still remains after 116 years, the only one remaining on the Dow index. General Electric has however not been on the DOW continuously.[12] 23 Ton diesel electric locomotive made at the General Electric Corp. plant in Schenectady, New York In 1911 the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) was absorbed into General Electric's existing lighting business. GE then established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio. Nela Park is still the headquarters for GE's lighting business. RCA Main article: Radio Corporation of America The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was founded by GE in 1919 to further international radio. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales from 1919, when GE began production, until separation in 1930.[13] RCA would quickly grow into an industrial giant of its own. Power generation See also: GE Wind Energy GE's long history of working with turbines in the power-generation field gave them the engineering know-how to move into the new field of aircraft turbosuperchargers. Led by Sanford Alexander Moss, GE introduced the first superchargers during World War I, and continued to develop them during the Interwar period. Superchargers became indispensable in the years immediately prior to World War II, and GE was the world leader in exhaust-driven supercharging when the war started. This experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine that was demonstrated in the United States in 1941. Although their early work with Whittle's designs was later handed to Allison Engine Company, GE Aviation emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, second only to the well-founded and older British company, Rolls-Royce plc, which led the way in the design and manufacture of innovative, reliable, efficient, high-performance, heavy-duty jet engines. In 2002, GE acquired the windpower assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings.[14] Enron Wind was the only surviving U.S. manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time, and GE increased engineering and supplies for the Wind Division and doubled the annual sales to $1.2 billion in 2003.[15] It acquired ScanWind in 2009.[16] Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs, refrigerators and other products in the 1980s and 1990s to protest GE’s role in nuclear weapons production.[17] Computing GE was one of the eight major computer companies during the 1960s — with IBM, the largest, called "Snow White" followed by the "Seven Dwarfs": Burroughs, NCR, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA, UNIVAC and GE. GE had an extensive line of general purpose and special purpose computers. Among them were the GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 series general purpose computers, the GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060 real time process control computers, the Datanet 30 and Datanet 355 message switching computers (Datanet 30 and 355 were also used as front end processors for GE mainframe computers). A Datanet 500 computer was designed, but never sold. In 1962, GE started developing its GECOS (later renamed GCOS) operating system, originally for batch processing, but later extended to timesharing and transaction processing. Versions of GCOS are still in use today. In 1964–1969, GE and Bell Laboratories (which soon dropped out) joined with MIT to develop the pioneering and influential Multics operating system on the GE 645 mainframe computer. The project took longer than expected and was not a major commercial success, but it demonstrated important concepts such as single level store, dynamic linking, hierarchical file system, and ring-oriented security. Active development of Multics continued until 1985. It has been said[by whom?] that GE got into computer manufacturing because in the 1950s they were the largest user of computers outside of the United States federal government. However, in 1970, GE sold its computer division to Honeywell, exiting the computer manufacturing industry, though it retained its timesharing operations for some years afterwards. GE was a major provider of computer timesharing services, through General Electric Information Services (GEIS, now GXS), offering online computing services that included GEnie. Acquisitions This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009) For a complete list of acquisitions and divestitures, see General Electric timeline In 1986 GE reacquired RCA, primarily for the NBC television network (also parent of Telemundo Communications Group). The remainder was sold to various companies, including Bertelsmann (Bertelsmann acquired RCA Records) and Thomson SA which traces its roots to Thomson-Houston, one of the original components of GE. Also in 1986, Kidder, Peabody & Co. a U.S.-based securities firm was sold to GE and following heavy losses was subsequently sold to PaineWebber in 1994.[18] In 2002 Francisco Partners and Norwest Venture Partners acquired a division of GE called GE Information Systems (GEIS). The new company, named GXS, is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. GXS is a leading provider of B2B e-Commerce solutions. GE maintains a minority ownership position in GXS. Also in 2002, GE bought wind turbine manufacturing assets of Enron Wind after the Enron scandals.[19] In 2004 GE bought 80% of Universal Pictures from Vivendi. Vivendi bought 20% of NBC forming the company NBCUniversal. GE then owned 80% of NBC Universal and Vivendi owned 20%. As of January 28, 2011 GE owns 49% and Comcast 51%. In 2004 GE completed the spin-off of most of its mortgage and life insurance assets into an independent company, Genworth Financial, based in Richmond, Virginia. Genpact formerly known as GE Capital International Services (GECIS) was established by GE in late 1997 as its captive India based BPO. GE sold 60% stake in Genpact to General Atlantic and Oak Hill Capital Partners in 2005 and hived off Genpact into an independent business. GE is still a major client to Genpact getting its services in customer service, finance, information technology and analytics. GE Plastics was sold in 2007 to SABIC. In May 2007, GE acquired Smiths Aerospace for $4.8 billion. In May 2008, GE announced it was exploring options for divesting the bulk of its Consumer and Industrial business. General Electric's Schenectady, New York facilities (including GE's original headquarters) are assigned the ZIP code 12345. (All Schenectady ZIP codes begin with 123, but no others begin with 1234.) On December 3, 2009, it was announced that NBCUniversal will become a joint venture between GE and cable television operator Comcast. The cable giant will hold a controlling interest in the company, while GE retains a 49% stake and will buy out shares currently owned by Vivendi.[20] Vivendi will sell its 20% stake in NBCUniversal to GE for US$5.8 billion. Vivendi will sell 7.66% of NBCUniversal to GE for US$2 billion if the GE/Comcast deal is not completed by September 2010 and then sell the remaining 12.34% stake of NBCUniversal to GE for US$3.8 billion when the deal is completed or to the public via an IPO if the deal is not completed.[21][22] On March 1, 2010, General Electric (GE) announced that the company is planning to sell its 20.85% stake in Turkey-based Garanti Bank.[23] In August 2010, GE Healthcare signed a strategic partnership to bring cardiovascular Computed Tomography (CT) technology from start-up Arineta Ltd. of Israel to the hospital market.[24] In October 2010, General Electric acquired gas engines manufacture Dresser Inc. for a $3 billion deal and also bought a $1.6 billion portfolio of retail credit cards from Citigroup Inc. This is the first major deal since the start of the financial crisis.[25] On October 14, 2010, GE announced acquisition of data migration & SCADA simulation specialists Opal Software.[26] December 2010: For the second times of this year (after Dresser acquisition), General Electric Co. buy oil sector company British Wellstream Holding Plc. an oil drilling pipe maker for 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion).[27] February 2011: The company has agreed to buy the well-support division of John Wood Group Plc for about $2.8 billion. It is another aggressive moves recently of GE Oil & Gas made GE's acquisition was the largest of oil-service unit world wide in 2010.[28] March 2011: GE announced it has completed the acquisition of privately held Lineage Power Holdings, Inc., from The Gores Group, LLC. [29] GE Capital sold its $2 billion dollar Mexican assets to Santander for $162 million and exit the business in Mexico. Santander will additionally assume the portfolio debts of GE Capital in the country. The transaction will be finished at first half of 2011. GE Capital will focus in the core business and will shed its non-core assets.[30] In June 2012,CEO and President of GE said that the company would invest 300 crores to accelerate its businesses in Karnataka.[31] Corporate affairs Classic GE neon sign GE is a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Its New York main offices are located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center, known as the GE Building for the prominent GE logo on the roof. NBC's headquarters and main studios are also located in the building. Through its RCA subsidiary, it has been associated with the Center since its construction in the 1930s. The company describes itself as composed of a number of primary business units or "businesses." Each unit is itself a vast enterprise, many of which would, even as a standalone company, rank in the Fortune 500[citation needed]. The list of GE businesses varies over time as the result of acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations. GE's tax return is the largest return filed in the United States; the 2005 return was approximately 24,000 pages when printed out, and 237 megabytes when submitted electronically.[32] The company also "spends more on U.S. lobbying than any other company."[33] In 2005 GE launched its "Ecomagination" initiative in an attempt to position itself as a "green" company. GE is currently one of the biggest players in the wind power industry, and it is also developing new environment-friendly products such as hybrid locomotives, desalination and water reuse solutions, and photovoltaic cells. The company "plans to build the largest solar-panel-making factory in the U.S.,"[33] and has set goals for its subsidiaries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.[34] On May 21, 2007, GE announced it would sell its GE Plastics division to petrochemicals manufacturer SABIC for net proceeds of $11.6 billion. The transaction took place on August 31, 2007, and the company name changed to SABIC Innovative Plastics, with Brian Gladden as CEO.[35] CEO Main article: Jeffrey R. Immelt Jeffrey Immelt is the current chairman of the board and chief executive officer of GE. He was selected by GE's Board of Directors in 2000 to replace John Francis Welch Jr. (Jack Welch) following his retirement. Previously, Immelt had headed GE's Medical Systems division (now GE Healthcare) as its President and CEO. His tenure as the Chairman and CEO started at a time of crisis — he took over the role on September 7, 2001[36] four days before the terrorist attacks on the United States, which killed two employees and cost GE's insurance business $600 million — as well as having a direct effect on the company's Aircraft Engines sector. Immelt has also been selected as one of President Obama's financial advisors concerning the economic rescue plan. Businesses Main article: List of assets owned by General Electric GE's divisions include GE Capital, GE Energy, GE Technology Infrastructure, and GE Home & Business Solutions Through these businesses, GE participates in a wide variety of markets including the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity (e.g. nuclear, gas and solar), lighting, industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, railway locomotives, aircraft jet engines, and aviation services. It co-owns NBCUniversal with Comcast. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services as well. It has a presence in over 100 countries. GE gauges to control a railway locomotive at a museum near Saskatoon, Canada[37] GE also produces General Imaging digital cameras.[38] In 2010, General Imaging released the Bridge Camera GE X5 with 14MP and 15x optical zoom.[39] In 2011, it is replaced by 16MP GE X500 with optional red color in Japan besides traditional black or white color in world wide.[40] Since over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan. Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT Corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc.) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE's success. It was announced on May 4, 2008 that GE would auction off its appliances business for an expected sale of $5–8 billion.[41] However, this plan fell through as a result of the recession. Corporate recognition and rankings In 2011, Fortune ranked GE the 6th largest firm in the U.S.,[7] as well as the 14th most profitable.[8] Other rankings for 2011/2012 include the following:[10] #7 company for leaders (Fortune) #5 best global brand (Interbrand) #82 green company (Newsweek) #15 most admired company (Fortune) #19 most innovative company (Fast Company). For 2010, GE's brand was valued at $42.8 billion.[42] CEO Jeffrey Immelt had a set of changes in the presentation of the brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE. The changes included a new corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE logo, a new customized font (GE Inspira), and a new slogan, "imagination at work" replacing the longtime slogan "we bring good things to life", composed by David Lucas. The standard requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual "white space" to documents and advertising to promote an open and approachable company. The changes were designed by Wolff Olins and are used extensively on GE's marketing, literature and website. Recent controversies The six reactors in the 2011 Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe had been designed by General Electric, the design of which had been criticised as far back as 1972.[43] In March 2011, The New York Times reported that, despite earning $14.2 billion in worldwide profits, including more than $5 billion from U.S. operations, General Electric did not owe taxes in 2010. General Electric had a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. This same article also pointed out that GE has reduced its American workforce by one fifth since 2002.[44] In December 2011, the non-partisan organization Public Campaign criticized General Electric for spending $84.35 million on lobbying and not paying any taxes during 2008–2010, instead getting $4.7 billion in tax rebates, despite making a profit of $10.4 billion, laying off 4,168 workers since 2008, and increasing executive pay by 27% to $75.9 million in 2010 for the top 5 executives.[45] Environmental record Pollution GE has a history of some of its activities giving rise to large-scale air and water pollution. Based on year 2000 data,[46] researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute listed the corporation as the fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 tons) of toxic chemicals released into the air.[47] GE has also been implicated in the creation of toxic waste. According to EPA documents, only the United States Government, Honeywell, and Chevron Corporation are responsible for producing more Superfund toxic waste sites.[48] In 1983, New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to compel GE to pay for the cleanup of what was claimed to be more than 100,000 tons of chemicals dumped (legally, at the time) from their plant in Waterford, New York.[49] In 1999, the company agreed to pay a $250 million settlement in connection with claims it polluted the Housatonic River (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) and other sites with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances.[50] From approximately 1947 to 1977, GE discharged as much as 1.3 million pounds of PCBs from its capacitor manufacturing plants at the Hudson Falls and Fort Edward upstate New York facilities into the Hudson River.[51] GE fought a media and political battle to avoid cleaning up the river and countered that dredging the river would actually stir up PCBs.[52] In 2002, GE was ordered to clean up a 40-mile (64 km) stretch of the Hudson River it had contaminated.[53] In 2003, acting on concerns that the plan proposed by GE did not "provide for adequate protection of public health and the environment," the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a unilateral administrative order for the company to "address cleanup at the GE site" in Rome, Georgia, also contaminated with PCBs.[54] The nuclear reactors involved in the 2011 crisis at Fukushima I in Japan are GE designs,[55] and the architectural designs were done by Ebasco,[56] formerly owned by GE. Concerns over the design and safety of these reactors were raised as early as 1975.[57] Environmental initiatives On June 6, 2011, GE announced that it has licensed solar thermal technology from California-based eSolar for use in power plants that use both solar and natural gas.[58] On May 26, 2011, GE unveiled its EV Solar Carport, a carport that incorporates solar panels on its roof, with electric vehicle charging stations under its cover.[59] In May 2005 GE announced the launch of a program called "Ecomagination," intended, in the words of CEO Jeff Immelt "to develop tomorrow's solutions such as solar energy, hybrid locomotives, fuel cells, lower-emission aircraft engines, lighter and stronger durable materials, efficient lighting, and water purification technology”.[60] The announcement prompted an op-ed piece in The New York Times to observe that, "while General Electric's increased emphasis on clean technology will probably result in improved products and benefit its bottom line, Mr. Immelt's credibility as a spokesman on national environmental policy is fatally flawed because of his company's intransigence in cleaning up its own toxic legacy."[61] GE has said that it will invest $1.4 billion in clean technology research and development in 2008 as part of its Ecomagination initiative. As of October 2008, the scheme had resulted in 70 green products being brought to market, ranging from halogen lamps to biogas engines. In 2007, GE raised the annual revenue target for its Ecomagination initiative from $20 billion in 2010 to $25 billion following positive market response to its new product lines.[62] In 2010, GE continued to raise its investment by adding $10 billion into Ecomagination over the next five years.[63] GE (General Electric) Energy's renewable energy business has expanded greatly, to keep up with growing U.S. and global demand for clean energy. Since entering the renewable energy industry in 2002, GE has invested more than $850 million in renewable energy technology. In August 2008 it acquired Kelman Ltd,[64] a Northern Ireland company specializing in advanced monitoring and diagnostics technologies for transformers used in renewable energy generation, and announced an expansion of its business in Northern Ireland in May 2010.[65] In 2009, GE's renewable energy initiatives, which include solar power, wind power and GE Jenbacher gas engines using renewable and non-renewable methane-based gases,[66] employ more than 4,900 people globally and have created more than 10,000 supporting jobs.[67] GE Energy and Orion New Zealand Limited (Orion) have announced implementation of the first phase of a GE network management system to help improve power reliability for customers. GE's ENMAC Distribution Management System is the foundation of Orion's initiative. The system of smart grid technologies will significantly improve the network company's ability to manage big network emergencies and help it to restore power faster when outages occur. GE unveiled a 40W replacement Energy Smart LED bulb, to be available late 2010 or early 2011. The company claims that the new LED bulb will provide a 77% energy savings and produce nearly the same light output as a 40W incandescent bulb, while lasting more than 25 times as long.[68] Educational initiatives GE Healthcare is collaborating with The Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Medical University of South Carolina to offer an integrated radiology curriculum during their respective MD Programs led by investigators of the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity study.[69] GE has donated over one million dollars of Logiq E Ultrasound equipment to these two institutions.[70] Legal issues On August 4, 2009 the SEC fined General Electric $50 million for breaking accounting rules in two separate cases, misleading investors into believing GE would meet or beat earnings expectations.[71] GE has faced criminal action regarding its defense related operations. GE was convicted in 1990 of defrauding the US Department of Defense, and again in 1992 on charges of corrupt practices in the sale of jet engines to Israel.[72] Notable appearances in media This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012) GE was the focus of a 1991 short subject Academy Award-winning documentary, Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment,[73] that juxtaposed GE's "We Bring Good Things To Life" commercials with the true stories of workers and neighbors whose lives have been affected by the company's activities involving nuclear weapons.[74] In the early 1950s Kurt Vonnegut was a writer for General Electric. A number of his novels and stories (notably Cat's Cradle) refer to the fictional city of Ilium, which appears to be loosely based on Schenectady, New York.[citation needed] The Ilium Works is the setting for the short story "Deer in the Works". The NBC sitcom 30 Rock is set at the NBC Studios in the GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Center (hence the title). All characters in the main cast are NBC (and therefore GE) employees, and one character, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is portrayed as having risen through the ranks of GE management to become Vice President of NBC's East Coast operations through the company's microwave oven division. ... ...... Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is an American multinational corporation which provides Internet-related products and services, including Internet search, cloud computing, software and advertising technologies.[5] Advertising revenues from AdWords generate almost all of the company's profits.[6][7] The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stake. Google was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. The company's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful",[8] and the company's unofficial slogan is "Don't be evil".[9][10] In 2006, the company moved to its current headquarters in Mountain View, California. Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the company's core web search engine. The company offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking. Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications for web browsing, organizing & editing photos, and instant messaging. Google leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, as well as the Google Chrome OS browser-only operating system,[11] found on specialized netbooks called Chromebooks. Google has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the world,[12] and process over one billion search requests[13] and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day.[14][15][16][17] As of September 2009 Alexa listed the main U.S.-focused google.com site as the Internet's most visited website, and numerous international Google sites as being in the top hundred, as well as several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube, Blogger and Orkut.[18] Google also ranks number two in the BrandZ brand equity database.[19] The dominant market position of Google's services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright, and censorship.[20][21] Main article: History of Google Google's homepage in 1998 Google's original homepage had a simple design, since its founders were not experienced in HTML, the language for designing web pages.[22] Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[23] While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites.[24] They called this new technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.[25][26] A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking.[27] The technology in RankDex would be patented[28] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.[29][30] Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.[31][32][33] Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol",[34][35] the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine wants to provide large quantities of information for people.[36] Originally, Google ran under the Stanford University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu.[37] The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997,[38] and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend's (Susan Wojcicki[23]) garage in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.[23][39][40] In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed 1 billion for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million).[41] Financing and initial public offering Google's first servers, showing lots of exposed wiring and circuit boards Google's first production server. The first iteration of Google production servers was built with inexpensive hardware.[42] The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of US$100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was even incorporated.[43] Early in 1999, while still graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much of their time from academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer, and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced,[44] with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[43] Google's initial public offering (IPO) took place five years later on August 19, 2004. At that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024.[45] The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share.[46][47] Shares were sold in a unique online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[48][49] The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[50] The vast majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place.[51] Some people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires.[52] As a reply to this concern, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company's culture.[53] In 2005, however, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy.[54][55][56] In an effort to maintain the company's unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment.[57] Google has also faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees.[58][59] The stock's performance after the IPO went well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007,[60] primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market.[61] The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.[61] The company is now listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG and under the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1. Growth In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[62] The next year, against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine,[63] Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[23] In order to maintain an uncluttered page design and increase speed, advertisements were solely text-based. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bids and click-throughs, with bidding starting at five cents per click.[23] This model of selling keyword advertising was first pioneered by Goto.com, an Idealab spin-off created by Bill Gross.[64][65] When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company's pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court, with Google agreeing to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.[66] During this time, Google was granted a patent describing its PageRank mechanism.[67] The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased its current office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[68] The complex has since come to be known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Three years later, Google would buy the property from SGI for $319 million.[69] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."[70][71] Acquisitions and partnerships See also: List of acquisitions by Google Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc.[72] The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Two years later, Google bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.[73] On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies.[74] Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million.[75] The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million.[76] Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, "we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it".[77] In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux.[78] In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for everything from research to advertising. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of offices.[79] The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other's technologies.[80] The company also partnered with AOL of Time Warner,[81] to enhance each other's video search services. Google's 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.[82] Google would later launch "Adsense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.[83] Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on popular social networking site MySpace.[84] In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.[85] Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing.[86] In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales.[87] In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, a service that follows Santa Claus' progress on Christmas Eve,[88] using Google Earth to "track Santa" in 3-D for the first time,[89] and displacing former sponsor AOL. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel.[90] In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008.[91] Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine's photographs as part of its latest partnership. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine.[92] The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status.[93] In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable energy project, putting $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, or enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty percent stake in the project to get funding for its development.[94] Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway-based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition will enable Google to add telephone-style services to its list of products.[95] On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This purchase occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase.[96] Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount.[97] In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years.[98] On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents.[99] On August 15, 2011, Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion[100][101] subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Google's blog, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page revealed that Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility is a strategic move to strengthen Google's patent portfolio. The company's Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have taken to court Android device makers such as HTC, Samsung and Motorola.[102] The merger was completed on the 22 May 2012, after the approval of People's Republic of China.[103] This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies,[104] mainly Apple and Microsoft[102] and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android.[105] In order to expand its social networing services, Google plans to purchase Silicon Valley start up Meebo.[106] On June 5, 2012 Google announced it acquired Quickoffice, a company widely known for their mobile productivity suite for both iOS and Android. Google plans to integrate Quickoffice's technology into its own product suite.[107] Google Data Centers Google Inc. currently owns and operates 6 data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011 the company has announced to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and has already purchased the land for them. Google said they will be operational in one to two years.[108] Products and services See also: List of Google products Advertising Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.[109] For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.[110] Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped make it one of the biggest brokers in the market. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them.[111][112] Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.[113] Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.[114] One of the disadvantages and criticisms of this program is Google's inability to combat click fraud, when a person or automated script "clicks" on advertisements without being interested in the product, which causes that advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid.[115] Furthermore, there has been controversy over Google's "search within a search", where a secondary search box enables the user to find what they are looking for within a particular website. It was soon reported that when performing a search within a search for a specific company, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up along with those results, drawing users away from the site they were originally searching.[116] Another complaint against Google's advertising is its censorship of advertisers, though many cases concern compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For example, in February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship's sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorial policy at the time, stating "Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."[117] The policy was later changed.[118] In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due to antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008.[119][120] In an attempt to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products.[121] Each week, two teams compete at putting Google's technology into new contexts. Search Engine Journal said Demo Slam is "a place where creative and tech-savvy people can create videos to help the rest of the world understand all the newest and greatest technology out there."[122] Search engine Main article: Google Search On February 14, 2012, Google updated its homepage with a minor twist. There are no red lines above the options in the black bar, and there is a tab space before the "+You". The sign-in button has also changed, it is no longer in the black bar, instead under it as a button. Google Search, a web search engine, is the company's most popular service. According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[123] Google indexes billions[124] of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Despite its popularity, it has received criticism from a number of organizations. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.[125] In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.[126][127] Furthermore, the publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giant's new instant search feature will not search.[128] Google Watch has also criticized Google's PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites,[129] and has made allegations about connections between Google and the NSA and the CIA.[130] Despite criticism, the basic search engine has spread to specific services as well, including an image search engine, the Google News search site, Google Maps, and more. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to upload, search, and watch videos from the Internet.[131] In 2009, however, uploads to Google Video were discontinued so that Google could focus more on the search aspect of the service.[132] The company even developed Google Desktop, a desktop search application used to search for files local to one's computer (discontinued in 2011). Google's most recent development in search is its partnership with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to create Google Patents, which enables free access to information about patents and trademarks. One of the more controversial search services Google hosts is Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this new service. Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books.[133] Google eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia and Canada.[134] Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinière (Éditions du Seuil) from its database.[135] In competition with Amazon.com, Google plans to sell digital versions of new books.[136] On July 21, 2010, in response to newcomer Bing, Google updated its image search to display a streaming sequence of thumbnails that enlarge when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch per page format, on July 23, 2010, dictionary definitions for certain English words began appearing above the linked results for web searches.[137] Google's algorithm was changed in March 2011, giving more weight to high-quality content[138] possibly by the use of n-grams to remove spun content.[139] Productivity tools In addition to its standard web search services, Google has released over the years a number of online productivity tools. Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004,[140] and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007.[141] The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009,[142] at which time it had 146 million users monthly.[143] The service would be the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage, and the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum.[140] The service currently offers over 7600 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for US$0.25 per 1 GB per year.[144] Furthermore, software developers know Gmail for its pioneering use of AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser.[145] One criticism of Gmail has been the potential for data disclosure, a risk associated with many online web applications. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft's CEO),[146] Liz Figueroa,[147] Mark Rasch,[148] and the editors of Google Watch[149] believe the processing of email message content goes beyond proper use, but Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements.[150] Google Docs, another part of Google's productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, not dissimilar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, where it was released as an invitation-only preview.[151] On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing program,[152] which would be combined with Google Docs on October 10.[153] A program to edit presentations would complete the set on September 17, 2007,[154] before all three services were taken out of beta along with Gmail, Google Calendar and all products from the Google Apps Suite on July 7, 2009.[142] Enterprise products Google's search appliance Google's search appliance at the 2008 RSA Conference Google entered the enterprise market in February 2002 with the launch of its Google Search Appliance, targeted toward providing search technology for larger organizations.[23] Google launched the Mini three years later, which was targeted at smaller organizations. Late in 2006, Google began to sell Custom Search Business Edition, providing customers with an advertising-free window into Google.com's index. The service was renamed Google Site Search in 2008.[155] Google Apps is another primary Google enterprise service offering. The service allows organizations to bring Google's web application offerings, such as Gmail and Google Docs, into its own domain. The service is available in several editions: a basic free edition (formerly known as Google Apps Standard edition), Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Education, and Google Apps for Government. Special editions include extras such as more disk space, API access, a service level agreement (SLA), premium support, and additional apps. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini[156] and proceeded to integrate the company's security technologies into Google Apps[157] under the name Google Postini Services.[158] Additional Google enterprise offerings include geospatial solutions (e.g., Google Earth and Google Maps); security and archival solutions (e.g., Postini), and Chromebooks for business and education (i.e., personal computing run on browser-centric operating systems). Other products Galaxy Nexus, the latest "Google phone" Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. Browser extensions allow for easy access to Google Translate from the browser. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program "learns" from professionally translated documents, specifically UN and European Parliament proceedings.[159] Furthermore, a "suggest a better translation" feature accompanies the translated text, allowing users to indicate where the current translation is incorrect or otherwise inferior to another translation. Google launched its Google News service in 2002. The site proclaimed that the company had created a "highly unusual" site that "offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. Google employs no editors, managing editors, or executive editors."[160] The site hosted less licensed news content than Yahoo! News, and instead presented topically selected links to news and opinion pieces along with reproductions of their headlines, story leads, and photographs.[161] The photographs are typically reduced to thumbnail size and placed next to headlines from other news sources on the same topic in order to minimize copyright infringement claims. Nevertheless, Agence France Presse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News.[162] In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access throughout the city of San Francisco along with Internet service provider EarthLink. Large telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed such efforts, claiming it was "unfair competition" and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In his testimony before Congress on network neutrality in 2006, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf blamed such tactics on the fact that nearly half of all consumers lack meaningful choice in broadband providers.[163] Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain View, California.[164] One year later, reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone, possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone.[165][166][167] The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license.[168] Google provides a software development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phones. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone.[169] More than a year later on January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One.[170] Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and even a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. Google Wave was described as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. The service is Google's "email redesigned", with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave was previously in a developer's preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Google's I/O keynote. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open source web browser,[171] which was then released on September 2, 2008. The next year, on July 7, 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account.[172][173] Google Goggles is a mobile application available on Android and iOS used for image recognition and non-text-based search. In addition to scanning QR codes, the app can recognize historic landmarks, import business cards, and solve Sudoku puzzles.[174] While Goggles could originally identify people as well, Google has limited that functionality as a privacy protection.[175] In 2011, Google announced that it will unveil Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments.[176] In late June 2011, Google soft-launched a social networking service called Google+.[177] On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in this "limited" trial phase.[178] After four weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million users.[179] Corporate affairs and culture Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page sitting together Then-CEO, now Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt with Sergey Brin and Larry Page (left to right) in 2008. Asian man in his twenties wearing a blue, green, yellow and red propeller hat that says "Noogle" New employees are called "Nooglers," and are given a propeller beanie cap to wear on their first Friday.[180] Google is known for having an informal corporate culture. On Fortune magazine's list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012[181][182][183] and fourth in 2009 and 2010.[184][185] Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the world’s most attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent attraction index.[186] Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "you can make money without doing evil," "you can be serious without a suit," and "work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun."[187] Employees Google's stock performance following its initial public offering has enabled many early employees to be competitively compensated.[188] After the company's IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.[189] In 2007 and through early 2008, several top executives left Google. In October 2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook[190] along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer.[191] In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer of Facebook[192] while Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops, an online retail company that was renamed Hayneedle in 2009.[193] On April 4, 2011 Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google.[194] As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.[195] In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off.[196] In March 2011, consulting firm Universum released data that Google ranks the first on list of ideal employers by nearly 25 percent chosen from more than 10,000 young professionals asked.[197] Fortune magazine ranked Google as number one on its 100 Best Companies To Work For list for 2012.[198] Googleplex Main article: Googleplex The Googleplex The Googleplex, Google's original and largest corporate campus Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California is referred to as "the Googleplex", a play on words on the number googolplex and the headquarters itself being a complex of buildings. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, table football, a baby grand piano, a billiard table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks, with special emphasis placed on nutrition.[199] Free food is available to employees 24/7, with paid vending machines prorated favoring nutritional value.[200] In 2006, Google moved into 311,000 square feet (28,900 m2) of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.[201] The office was specially designed and built for Google, and it now houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships.[201] In 2003, they added an engineering staff in New York City, which has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets, and others. It is estimated that the building costs Google $10 million per year to rent and is similar in design and functionality to its Mountain View headquarters, including table football, air hockey, and ping-pong tables, as well as a video game area. In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon's campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping related advertisement coding and smartphone applications and programs.[202][203] By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan.[204] Furthermore, Google has offices all around the world, and in the United States, including Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York City; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Reston, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Google's NYC office building Google's NYC office building houses its largest advertising sales team.[201] Google is taking steps to ensure that its operations are environmentally sound. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus' energy needs.[205] The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world.[205] In addition, Google announced in 2009 that it was deploying herds of goats to keep grassland around the Googleplex short, helping to prevent the threat from seasonal bush fires while also reducing the carbon footprint of mowing the extensive grounds.[206][207] The idea of trimming lawns using goats originated from R. J. Widlar, an engineer who worked for National Semiconductor.[208] Despite this, Google has faced accusations in Harper's Magazine of being an "energy glutton", and was accused of employing its "Don't be evil" motto as well as its very public energy-saving campaigns as an attempt to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy its servers actually require.[209] Easter eggs and April Fools' Day jokes Main article: List of Google's hoaxes and easter eggs Google has a tradition of creating April Fools' Day jokes. For example, Google MentalPlex allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web.[210] In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet.[211] Also in 2007, Google's Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, allowing users to have email messages printed and shipped to them.[212] In 2008 Google announced Gmail Custom time where users could change the time that the email was sent.[213] In 2010, Google jokingly changed its company name to Topeka in honor of Topeka, Kansas, whose mayor actually changed the city's name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Google's decision in its new Google Fiber Project.[214][215] In 2011, Google announced Gmail Motion, an interactive way of controlling Gmail and the computer with body movements via the user's webcam.[216] In addition to April Fools' Day jokes, Google's services contain a number of Easter eggs. For instance, Google included the Swedish Chef's "Bork bork bork," Pig Latin, "Hacker" or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine.[217] In addition, the search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[218] Furthermore, when searching the word "recursion", the spell-checker's result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link.[219] Likewise, when searching for the word "anagram," meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Google's suggestion feature displays "Did you mean: nag a ram?"[220] In Google Maps, searching for directions between places separated by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to "kayak across the Pacific Ocean." During FIFA World Cup 2010, search queries like "World Cup", "FIFA", etc. caused the "Goooo...gle" page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read "Goooo...al!" instead.[221] Typing in 'Do a barrel roll' in the search engine will make the page do a 360° rotation. Philanthropy Main article: Google.org In 2004, Google formed the not-for-profit philanthropic Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion.[222] The mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google hired Dr. Larry Brilliant as the program's executive director in 2004[223] and the current director is Megan Smith.[224] In 2008 Google announced its "project 10100" which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites.[225] After two years of silence, during which many wondered what had happened to the program,[226] Google revealed the winners of the project, giving a total of ten million dollars to various ideas ranging from non-profit organizations that promote education to a website that intends to make all legal documents public and online.[227] In 2011, Google donated 1 million euros to International Mathematical Olympiad to support the next five annual International Mathematical Olympiads (2011–2015).[228] Network neutrality Google is a noted supporter of network neutrality. According to Google's Guide to Net Neutrality: Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days... Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online.[229] On February 7, 2006, Vint Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol (IP), and current Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google, in testimony before Congress, said, "allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success."[230] Privacy Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a 2007 interview with the Financial Times: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?'".[231] Schmidt reaffirmed this 2010 in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."[232] On December 2009, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared after privacy concerns: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."[233] Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on its report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.[234][235][236] At the Techonomy conference in 2010 Eric Schmidt predicted that "true transparency and no anonymity" is the way forward for the internet: "In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it." He also said that "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!"[237] The non-profit group Public Information Research launched Google Watch, a website advertised as "a look at Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy issues."[238][239] The site raised questions relating to Google's storage of cookies, which in 2007 had a life span of more than 32 years and incorporated a unique ID that enabled creation of a user data log.[240] Google has also faced criticism with its release of Google Buzz, Google's version of social networking, where Gmail users had their contact lists automatically made public unless they opted out.[241] Google has been criticized for its censorship of certain sites in specific countries and regions. Until March 2010, Google adhered to the Internet censorship policies of China by removing certain search results, arguing that providing no service to Chinese users at all was "more inconsistent with our mission".[242] There were reports in 2010 from leaked diplomatic cables that the Chinese Politburo had hacked into Google's computers as part of a worldwide coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by "government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government."[243] Despite being highly influential in local and national public policy, Google does not disclose its political spending online. In August 2010, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio launched a national campaign urging the corporation to disclose all of its political spending.[244] During 2006–2010 Google Streetview camera cars collected about 600 gigabytes of data from users of unencrypted public and private Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries. No disclosures nor privacy policy was given to those affected, nor to the owners of the Wi-Fi stations. A Google representative claimed that the company was not aware of its own data collection activities until an inquiry from German regulators was received, and that none of this data was used in Google's search engine or other services. A representative of Consumer Watchdog replied, "Once again, Google has demonstrated a lack of concern for privacy. Its computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar." In a sign that legal penalties may result, Google said it will not destroy the data until permitted by regulators. ... ...... International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.[3] The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of three companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale Corporation.[4][5] CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue. In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the #2 largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees (433,362),[2] the #4 largest in terms of market capitalization,[6] the #9 most profitable,[7] and the #19 largest firm in terms of revenue.[8] Globally, the company was ranked the #31 largest in terms of revenue by Forbes for 2011.[9][10] Other rankings for 2011/2012 include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #1 green company worldwide (Newsweek), #5 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).[11] IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company, and has nine research laboratories worldwide.[12] Its employees have garnered four Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[13] Famous inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence. The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002), spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991), and selling off product lines like ThinkPad to Lenovo (2005). Sam Palmisano stepped down as chief executive officer on January 1, 2012, but retained his position as chairman. He was replaced by veteran IBMer Ginni Rometty.[14][15] Main articles: History of IBM and Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation 1880–1929 Thomas J Watson Sr.jpg "THINK" Thomas J. Watson, who led IBM from 1914–1956, discussing the company's motto "THINK" Problems listening to this file? See media help. Starting in the 1880s, various technologies came into existence that would form part of IBM's predecessor company. Julius E. Pitrap patented the computing scale in 1885;[16] Alexander Dey invented the dial recorder (1888);[17] in 1889, Herman Hollerith patented the Electric Tabulating Machine[18] and Willard Bundy invented a time clock to record a worker's arrival and departure time on a paper tape.[19] On June 16, 1911, these technologies and their respective companies were merged by Charles Ranlett Flint to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).[20] The New York City-based company had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; and Toronto, Ontario. It manufactured and sold machinery ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders to meat and cheese slicers, along with tabulators and punched cards. Flint recruited Thomas J. Watson, Sr., from the National Cash Register Company to help lead the company in 1914.[20] Watson implemented "generous sales incentives, a focus on customer service, an insistence on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen and an evangelical fervor for instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker".[21] His favorite slogan, "THINK", became a mantra for C-T-R's employees, and within 11 months of joining C-T-R, Watson became its president.[21] The company focused on providing large-scale, custom-built tabulating solutions for businesses, leaving the market for small office products to others. During Watson's first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million and the company's operations expanded to Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia.[21] On February 14, 1924, C-T-R was renamed the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM),[11] citing the need to align its name with the "growth and extension of [its] activities".[22] 1930–1979 NACA researchers using an IBM type 704 electronic data processing machine in 1957 In 1937, IBM's tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U.S. Government, during its first effort to maintain the employment records for 26 million people pursuant to the Social Security Act,[23] and the Third Reich,[24] largely through the German subsidiary Dehomag. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort (M1 Carbine, and Browning Automatic Rifle). In 1952, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., became president of the company, ending almost 40 years of leadership by his father. In 1956, Arthur L. Samuel of IBM's Poughkeepsie, New York, laboratory programmed an IBM 704 to play checkers using a method in which the machine can "learn" from its own experience. It is believed to be the first "self-learning" program, a demonstration of the concept of artificial intelligence. In 1957, IBM developed the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) scientific programming language. In 1961, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., was elected chairman of the board and Albert L. Williams became president of the company. IBM develops the SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment) reservation system for American Airlines. The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful model line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on July 31, 1961. In 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts, and a year later, the company moved its corporate headquarters from New York City to Armonk, New York. The latter half of that decade saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, with IBM participating in the 1965 Gemini flights, the 1966 Saturn flights, and the 1969 mission to land a man on the moon. On April 7, 1964 IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360. Sold between 1964 and 1978, it was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific. For the first time, companies could upgrade their computing capabilities with a new model without rewriting their applications. In 1973, IBM engineer George J. Laurer developed the Universal Product Code.[25] On October 11, 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3660, a laser-scanning point-of-sale barcode reader which would become the workhorse of grocery checkouts. On June 26, 1974, the first-ever product, a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum, was swiped at Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The pack is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. IBM's Blue Gene supercomputers were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by U.S. President Barack Obama on September 18, 2009. In the late 1970s, IBM underwent some internal convulsions between those in management wanting to concentrate on their bread-and-butter mainframe business, and those wanting the company to invest heavily in the emerging personal computer industry. 1980–present Financial swaps were first introduced to the public in 1981 when IBM and the World Bank entered into a swap agreement.[26] The IBM PC, originally designated IBM 5150, was introduced in 1981, and it soon became the industry standard. In 1991, IBM sold Lexmark, and in 2002, it acquired PwC consulting. In 2003, IBM initiated a project to rewrite its company values. Using its Jam technology, the company hosted Internet-based online discussions on key business issues with 50,000 employees over 3 days. The discussions were analyzed by sophisticated text analysis software (eClassifier) to mine online comments for themes. As a result of the 2003 Jam, the company values were updated to reflect three modern business, marketplace and employee views: "Dedication to every client's success", "Innovation that matters—for our company and for the world", "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships".[27] In 2004, another Jam was conducted during which 52,000 employees exchanged best practices for 72 hours. They focused on finding actionable ideas to support implementation of the values previously identified.[28] IBM showing their various innovations at CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany In 2005 the company sold its personal computer business to Lenovo, and in 2009, it acquired software company SPSS Inc. Later in 2009, IBM's Blue Gene supercomputing program was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by U.S. President Barack Obama. In 2006, IBM launched Secure Blue, a low-cost hardware design for data encryption that can be built into a microprocessor.[29] In 2011, IBM gained worldwide attention for its artificial intelligence program Watson, which was exhibited on Jeopardy! where it won against game show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. As of 2011, IBM had been the top annual recipient of U.S. patents for 19 consecutive years.[30] IBM's closing value of $214 billion on September 29, 2011 surpassed Microsoft which was valued at $213.2 billion. It was the first time since 1996 that IBM exceeded its software rival based on closing price. However, as of June 11, 2012, IBM's value remained less than half of Apple's value of $541 billion.[31] Corporate affairs IBM's headquarter complex is located in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States.[32][33][34] The 283,000-square-foot (26,300 m2) IBM building has three levels of custom curtainwall. The building is located on a 25 acre site.[35] IBM has been headquartered in Armonk since 1964.[36] The company has ten research labs worldwide—Almaden, Austin, Australia, Brazil, China, Israel, India, Tokyo, Watson (New York), and Zurich—with Watson (dedicated in 1961) serving as headquarters for the research division and the site of its annual meeting. Other campus installations include towers in Montreal, Paris, and Atlanta; software labs in Raleigh-Durham, Rome and Toronto; buildings in Chicago, Johannesburg, and Seattle; and facilities in Hakozaki and Yamato. The company also operates the IBM Scientific Center, Hursley House, the Canada Head Office Building, IBM Rochester, and the Somers Office Complex. The company's contributions to architecture and design, including Chicago's 330 North Wabash building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, were recognized with the 1990 Honor Award from the National Building Museum.[37] IBM's Board of Directors, with 14 members, is responsible for the overall management of the company. With Cathie Black's resignation from the board in November 2010, the remaining 13 members (along with their affiliation and year of joining the board) are as follows: Alain J. P. Belda '08 (Alcoa), William R. Brody '07 (Salk Institute / Johns Hopkins University), Kenneth Chenault '98 (American Express), Michael L. Eskew '05 (UPS), Shirley Ann Jackson '05 (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Andrew N. Liveris '10 (Dow Chemical), W. James McNerney, Jr. '09 (Boeing), James W. Owens '06 (Caterpillar), Samuel J. Palmisano '00 (IBM), Joan Spero '04 (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), Sidney Taurel '01 (Eli Lilly), and Lorenzo Zambrano '03 (Cemex).[38] In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the #2 largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees,[2] the #4 largest in terms of market capitalization,[6] the #9 most profitable,[7] and the #19 largest firm in terms of revenue.[8] Globally, the company was ranked the #31 largest firm in terms of revenue by Forbes for 2011.[9] Other rankings for 2011/2012 include the following:[11] For 2010, IBM's brand was valued at $64.7 billion.[40] For 2012, Vault ranked IBM Global Technology Services #1 in tech consulting for cyber security, operations and implementation, and public sector; and #2 in outsourcing.[41] Working at IBM In 2010, IBM employed 105,000 workers in the U.S., a drop of 30,000 since 2003, and 75,000 people in India, up from 9,000 seven years previous.[42] IBM's employee management practices can be traced back to its roots. In 1914, CEO Thomas J. Watson boosted company spirit by creating employee sports teams, hosting family outings, and furnishing a company band. In 1924, the Quarter Century Club, which recognizes employees with 25 years of service, was organized and the first issue of Business Machines, IBM's internal publication, was published. In 1925, the first meeting of the Hundred Percent Club, composed of IBM salesmen who meet their quotas, convened in Atlantic City, New Jersey. IBM was among the first corporations to provide group life insurance (1934), survivor benefits (1935) and paid vacations (1937). In 1932 IBM created an Education Department to oversee training for employees, which oversaw the completion of the IBM Schoolhouse at Endicott in 1933. In 1935, the employee magazine Think was created. Also that year, IBM held its first training class for women systems service professionals. In 1942, IBM launched a program to train and employ disabled people in Topeka, Kansas. The next year classes begin in New York City, and soon the company was asked to join the President's Committee for Employment of the Handicapped. In 1946, the company hired its first black salesman, 18 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1947, IBM announced a Total and Permanent Disability Income Plan for employees. A vested rights pension was added to the IBM retirement plan. In 1952, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., published the company's first written equal opportunity policy letter, one year before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and 11 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1961, IBM's nondiscrimination policy was expanded to include sex, national origin, and age. The following year, IBM hosted its first Invention Award Dinner honoring 34 outstanding IBM inventors; and in 1963, the company named the first eight IBM Fellows in a new Fellowship Program that recognizes senior IBM scientists, engineers and other professionals for outstanding technical achievements. An IBM delivery tricycle in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1965 On September 21, 1953, Thomas Watson, Jr., the company's president at the time, sent out a controversial letter to all IBM employees stating that IBM needed to hire the best people, regardless of their race, ethnic origin, or gender. He also publicized the policy so that in his negotiations to build new manufacturing plants with the governors of two states in the U.S. South, he could be clear that IBM would not build "separate-but-equal" workplaces.[43] In 1984, IBM added sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy. The company stated that this would give IBM a competitive advantage because IBM would then be able to hire talented people its competitors would turn down.[44] IBM was the only technology company ranked in Working Mother magazine's Top 10 for 2004, and one of two technology companies in 2005.[45][46] On October 10, 2005, IBM became the first major company in the world to commit formally to not using genetic information in employment decisions. The announcement was made shortly after IBM began working with the National Geographic Society on its Genographic Project. IBM provides same-sex partners of its employees with health benefits and provides an anti-discrimination clause. The Human Rights Campaign has consistently rated IBM 100% on its index of gay-friendliness since 2003 (in 2002, the year it began compiling its report on major companies, IBM scored 86%).[47] In 2007 and again in 2010, IBM UK was ranked first in Stonewall's annual Workplace Equality Index for UK employers.[48] The company has traditionally resisted labor union organizing,[49] although unions represent some IBM workers outside the United States. In 2009, the Unite union stated that several hundred employees joined following the announcement in the UK of pension cuts that left many employees facing a shortfall in projected pensions.[50] A dark (or gray) suit, white shirt, and a "sincere" tie[51] was the public uniform for IBM employees for most of the 20th century. During IBM's management transformation in the 1990s, CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. relaxed these codes, normalizing the dress and behavior of IBM employees to resemble their counterparts in other large technology companies. Since then IBM's dress code is business casual although employees often wear formal clothes during client meetings.[52] On 16 June 2011, the company announced a grants programs, called IBM100, to fund its employees participation in volunteer projects - the year long initiative is part of the company's centenary celebrations.[53] Research and inventions An anechoic chamber inside IBM's Yamato research facility In 1945, The Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was founded at Columbia University in New York, New York. The renovated fraternity house on Manhattan's West Side was used as IBM's first laboratory devoted to pure science. The lab was the forerunner of IBM's Research Division, which today operates research facilities around the world. In 1966, IBM researcher Robert H. Dennard invented Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) cells, one-transistor memory cells that store each single bit of information as an electrical charge in an electronic circuit. The technology permits major increases in memory density and is widely adopted throughout the industry where it remains in widespread use today. IBM has been a leading proponent of the Open Source Initiative, and began supporting Linux in 1998.[54] The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux through the IBM Linux Technology Center, which includes over 300 Linux kernel developers.[55] IBM has also released code under different open source licenses, such as the platform-independent software framework Eclipse (worth approximately US$40 million at the time of the donation),[56] the three-sentence International Components for Unicode (ICU) license, and the Java-based relational database management system (RDBMS) Apache Derby. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however (see SCO v. IBM). DeveloperWorks is a website run by IBM for software developers and IT professionals. It contains how-to articles and tutorials, as well as software downloads and code samples, discussion forums, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and other resources for developers and technical professionals. Subjects range from open, industry-standard technologies like Java, Linux, SOA and web services, web development, Ajax, PHP, and XML to IBM's products (WebSphere, Rational, Lotus, Tivoli and Information Management). In 2007, developerWorks was inducted into the Jolt Hall of Fame.[57] alphaWorks is IBM's source for emerging software technologies. These technologies include: Flexible Internet Evaluation Report Architecture – A highly flexible architecture for the design, display, and reporting of Internet surveys. IBM History Flow Visualization Application – A tool for visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors. IBM Linux on POWER Performance Simulator – A tool that provides users of Linux on Power a set of performance models for IBM's POWER processors. Database File Archive And Restoration Management – An application for archiving and restoring hard disk drive files using file references stored in a database. Policy Management for Autonomic Computing – A policy-based autonomic management infrastructure that simplifies the automation of IT and business processes. FairUCE – A spam filter that verifies sender identity instead of filtering content. Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) SDK – A Java SDK that supports the implementation, composition, and deployment of applications working with unstructured data. Accessibility Browser – A web-browser specifically designed to assist people with visual impairments, to be released as open source software. Also known as the "A-Browser," the technology will aim to eliminate the need for a mouse, relying instead completely on voice-controls, buttons and predefined shortcut keys. Watson, an IBM artificial intelligence computer, is capable of "learning" as it operates. Virtually all console gaming systems of the latest generation use microprocessors developed by IBM. The Xbox 360 contains a PowerPC tri-core processor, which was designed and produced by IBM in less than 24 months.[58] Sony's PlayStation 3 features the Cell BE microprocessor designed jointly by IBM, Toshiba, and Sony. IBM will provide the microprocessors that serve as the heart of Nintendo's new Wii U system, which will debut in 2012.[59] The new Power Architecture-based microprocessor includes IBM's latest technology in an energy-saving silicon package.[60] Nintendo's seventh-generation console, Wii, features an IBM chip codenamed Broadway. The older Nintendo GameCube utilizes the Gekko processor, also designed by IBM. In May 2002, IBM and Butterfly.net, Inc. announced the Butterfly Grid, a commercial grid for the online video gaming market.[61] In March 2006, IBM announced separate agreements with Hoplon Infotainment, Online Game Services Incorporated (OGSI), and RenderRocket to provide on-demand content management and blade server computing resources.[62] IBM announced it will launch its new software, called "Open Client Offering" which is to run on Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X. The company states that its new product allows businesses to offer employees a choice of using the same software on Windows and its alternatives. This means that "Open Client Offering" is to cut costs of managing whether to use Linux or Apple relative to Windows. There will be no necessity for companies to pay Microsoft for its licenses for operating systems since the operating systems will no longer rely on software which is Windows-based. One alternative to Microsoft's office document formats is the Open Document Format software, whose development IBM supports. It is going to be used for several tasks like: word processing, presentations, along with collaboration with Lotus Notes, instant messaging and blog tools as well as an Internet Explorer competitor – the Mozilla Firefox web browser. IBM plans to install Open Client on 5% of its desktop PCs. The Linux offering has been made available as the IBM Client for Smart Work product on the Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms.[63] The UC2 (Unified Communications and Collaboration) Client Platform is an IBM and Cisco Systems joint project based on Eclipse and OSGi. It will offer the numerous Eclipse application developers a unified platform for an easier work environment. The software based on UC2 platform will provide major enterprises with easy-to-use communication solutions, such as the Lotus based Sametime. In the future the Sametime users will benefit from such additional functions as click-to-call and voice mailing.[64] Redbooks are publicly available online books about best practices with IBM products. They describe the products features, field experience and dos and don'ts, while leaving aside marketing buzz. Available formats are Redbooks, Redpapers and Redpieces. Extreme Blue is one of IBM's internship programs, which tasks students with developing high-value technology.[65] In 2003, participants in the program filed 98 patents.[66] In 2006, IBM launched Secure Blue, encryption hardware that can be built into microprocessors. In May 2007, IBM unveiled Project Big Green, a re-direction of $1 billion per year across its businesses to increase energy efficiency. On November 2008, IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, outlined a new agenda for building a Smarter Planet.[67] In addition, an official company blog exists. Smarter Planet @ IBM On Aug 18, 2011, as part of its effort in cognitive computing, IBM has produced chips that imitate neurons and synapses. These microprocessors do not use von Neumann architecture, and they consume less memory and power.[68] IBM also holds the SmartCamp program globally. The program searches for fresh start-up companies that IBM can partner with to solve world problems. IBM holds 17 SmartCamp events around the world.[69] Since July 2011, IBM has partnered with Pennies, the electronic charity box, and produced a software solution for IBM retail customers that provides an easy way to donate money when paying in-store by credit or debit card. Customers donate just a few pence (1p-99p) a time and every donation goes to UK charities. Environmental record IBM was recognized as one of the "Top 20 Best Workplaces for Commuters" by the United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) in 2005. The award was to recognize Fortune 500 companies which provided employees with excellent commuter benefits to help reduce traffic and air pollution.[70] The birthplace of IBM, Endicott, suffered pollution for decades, however. IBM used liquid cleaning agents in circuit board assembly operation for more than two decades, and six spills and leaks were recorded, including one leak in 1979 of 4,100 gallons from an underground tank. These left behind volatile organic compounds in the town's soil and aquifer. Trace elements of volatile organic compounds have been identified in Endicott’s drinking water, but the levels are within regulatory limits. Also, from 1980, IBM has pumped out 78,000 gallons of chemicals, including trichloroethane, freon, benzene and perchloroethene to the air and allegedly caused several cancer cases among the townspeople. IBM Endicott has been identified by the Department of Environmental Conservation as the major source of pollution, though traces of contaminants from a local dry cleaner and other polluters were also found. Despite the amount of pollutant, state health officials could not verify whether air or water pollution in Endicott has actually caused any health problems. According to city officials, tests show that the water is safe to drink.[71] Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd. (TOK) and IBM are collaborating to establish new, low-cost methods for bringing the next generation of solar energy products, called CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) solar cell modules, to market. Use of thin film technology, such as CIGS, has great promise in reducing the overall cost of solar cells and further enabling their widespread adoption.[72][73] IBM is exploring four main areas of photovoltaic research: using current technologies to develop cheaper and more efficient silicon solar cells, developing new solution processed thin film photovoltaic devices, concentrator photovoltaics, and future generation photovoltaic architectures based upon nanostructures such as semiconductor quantum dots and nanowires.[74] Company logo and nickname The company used the "globe" logo until 1946, when it began using an acronym-based logo. IBM's current "8-bar" logo was designed in 1972 by graphic designer Paul Rand.[75] It was a general replacement for a 13-bar logo that first appeared in the public on the 1966 release of the TSS/360. Logos designed in the 1970s tended to be sensitive to the technical limitations of photocopiers, which were then being widely deployed. A logo with large solid areas tended to be poorly copied by copiers in the 1970s, so companies preferred logos that avoided large solid areas. The 1972 IBM logos are an example of this tendency. With the advent of digital copiers in the mid-1980s this technical restriction had largely disappeared; at roughly the same time, the 13-bar logo was abandoned for almost the opposite reason – it was difficult to render accurately on the low-resolution digital printers (240 dots per inch) of the time. Big Blue is a nickname for IBM. There are several theories explaining the origin of the name. One theory, substantiated by people who worked for IBM at the time, is that IBM field representatives coined the term in the 1960s, referring to the color of the mainframes IBM installed in the 1960s and early 1970s. "True Blue" was a term used to describe a loyal IBM customer, and business writers later picked up the term.[76][77] Another theory suggests that Big Blue simply refers to the Company's logo. A third theory suggests that Big Blue refers to a former company dress code that required many IBM employees to wear only white shirts and many wore blue suits.[76][78] In any event, IBM keyboards, typewriters, and some other manufactured devices have played on the "Big Blue" concept, using the color for enter keys and carriage returns. IBM has also used blue logos since 1947, making blue the defining color of the company's corporate design, which might be another, more plausible reason for the term. ... ...... Lawrence "Larry" Page[2] (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. On April 4, 2011, he took on the role of chief executive officer of Google, replacing Eric Schmidt.[3][4] As of 2012, his personal wealth is estimated to be $18.7 billion.[1] He is the inventor of PageRank, which became the foundation of Google's search ranking algorithm.[5] Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stake. Larry Page was born in Lansing, Michigan.[6][7] His father, Carl Page, earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 1965 when the field was in its infancy, and is considered a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence." Both he and Page's mother were computer science professors at Michigan State University.[8][9] Gloria Page, his mother, is Jewish but he was raised without religion.[10] Page attended the Okemos Montessori School (now called Montessori Radmoor) in Okemos, Michigan from 1975 to 1979, and graduated from East Lansing High School in 1991.[11] He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Master of Science in computer science from Stanford University. While at the University of Michigan, "Page created an inkjet printer made of Lego bricks" (actually a line plotter),[12] served as the president of the Eta Kappa Nu in Fall 1994,[13] and was a member of the 1993 "Maize & Blue" University of Michigan Solar Car team. During an interview, Page recalled his childhood, noting that his house "was usually a mess, with computers and Popular Science magazines all over the place". His attraction to computers started when he was six years old when he got to "play with the stuff lying around". He became the "first kid in his elementary school to turn in an assignment from a word processor."[14] His older brother also taught him to take things apart, and before long he was taking "everything in his house apart to see how it worked". He said that "from a very early age, I also realized I wanted to invent things. So I became really interested in technology...and business . . . probably from when I was 12, I knew I was going to start a company eventually".[14] After enrolling for a Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry Page was in search of a dissertation theme and considered exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph.[15][16] His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pursue this idea, which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got".[17] Page then focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind).[16] In his research project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student.[16] John Battelle, co-founder of Wired magazine, wrote of Page that he had reasoned that the "entire Web was loosely based on the premise of citation – after all, what is a link but a citation? If he could devise a method to count and qualify each backlink on the Web, as Page puts it 'the Web would become a more valuable place'."[16] Battelle further described how Page and Brin began working together on the project: "At the time Page conceived of BackRub, the Web comprised an estimated 10 million documents, with an untold number of links between them. The computing resources required to crawl such a beast were well beyond the usual bounds of a student project. Unaware of exactly what he was getting into, Page began building out his crawler. "The idea's complexity and scale lured Brin to the job. A polymath who had jumped from project to project without settling on a thesis topic, he found the premise behind BackRub fascinating. "I talked to lots of research groups" around the school, Brin recalls, "and this was the most exciting project, both because it tackled the Web, which represents human knowledge, and because I liked Larry".[16] Brin and Page originally met in March 1995, during a spring orientation of new computer Ph.D. candidates. Page, who had already been in the program for two years, was assigned to show some students, including Brin, around campus, and they later became good friends.[18] To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub's web crawler into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm, and realized that it could be used to build a search engine far superior to existing ones.[16] It relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of the back links that connected one Web page to another.[18] In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available, still on the Stanford University Web site.[16] Business Main articles: Google and History of Google In 1998, Brin and Page founded Google, Inc.[19] Page ran Google as co-president along with Brin until 2001 when they hired Eric Schmidt as Chairman and CEO of Google. In January 2011 Google announced that Page would replace Schmidt as CEO in April the same year.[20] Both Page and Brin earn an annual compensation of one dollar. On April 4, 2011, Page officially became the chief executive of Google, while Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman. Personal life Page married Lucinda Southworth at Richard Branson's Caribbean island, Necker Island in 2007.[21] Southworth is a research scientist and sister of actress and model Carrie Southworth.[22][23][24] They have one child. Other interests Page is an active investor in alternative energy companies, such as Tesla Motors, which developed the Tesla Roadster, a 244-mile (393 km) range battery electric vehicle.[25] He continues to be committed to renewable energy technology, and with the help of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, promotes the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric cars and other alternative energy investments.[14] Brin and Page are the executive producers of the 2007 film Broken Arrows.[26] Awards and recognition PC Magazine has praised Google as among the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards."[27] In 2002, Page, along with Sergey Brin, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[28] In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...."[29] And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering," and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers...."[30] He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004. In 2005, Brin and Page were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[31] In 2002 the World Economic Forum named Page a Global Leader for Tomorrow and in 2004 the X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee for their board.[12] In 2004, Page and Brin were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight. Page received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2009 during graduation commencement ceremonies.[32] In 2011, he was ranked 24th on the Forbes list of billionaires and as the 11th richest person in the United States. ... ...... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft is the largest software corporation in the world. Microsoft dominates the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has also diversified into areas including the video game industry (with the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles), consumer electronics (with the Zune), the digital services market (through MSN), and mobile phones (via the Windows Phone OS). The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) created an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees (Forbes 400 list revealed that in March 2011 both Jon Shipley and Nathan Myhrvold lost their billionaire status). In May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype for $8.5 billion.[2] In the 1990s, critics began to contend that Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws. Known for its interviewing process with obscure questions, various studies and ratings were generally favorable to Microsoft's diversity within the company as well as its overall environmental impact with the exception of the electronics portion of the business. Main articles: History of Microsoft and History of Microsoft Windows Paul Allen and Bill Gates (respectively) on October 19, 1981, in a sea of PCs after signing a pivotal contract. IBM called Microsoft in July 1980 inquiring about programming languages for its upcoming PC line;[3]:228 after failed negotiations with another company, IBM gave Microsoft a contract to develop the OS for the new line of PCs.[4] Early history Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion in computer programming, were seeking to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer. Allen noticed that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device; after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didn't actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter. Although they developed the interpreter on a simulator and not the actual device, the interpreter worked flawlessly when they demonstrated the interpreter to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 1975; MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC.[3]:108, 112–114 They officially established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as the CEO.[5] Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft," as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, "ASCII Microsoft".[6] The company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979.[5] Microsoft Inc. logo history Logo Years Microsoft Logo Historical.svg Microsoft "blibbet" logo, filed August 26, 1982 at the USPTO and used until 1987.[7] Microsoft - Where do you want to go today.svg Microsoft "Pac-Man" logo, designed by Scott Baker and used since 1987, with the 1994–2002 slogan "Where do you want to go today?".[8][9] Microsoft logo & slogan.svg Microsoft logo as of 2006–2011, with the slogan "Your potential. Our passion."[9] The Microsoft logo & slogan.png Logo by Microsoft with the slogan"Be What's Next." 2011–present.[10] Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix.[11] However, it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. After negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC).[12] For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC-DOS. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOS's available software selection, Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor.[4][13]:210 The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.[3]:232 Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in February after developing Hodgkin's disease.[3]:231 1984–1994: Windows and Office While jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20.[3]:242–243, 246 Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond on February 26, 1986, and on March 13 the company went public;[14] the ensuing rise in the stock would make an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.[15] Due to the partnership with IBM, in 1990 the Federal Trade Commission set its eye on Microsoft for possible collusion; it marked the beginning of over a decade of legal clashes with the U.S. Government.[16] Microsoft announced the release of its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987;[3]:243–244 meanwhile, the company was at work on a 32-bit OS, Microsoft Windows NT, using ideas from OS/2; it shipped on July 21, 1993 with a new modular kernel and the Win32 application programming interface (API), making porting from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows easier. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.[17] Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office, in 1990. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.[3]:301 On May 22 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 with a streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor.[18] Both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas.[19][20] Novell, a Word competitor from 1984–1986, filed a lawsuit years later claiming that Microsoft left part of its APIs undocumented in order to gain a competitive advantage.[21] On July 27, 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division filed a Competitive Impact Statement that said, in part: "Beginning in 1988, and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anti-competitive "per processor" licenses. Under a per processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased."[22] 1995–2005: Internet and the 32-bit era Bill Gates giving his deposition in 1998 for the United States v. Microsoft trial. Once the U.S. Department of Justice 1993 took over from the Federal Trade Commission, a protracted legal wrangling between Microsoft and the department ensued, resulting in various settlements and possible blocked mergers. Microsoft would point to companies such as AOL-Time Warner in its defense.[16] Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995 Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web.[23] The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API.[24][25]:20 Windows 95 came bundled with the online service MSN, and for OEMs Internet Explorer, a web browser. Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes because the boxes were printed before the team finished the web browser, and instead was included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack.[26] Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and NBC Universal created a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC.[27] Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants.[28] In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court, stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.[3]:323–324 Bill Gates handed over the CEO position on January 13, 2000 to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect.[5][3]:111, 228 Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to, among other things, increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decry the alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, a form of digital rights management; for example the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner, but also secured against its owner as well.[29][30] On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft,[31] calling the company an "abusive monopoly";[32] it settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004.[14] On October 25, 2001 Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines under the NT codebase.[33] The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo.[34] In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million ($613 million) and to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player, Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N.[35][36] 2006–present: Windows Vista, mobile, SaaS CEO Steve Ballmer at the MIX event in 2008. In an interview about his management style in 2005, he mentioned that his first priority was to get the people he delegates to in order. Ballmer also emphasized the need to continue pursuing new technologies even if initial attempts fail, citing the original attempts with Windows as an example.[37] Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, focused on features, security, and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero.[38][39] Microsoft Office 2007, released at the same time, featured a "Ribbon" user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both titles helped to produce a record profit in 2007.[40] The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved".[41] Bill Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008 while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects.[42] Azure Services Platform, the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008.[43] On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open a chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009 the first retail Microsoft Store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona; the same day the first store opened Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease of use features and performance enhancements, rather than a large reworking of Windows.[44][45][46] As the smartphone industry boomed beginning in 2007, Microsoft struggled to keep up with its rivals Apple and Google in providing a modern smartphone operating system. As a result, in 2010, Microsoft revamped their aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS; along with a new strategy in the smartphone industry that has Microsoft working more closely with smartphone manufactures, such as Nokia, and to provide a consistent user experience across all smartphones using Microsoft's Windows Phone OS. Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Other founding companies include Google, HP Networking, Yahoo, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. The nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a new cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking.[47] The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers and other networking areas.[48] In May 2012, Microsoft opened its social networking site So.cl to the general public. [49] On 31st May 2012, Microsoft released the release preview version of its next generation Windows 8 software. It is designed to power devices ranging from tablets to desktop computers.[50] Product divisions Main article: Microsoft Product Divisions For the 2010 fiscal year, Microsoft had five product divisions: Windows & Windows Live Division, Server and Tools, Online Services Division, Microsoft Business Division, and Entertainment and Devices Division. Windows & Windows Live Division, Server and Tools, Online Services Division The company's Client division produces the flagship Windows OS line such as Windows 7; it also produces the Windows Live family of products and services. Server and Tools produces the server versions of Windows, such as Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as a set of development tools called Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Silverlight, a web application framework, and System Center Configuration Manager, a collection of tools providing remote-control abilities, patch management, software distribution and a hardware/software inventory. Other server products include: Microsoft SQL Server, a relational database management system, Microsoft Exchange Server, for certain business-oriented e-mail and scheduling features, Small Business Server, for messaging and other small business-oriented features; and Microsoft BizTalk Server, for business process management. Microsoft provides IT consulting ("Microsoft Consulting Services") and produces a set of certification programs handled by the Server and Tools division designed to recognize individuals who have a minimal set of proficiencies in a specific role; this includes developers ("Microsoft Certified Solution Developer"), system/network analysts ("Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer"), trainers ("Microsoft Certified Trainers") and administrators ("Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator" and "Microsoft Certified Database Administrator"). Microsoft Press, which publishes books, is also managed by the division. The Online Services Business division handles the online service MSN and the search engine Bing. As of December 2009, the company also possesses an 18% ownership of the cable news channel MSNBC without any editorial control; however, the division develops the channel's website, msnbc.com, in a joint venture with the channel's co-owner, NBC Universal.[51] Business Division The Commons, located on the campus of the company's headquarters in Redmond. The Microsoft Business Division produces Microsoft Office including Microsoft Office 2010, the company's line of office software. The software product includes Word (a word processor), Access (a relational database program), Excel (a spreadsheet program), Outlook (Groupware, frequently used with Exchange Server), PowerPoint (presentation software), Publisher (desktop publishing software) and Sharepoint. A number of other products were added later with the release of Office 2003 including Visio, Project, MapPoint, InfoPath and OneNote. The division also develops enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for companies under the Microsoft Dynamics brand. These include: Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Microsoft Dynamics SL. They are targeted at varying company types and countries, and limited to organizations with under 7,500 employees.[52] Also included under the Dynamics brand is the customer relationship management software Microsoft Dynamics CRM, part of the Azure Services Platform. Entertainment and Devices Division The Entertainment and Devices Division produces the Windows CE OS for embedded systems and Windows Phone for smartphones.[53] Microsoft initially entered the mobile market through Windows CE for handheld devices, eventually developing into the Windows Mobile OS and now, Windows Phone. Windows CE is designed for devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, appliances and cars. The division also produces computer games that run on Windows PCs and other systems including titles such as Age of Empires, Halo and the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, and houses the Macintosh Business Unit which produces Mac OS software including Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division designs, markets, and manufactures consumer electronics including the Xbox 360 game console, the handheld Zune media player, and the television-based Internet appliance MSN TV. Microsoft also markets personal computer hardware including mice, keyboards, and various game controllers such as joysticks and gamepads. Culture Technical reference for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as Microsoft Systems Journal (or MSJ) are available through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software.[54][55] In April 2004 Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, titled Channel9, that provides a wiki and an Internet forum.[56] Another community site that provides daily videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006.[57] Free technical support is traditionally provided through online Usenet newsgroups, and CompuServe in the past, monitored by Microsoft employees; there can be several newsgroups for a single product. Helpful people can be elected by peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits.[58] Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression "eating our own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using prerelease and beta versions of products inside Microsoft in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations.[59] This is usually shortened to just "dog food" and is used as noun, verb, and adjective. Another bit of jargon, FYIFV or FYIV ("Fuck You, I'm [Fully] Vested"), is used by an employee to indicate they are financially independent and can avoid work anytime they wish.[60] The company is also known for its hiring process, mimicked in other organizations and dubbed the "Microsoft interview", which is notorious for off-the-wall questions such as "Why is a manhole cover round?".[61] Microsoft is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H1B visas, which allow companies in the U.S. to employ certain foreign workers. Bill Gates claims the cap on H1B visas makes it difficult to hire employees for the company, stating "I'd certainly get rid of the H1B cap" in 2005.[62] Critics of H1B visas argue that relaxing the limits would result in increased unemployment for U.S. citizens due to H1B workers working for lower salaries.[63] The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a report of how progressive the organization deems company policies towards LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) employees, rated Microsoft as 87% from 2002 to 2004 and as 100% from 2005 to 2010 after they allowed gender expression.[64] Criticism Main article: Criticism of Microsoft Criticism of Microsoft has followed the company's existence because of various aspects of its products and business practices. Ease of use, stability, and security of the company's software are common targets for critics. More recently, Trojan horses and other exploits have plagued numerous users due to faults in the security of Microsoft Windows and other programs. Microsoft is also accused of locking vendors into their products, and of not following and complying with existing standards in its software.[65] Total cost of ownership comparisons of Linux as well as Mac OS X to Windows are a continuous point of debate. The company has been in numerous lawsuits by several governments and other companies for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty in a highly publicized anti-trust case. Additionally, Microsoft's EULA for some of its programs is often criticized as being too restrictive as well as being against open source software. Microsoft has been criticized (along with Yahoo, AOL, and other companies) for its involvement in censorship in the People's Republic of China.[66] Microsoft has also come under criticism for outsourcing jobs to China and India.[67][68][69] There were reports of poor working conditions at a factory in southern China that makes some of Microsoft's products.[70] Criticism of the company has resulted in it being deemed "the evil empire" by some.[71] In a sci-fi allusion, Microsoft has also been called "The Borg" after the fictional race of aliens in the Star Trek universe. It reflects the perception that Microsoft often acquires technology from other companies rather than developing it in-house[72], as well as to Microsoft's ability to adapt to and overwhelm its opponents' strategies. [73][74][75][76][77][78] Corporate affairs The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. Members of the board of directors as of June 2010 are: Steve Ballmer, Dina Dublon, Bill Gates (chairman), Raymond Gilmartin, Reed Hastings, Maria Klawe, David Marquardt, Charles Noski, and Helmut Panke.[79] Board members are elected every year at the annual shareholders' meeting using a majority vote system. There are five committees within the board which oversee more specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues with the company including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Finance Committee, which handles financial matters such as proposing mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including nomination of the board; and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating antitrust laws.[80] Five year history graph of (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock on September 29, 2009.[81] When Microsoft went public and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in 1986, the opening stock price was $21; after the trading day, the price closed at $27.75. As of July 2010, with the company's nine stock splits, any IPO shares would be multiplied by 288; if one was to buy the IPO today given the splits and other factors, it would cost about 9 cents.[82][3]:235–236[83] The stock price peaked in 1999 at around $119 ($60.928 adjusting for splits).[84] The company began to offer a dividend on January 16, 2003, starting at eight cents per share for the fiscal year followed by a dividend of sixteen cents per share the subsequent year, switching from yearly to quarterly dividends in 2005 with eight cents a share per quarter and a special one-time payout of three dollars per share for the second quarter of the fiscal year.[84][85] Though the company had subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft's stock remained steady for years.[85][86] One of Microsoft's business tactics, described by an executive as "embrace, extend and extinguish," initially embraces a competing standard or product, then extends it to produce their own version which is then incompatible with the standard, which in time extinguishes competition that does not or cannot use Microsoft's new version.[87] Various companies and governments sue Microsoft over this set of tactics, resulting in billions of dollars in rulings against the company.[88][31][36] Microsoft claims that the original strategy is not anti-competitive, but rather an exercise of its discretion to implement features it believes customers want.[89] Financial Standard and Poor's and Moody's have both given a AAA rating to Microsoft, whose assets were valued at $41 billion as compared to only $8.5 billion in unsecured debt. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to government bonds.[90] For the first time in 20 years Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in Q1 2011 quarterly profits and revenues due to a slowdown in PC sales and continuing huge losses in Microsoft's Online Services Division (which contains its search engine Bing). Microsoft profits were $5.2 billion, while Apple Inc. profits were $6 billion, on revenues of $14.5 billion and $24.7 billion respectively.[91] Microsoft's Online Services Division has been continuously loss-making since 2006 and in Q1 2011 it lost $726 million. This follows a loss of $2.5 billion for the year 2010.[92] Environment Microsoft is ranked on the 17th place in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics (16th Edition) that ranks 18 electronics manufacturers according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change.[93] Microsoft’s timeline for phasing out BFRs and phthalates in all products is 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear. As yet (January 2011) it has no products that are completely free from PVC and BFRs.[94] Microsoft's main U.S. campus received a silver certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program in 2008, and it installed over 2,000 solar panels on top of its buildings in its Silicon Valley campus, generating approximately 15 percent of the total energy needed by the facilities in April 2005.[95] Microsoft makes use of alternative forms of transit. It created one of the worlds largest private bus systems, the "Connector", to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the "Shuttle Connect" uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel. The company also subsidises regional public transport as an incentive.[95][96] In February 2010 however, Microsoft took a stance against adding additional public transport and high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to a bridge connecting Redmond to Seattle; the company did not want to delay the construction any further.[97] Microsoft was ranked number 1 in the list of the World's Best Multinational Workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute in 2011.[98] Marketing In 2004, Microsoft commissioned research firms to do independent studies comparing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Windows Server 2003 to Linux; the firms concluded that companies found Windows easier to administrate than Linux, thus those using Windows would administrate faster resulting in lower costs for their company (i.e. lower TCO).[99] This spurred a wave of related studies; a study by the Yankee Group concluded that upgrading from one version of Windows Server to another costs a fraction of the switching costs from Windows Server to Linux, although companies surveyed noted the increased security and reliability of Linux servers and concern about being locked into using Microsoft products.[100] Another study, released by the OSDL, claimed that the Microsoft studies were "simply outdated and one-sided" and their survey concluded that the TCO of Linux was lower due to Linux administrators managing more servers on average and other reasons.[101] As part of the "Get the Facts" campaign Microsoft highlighted the .NET trading platform that it had developed in partnership with Accenture for the London Stock Exchange, claiming that it provided "five nines" reliability. After suffering extended downtime and unreliability[102][103] the LSE announced in 2009 that it was planning to drop its Microsoft solution and switch to a Linux based one in 2010.[104][105] Microsoft adopted the so-called "Pac-Man Logo", designed by Scott Baker, in 1987. Baker stated "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed."[106] Dave Norris ran an internal joke campaign to save the old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, but it was discarded.[107] Microsoft's logo with the "Your potential. Our passion." tagline below the main corporate name, is based on a slogan Microsoft used in 2008. In 2002, the company started using the logo in the United States and eventually started a TV campaign with the slogan, changed from the previous tagline of "Where do you want to go today?".[8][9][108] During the private MGX (Microsoft Global Exchange) conference in 2010, Microsoft unveiled the company's next tagline, "Be What's Next.". ... ...... Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is a Russian-American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the most profitable Internet companies.[3][4] As of 2012, his personal wealth is estimated to be $18.7 billion.[1] Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company. Brin immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he moved to Stanford University to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he met Larry Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin's data mining system to build a superior search engine. The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage. The Economist magazine referred to Brin as an "Enlightenment Man", and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance", a philosophy that is summed up by Google’s motto of making all the world’s information "universally accessible and useful"[5] and "Don't be evil". Brin was born in Moscow to Russian Jewish parents, Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University.[6] His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.[7][8] Childhood in the Soviet Union In 1979, when Brin was six, his family felt compelled to emigrate to the United States. In an interview with Mark Malseed, co-author of The Google Story,[9] Sergey's father explains how he was "forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college". Although an official policy of anti-Semitism did not exist in the Soviet Union, Michael Brin claims Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities: "Jews were excluded from the physics departments, in particular..." Michael Brin therefore changed his major to mathematics where he received nearly straight A's. He said, "Nobody would even consider me for graduate school because I was Jewish."[10] At Moscow State University, Jews were required to take their entrance exams in different rooms from non-Jewish applicants, which were nicknamed "gas chambers", and they were marked on a harsher scale.[11] The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.[10] Sergey told Malseed, "I've known for a long time that my father wasn't able to pursue the career he wanted", but Sergey only picked up the details years later after they had settled in the United States. He learned how, in 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, he announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. "We cannot stay here any more", he told his wife and mother. At the conference, he was able to "mingle freely with colleagues from the United States, France, England and Germany, and discovered that his intellectual brethren in the West were 'not monsters.'" He added, "I was the only one in the family who decided it was really important to leave..."[10] Sergey's mother was less willing to leave their home in Moscow, where they had spent their entire lives. Malseed writes, "For Genia, the decision ultimately came down to Sergey. While her husband admits he was thinking as much about his own future as his son's, for her, 'it was 80/20' about Sergey." They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father "was promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[10] At an interview in October, 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that my parents went through there, and am very thankful that I was brought to the States."[12] A decade earlier, in the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of gifted high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. "As Sergey recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority" and he remembers that his first "impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car." Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanitarium in the countryside near Moscow, Sergey took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"[10] Education in the United States Brin attended grade school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, nurtured his interest in mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. In September 1990, after having attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his Bachelor of Science in May 1993 with honors.[13] Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica.[13] He is on leave from his Ph.D. studies at Stanford.[14] Search engine development During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for The Economist, Brin jokingly said: "We're both kind of obnoxious." They seemed to disagree on most subjects. But after spending time together, they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends". Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers."[5] Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."[15] Combining their ideas, they "crammed their dormitory room with cheap computers" and tested their new search engine designs on the web. Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's computing infrastructure." But they realized they had succeeded in creating a superior engine for searching the web and suspended their PhD studies to work more on their system.[5] As Mark Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Sergey and Larry scraped together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in Menlo Park. ... [soon after], Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.” The only problem was, “Google, Inc.” did not yet exist—the company hadn’t yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to deposit the money."[10] The Economist magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's motto, "of making all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful.'" Others have compared their vision to the impact of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing: "In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles for mass consumption. The technology allowed for books and manuscripts – originally replicated by hand – to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the European Renaissance. . . Google has done a similar job."[16] The comparison was likewise noted by the authors of The Google Story: "Not since Gutenberg . . . has any new invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."[9]:1 Not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that is today beyond the web", such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.[5] Personal life In May 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki in The Bahamas. Wojcicki is a biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of Yale University with a B.S. in biology.[2][17] She has an active interest in health information, and together she and Brin are developing new ways to improve access to it. As part of their efforts, they have brainstormed with leading researchers about the human genome project. "Brin instinctively regards genetics as a database and computing problem. So does his wife, who co-founded the firm, 23andMe", which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup (consisting of 23 pairs of chromosomes).[5] In a recent announcement at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, he said he hoped that some day everyone would learn their genetic code in order to help doctors, patients, and researchers analyze the data and try to repair bugs.[5] Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In 2008, he decided to make a donation to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother is being treated.[18] Brin used the services of 23andMe and discovered that although Parkinson's is generally not hereditary, both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%.[5] When asked whether ignorance was not bliss in such matters, he stated that his knowledge means that he can now take measures to ward off the disease. An editorial in The Economist magazine states that "Mr Brin regards his mutation of LRRK2 as a bug in his personal code, and thus as no different from the bugs in computer code that Google’s engineers fix every day. By helping himself, he can therefore help others as well. He considers himself lucky. ... But Mr. Brin was making a much bigger point. Isn’t knowledge always good, and certainty always better than ignorance?"[5] Brin and his wife run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation.[19] In November, 2011 Brin and his wife's foundation, The Brin Wojcicki Foundation, awarded 500,000 dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation as it started its eighth annual fundraising campaign. Censorship of Google in China For more details on this topic, see Censorship in the People's Republic of China. Remembering his youth and his family's reasons for leaving the Soviet Union, he "agonized over Google’s decision to appease the communist government of China by allowing it to censor search engine results", but decided that the Chinese would still be better off than without having Google available.[5] He explained his reasoning to Fortune magazine: "We felt that by participating there, and making our services more available, even if not to the 100 percent that we ideally would like, that it will be better for Chinese web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it."[20] On January 12, 2010, Google reported a large cyber attack on its computers and corporate infrastructure that began a month earlier, which included accessing numerous Gmail accounts and the theft of Google's intellectual property. After the attack was determined to have originated in China, the company stated that it would no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit the country altogether. The New York Times reported that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but that the attack also targeted 20 other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical sectors."[21][22] It was later reported that the attack included "one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide."[23] In late March, 2010, it officially discontinued its China-based search engine while keeping its uncensored Hong Kong site in operation. Speaking for Google, Brin stated during an interview, "One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls."[24] During another interview with Spiegel, he added, "For us it has always been a discussion about how we can best fight for openness on the Internet. We believe that this is the best thing that we can do for preserving the principles of the openness and freedom of information on the Internet."[25] While only a few large companies so far pledged their support for the move, many Internet "freedom proponents are cheering the move," and it is "winning it praise in the U.S." from lawmakers.[24][26] Senator Byron Dorgan stated that "Google's decision is a strong step in favor of freedom of expression and information."[27] And Congressman Bob Goodlatte said, "I applaud Google for its courageous step to stop censoring search results on Google.com. Google has drawn a line in the sand and is shining a light on the very dark area of individual liberty restrictions in China."[28] From the business perspective, many recognize that the move is likely to affect Google's profits: "Google is going to pay a heavy price for its move, which is why it deserves praise for refusing to censor its service in China."[29] The New Republic adds that "Google seems to have arrived at the same link that was obvious to Andrei Sakharov: the one between science and freedom," referring to the move as "heroism."[30] Awards and recognition In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[31] In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...".[32] And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers..."[33] In 2004, Brin received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award with Larry Page at a ceremony in Chicago, Illinois. In November 2009, Forbes magazine decided Brin and Larry Page were the fifth most powerful people in the world.[34] Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer ... [and] honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web."[35] In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the National Science Foundation included a number of earlier awards: "he has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. ... PC Magazine has praised Google [of] the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards."[36] According to Forbes he is the 24th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$18.7 billion as of March 2012.[37] Other interests Brin is working on other, more personal projects that reach beyond Google. For example, he and Page are trying to help solve the world’s energy and climate problems at Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, which invests in the alternative energy industry to find wider sources of renewable energy. The company acknowledges that its founders want "to solve really big problems using technology."[38] In October 2010, for example, they invested in a major offshore wind power development to assist the East coast power grid,[39] which may eventually become the first "offshore wind farm" in the United States.[40] A week earlier they introduced a car that, with "artificial intelligence," can drive itself using video cameras and radar sensors.[38] In the future, drivers of cars with similar sensors would have fewer accidents. These safer vehicles could therefore be built lighter and require less fuel consumption.[41] They are trying to get companies to create innovative solutions to increasing the world's energy supply.[42] He is an investor in Tesla Motors, which has developed the Tesla Roadster, a 244-mile (393 km) range battery electric vehicle. Brin has appeared on television shows and many documentaries, including Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight. In January 2005 he was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders". He and Page are also the executive producers of the 2007 film Broken Arrows. In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in Space Adventures, the Virginia-based space tourism company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures' proposed flights in 2011. So far, Space Adventures has sent seven tourists into space.[43] He and Page co-own a customized Boeing 767–200 and a Dornier Alpha Jet, and pay $1.4 million a year to house them and two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.[44][45] Brin is a member of AmBAR, a networking organization for Russian-speaking business professionals (both expatriates and immigrants) in the United States. He has made many speaking appearances. ... ...... Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution[7][8] and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar. In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.[9] After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar.[10] He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006,[11] making Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder at seven percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.[12][13] After difficulties developing a new Mac operating system, Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 in order to use NeXTSTEP as the basis for what became Mac OS X.[14] As part of the deal Jobs was named Apple advisor. As Apple floundered, Jobs took control of the company and was named "interim CEO" in 1997, or as he jokingly referred to it, "iCEO". Under his leadership, Apple was saved from near bankruptcy, and became profitable by 1998.[15][16] Over the next decade, Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store.[17] The success of these products and services, providing several years of stable financial returns, propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.[18] The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.[19][20][21] In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health declined.[22] On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned as Apple CEO in August that year and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011. Jobs has received a number of honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He has widely been referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or simply "visionary",[23][24][25][26] and has been described as the "Father of the Digital Revolution",[27] a "master of innovation",[28][29] and a "design perfectionist". Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955 to two university students, Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian-born Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic: عبدالفتاح جندلي‎), who were both unmarried at the time.[32] Jandali, who was teaching in Wisconsin when Steve was born in 1955, said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's family objected to their relationship.[33] The baby was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993) and Clara Jobs (1924–1986), an Armenian-American[3] whose maiden name was Hagopian.[34] According to Steve Jobs's commencement address at Stanford, Schieble wanted Jobs to be adopted only by a college-graduate couple. Schieble learned that Clara Jobs didn't graduate from college and Paul Jobs only attended high school, but signed final adoption papers after they promised her that the child would definitely be encouraged and supported to attend college. Later, when asked about his "adoptive parents," Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents."[35] He stated in his authorized biography that they "were my parents 1,000%."[36] Unknown to him, his biological parents would subsequently marry (December 1955), have a second child Mona Simpson in 1957, and divorce in 1962.[36] The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when Steve was five years old.[1][2] The parents later adopted a daughter, Patti. Paul was a machinist for a company that made lasers, and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands.[1] The father showed Steve how to work on electronics in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As a result, Steve became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.[37] Clara was an accountant[35] who taught him to read before he went to school.[1] Clara Jobs had been a payroll clerk for Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon Valley.[38] Jobs's youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he was a prankster whose fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal his parents declined.[39] Jobs then attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California.[2] At Homestead, Jobs became friends with Bill Fernandez, a neighbor who shared the same interests in electronics. Fernandez introduced Jobs to another, older computer whiz kid, Stephen Wozniak (also known as "Woz"). In 1969 Woz started building a little computer board with Fernandez that they named “The Cream Soda Computer”, which they showed to Jobs; he seemed really interested.[40] Jobs frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Wozniak as a summer employee.[41] Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an expensive college which Paul and Clara could ill afford. They were spending much of their life savings on their son’s higher education.[40] Jobs dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy.[42] He continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[43] Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."[43] Early career Crystal Clear app kedit.svg This section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (March 2012) Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, September 1976 In 1974, Jobs took a job as a technician at Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.[44] He traveled to India in mid-1974[45] to visit Neem Karoli Baba[46] at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, an early Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted as Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973.[44] Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Hariakhan Baba. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and back, then up to Himachal Pradesh and back.[44] After staying for seven months, Jobs left India[47] and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke.[44] Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing.[48][49] During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[50][51] He also became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US.[52] He considered taking up monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen.[53] Jobs would later say that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.[50] Jobs then returned to Atari, and was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. At that time, Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line.[further explanation needed] According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[54] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.[55] In the early 1970s, Jobs and Wozniak were drawn to technology like a magnet. Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money selling it. The clandestine sales of the illegal "blue boxes" went well, and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be fun and profitable.[56] Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975.[2] He greatly admired Edwin H. Land, the inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corporation, and would explicitly model his own career after that of Land's.[57][58] In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed their own business, which they named “Apple Computer Company” in remembrance of a happy summer Jobs had spent picking apples. At first they started off selling circuit boards, but eventually they produced a complete computer prototype.[59] Career Apple Computer See also: History of Apple Home of Paul and Clara Jobs, on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California. Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer in its garage with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Wayne stayed only a short time leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the primary co-founders of the company. Home of Paul and Clara Jobs, on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California. Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer in its garage with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the primary co-founders of the company. Jobs and Steve Wozniak met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple computer in the garage of Jobs's parents in order to sell it.[60] They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing manager and engineer Mike Markkula.[61] In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"[62] In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa. One year later, Apple employee Jef Raskin invented the Macintosh.[63][64] The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984". At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium".[65] Apple logo in 1977, created by Rob Janoff with the rainbow color theme used until 1998. While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. Disappointing sales caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley and it eventually became a power struggle between Jobs and Sculley.[66] Jobs kept meetings running past midnight, sent out lengthy faxes, then called new meetings at 7:00 am.[67] Sculley learned that Jobs—believing Sculley to be "bad for Apple" and the wrong person to lead the company—had been attempting to organize a boardroom coup, and on May 24, 1985, called a board meeting to resolve the matter.[66] Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the Macintosh division.[68][69] Jobs resigned from Apple five months later[66] and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.[67][70] In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." And he added, "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."[43][71][72] NeXT Computer See also: NeXT A NeXTstation with the original keyboard, mouse and the NeXT MegaPixel monitor After leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT Computer in 1985, with $7 million. A year later, Jobs was running out of money, and with no product on the horizon, he appealed for venture capital. Eventually, he attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot who invested heavily in the company.[73] NeXT workstations were first released in 1990, priced at $9,999. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced, but was largely dismissed as cost-prohibitive by the educational sector for which it was designed.[74] The NeXT workstation was known for its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on a NeXT computer at CERN.[75] The revised, second-generation NeXTcube was released in 1990, also. Jobs touted it as the first "interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time. "Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told reporters.[76] Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case.[77] This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.[78] The company reported its first profit of $1.03 million in 1994.[73] In 1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store,[78] MobileMe services, and the iTunes Store. Pixar and Disney In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.[79] The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story, with Jobs credited as executive producer,[80] brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); The Incredibles (2004); Cars (2006); Ratatouille (2007); WALL-E (2008); Up (2009); and Toy Story 3 (2010). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.[81] Steve Jobs on computer graphics Steve Jobs on computer graphics. Interview excerpt from 1995.[82] In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership,[83] and in early 2004, Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films after its contract with Disney expired. In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock.[12] Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7 percent, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about one percent of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner — especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar — accelerated Eisner's ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger and also helped oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses from a seat on a special six-person steering committee.[84] Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.[85] Return to Apple See also: "1998–2005: Return to profitability" in Apple, Inc. Logo for the Think Different campaign designed by TBWA\Chiat\Day and initiated by Jobs after his return to Apple Computer in 1997. In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996,[86] bringing Jobs back to the company he co-founded. Jobs became de facto chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally named interim chief executive in September.[87] In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company."[88] Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines. With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO.[89] Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title "iCEO".[90] Full-length portrait of man about fifty wearing jeans and a black turtleneck shirt, standing in front of a dark curtain with a white Apple logo Jobs on stage at Macworld Conference & Expo, San Francisco, January 11, 2005 The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship".[91] Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences. In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the US by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. A few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker.[43] The banner read "Steve, don't be a mini-player—recycle all e-waste". In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any US customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems.[92] Resignation In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained with the company as chairman of the company's board.[93][94] Hours after the announcement, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares dropped five percent in after-hours trading.[95] This relatively small drop, when considering the importance of Jobs to Apple, was associated with the fact that his health had been in the news for several years, and he had been on medical leave since January 2011.[96] It was believed, according to Forbes, that the impact would be felt in a negative way beyond Apple, including at The Walt Disney Company where Jobs served as director.[97] In after-hours trading on the day of the announcement, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) shares dropped 1.5 percent.[98] Business life Wealth Jobs earned only $1 a year as CEO of Apple,[99] Jobs held 5.426 million Apple shares worth $2.1 billion, as well as 138 million shares in Disney (which he received in exchange for Disney's acquisition of Pixar) worth $4.4 billion.[100][101] Jobs quipped that the $1 per annum he was paid by Apple was based on attending one meeting for 50 cents while the other 50 cents was based on his performance.[102] Forbes estimated his net wealth at $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American.[103] Stock options backdating issue Two men in their fifties shown full length sitting in red leather chairs smiling at each other Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007 In 2001, Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30. It was alleged that the options had been backdated, and that the exercise price should have been $21.10. It was further alleged that Jobs had thereby incurred taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report, and that Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. As a result, Jobs potentially faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. The case was the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations,[104] though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.[105] On July 1, 2008, a $7-billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.[106][107] Management style Jobs was a demanding perfectionist[108][109] who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.[110] Steve Jobs announcing the transition to Intel processors in 2005. Much was made of Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs".[111] Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT. NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable", to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.[112] In 2005, Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[113] In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."[114] Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France", alluding to Jobs's compelling and larger-than-life persona.[115] Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.[116] Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987 when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes".[117] On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he ran then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[118] In 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read: Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.[119] Jobs was also a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.[120] Reality distortion field Main article: Reality distortion field Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term "reality distortion field" in 1981, to describe Jobs's charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project.[121] Tribble claimed that the term came from Star Trek.[121] Since then the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of Jobs's keynote speeches.[122] The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Steve Jobs's ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Although the subject of criticism, Jobs's so-called reality distortion field was also recognized as creating a sense that the impossible was possible. Once the term became widely known, it was often used in the technology press to describe Jobs's sway over the public, particularly regarding new product announcements.[123][124] Inventions and designs His design sense was greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a seven-month spiritual journey.[125] His sense of intuition was also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.[125] As of October 9, 2011, Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 342 United States patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. Most of these are design patents (specific product designs) as opposed to utility patents (inventions).[126][127] He has 43 issued US patents on inventions.[128] The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he died.[129] Applying his Triple F Model to Apple under Steve Jobs, Anand Kurian opines that Job's contribution in the area of pure ‘Function’ are less significant, but that his contribution in the areas of ‘Functionality’ and ‘Form’ are major and substantial.[130][131] Apple I Computer Main article: Apple I The first significant invention that Steve Jobs was involved in was the Apple I which came along in 1976. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who was at the time working for HP, scraped together some cash for printed circuit boards. Then they planned to sell the machine as a kit for $666.66. A store called the Byte Shop ordered 50 fully assembled devices, and sold them all.[132] The Apple’s first computer was for hobbyists and engineers so it was made in small numbers.[133] Apple II Computer Main article: Apple II During 1976, Steve Wozniak began work on the Apple II, and left HP to join Apple computer. In March 1977, Apple Computer moved from Jobs's garage to an office in Cupertino. Apple Computer delivered its first Apple II system, for US$1295 in April 1977.[134] Steve Jobs once said the Apple II could be described as an "appliance" computer. The Apple II was the first computer to be enclosed in plastic.[135] Jobs insisted that molded plastic was essential to the computer as a consumer item. The Apple II was “elegantly styled" and it became compared to an "overgrown pocket calculator".[136] Ten months after its introduction, Apple Computer began work on an enhanced Apple II with custom chips, code-named Annie, in 1978. At the same year, they began work on a supercomputer named Lisa; it featured a bit-sliced architecture. After two and a half years, 50,000 Apple II units had been sold until 1979. Nearly one-third of Canadians credited the Apple II as the first personal computer which had the most impact on society.[137] The Macintosh Computer The Macintosh was introduced in January 1984. The computer had no “Mac” name on the front, but rather just the Apple logo.[132] The Macintosh had a friendly appearance since it was meant to be easy to use. The disk drive is below the display, the Macintosh was taller, narrower, more symmetrical, and far more suggestive of a face. The Macintosh was identified as a computer that ordinary people could understand.[138] The NeXT Computer Main article: NeXT Computer After Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, he started a company that built workstation computers. The NeXT Computer was introduced in 1989. Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the world’s first web browser on the NeXT Computer. The NeXT Computer was the basis for today’s Macintosh OS X and iPhone operating system (iOS).[139] iMac Main article: IMac Apple iMac was introduced in 1998 and its innovative design was directly the result of Jobs's return to Apple. Apple boasted "the back of our computer looks better than the front of anyone else's".[140] Described as "cartoonlike" the first iMac, clad in Bondi Blue plastic, was unlike any personal computer that came before. In 1999, Apple introduced Graphite gray Apple iMac and since has switched to all-white. Design ideas were intended to create a connection with the user such as the handle and a breathing light effect when the computer went to sleep..[141] The Apple iMac sold for $1,299 at that time. There was some technical revolutions for iMac too. The USB ports being the only device inputs on the iMac. So the iMac’s success helped popularize the interface among third party peripheral makers, which is evidenced by the fact that many early USB peripherals were made of translucent plastic to match the iMac design.[142] iPod Main article: IPod The first generation of iPod was released October 23, 2001. The major innovation of the iPod was its small size achieved by using a 1.8" hard drive compared to the 2.5" drives common to players at that time. The capacity of the first generation iPod ranged from 5G to 10 Gigabytes.[143] The iPod sold for US$399 and more than 100,000 iPods were sold before the end of 2001. The introduction of the iPod resulted in Apple becoming a major player in the music industry.[144] Also, the iPod’s success prepared the way for the iTunes music store and the iPhone.[133] After the 1st generation of iPod, Apple released the hard drive-based iPod classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, video-capable iPod Nano, screenless iPod Shuffle in the following years.[144] iPhone Main article: IPhone Jobs began work on the first iPhone in 2005 and the first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. The iPhone created such a sensation that a survey indicated six out of ten Americans were aware of its release. Time magazine declared it "Invention of the Year" for 2007.[145] The Apple iPhone is a small device with multimedia capabilities and functions as a quad-band touch screen smartphone.[146] A year later, the iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 with the key feature was support for GPS, 3G data and quad-band UMTS/HSDPA. In June 2009, the iPhone 3GS, added voice control, a better camera, and a faster processor was introduced by Phil Schiller.[147] iPhone 4 was thinner than previous models, had a five megapixel camera which can record videos in 720p HD, and added a secondary front facing camera for video calls.[148] A major feature of the iPhone 4S, introduced in October 2011, was Siri, which is a virtual assistant that is capable of voice recognition.[145] Philanthropy Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek magazine stated that "Jobs isn't widely known for his association with philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates's efforts.[149] In contrast to Gates, Jobs did not sign the Giving Pledge of Warren Buffett which challenged the world’s richest billionaires to give at least half their wealth to charity.[150] In an interview with Playboy in 1985, Jobs said in respect to money that “the challenges are to figure out how to live with it and to reinvest it back into the world which means either giving it away or using it to express your concerns or values.”[151] Jobs also added that when he has some time we would start a public foundation but for now he does charitable acts privately.[152] After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs initially.[153] Jobs’s friends told The New York Times that he felt that expanding Apple would have done more good than giving money to charity.[154] Later, under Jobs, Apple signed to participate in Product Red program, producing red versions of devices to give profits from sales to charity. Apple has gone on to become the largest contributor to the charity since its initial involvement with it. The chief of the Product Red project, singer Bono cited Jobs saying there was "nothing better than the chance to save lives," when he initially approached Apple with the invitation to participate in the program.[155] Through its sales, Apple has been the largest contributor to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, according to Bono.[156] Personal life Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, from Syria,[157] taught there. Joanne Carole Schieble was his student; they were the same age because Jandali had "gotten his PhD really young." [158][159][160] Schieble had a career as a speech language pathologist. Jandali taught political science at the University of Nevada in the 1960s, and then made his career in the food and beverage industry, and since 2006, has been a vice president at a casino in Reno, Nevada.[161][162] In December 1955, ten months after giving up their baby boy, Schieble and Jandali married. In 1957 they had a daughter, Mona. They divorced in 1962, and Jandali lost touch with his daughter.[163] Her mother remarried and had Mona take the surname of her stepfather, so she became known as Mona Simpson.[159] In the 1980s, Jobs found his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, who told him he had a biological sister, Mona Simpson. They met for the first time in 1985[163] and became close friends. The siblings kept their relationship secret until 1986, when Mona introduced him at a party for her first book.[35] After deciding to search for their father, Simpson found Jandali managing a coffee shop. Without knowing who his son had become, Jandali told Mona that he had previously managed a popular restaurant in the Silicon Valley where "Even Steve Jobs used to eat there. Yeah, he was a great tipper." In a taped interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson, aired on 60 Minutes,[164] Jobs said: "When I was looking for my biological mother, obviously, you know, I was looking for my biological father at the same time, and I learned a little bit about him and I didn't like what I learned. I asked her to not tell him that we ever met...not tell him anything about me."[165] Jobs was in occasional touch with his mother Joanne Simpson,[153][166] who lives in a nursing home in Los Angeles.[159] When speaking about his biological parents, Jobs stated: "They were my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more."[36] Jandali stated in an interview with the The Sun in August 2011, that his efforts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful. Jandali mailed in his medical history after Jobs's pancreatic disorder was made public that year.[167][168][169] In her eulogy to Jobs at his memorial service, Mona Simpson stated: I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I'd met my father, I tried to believe he'd changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.[163] Jobs's first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, was born in 1978, the daughter of his longtime partner Chris Ann Brennan, a Bay Area painter.[153] For two years, she raised their daughter on welfare while Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.[153] Jobs later married Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991, in a ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Presiding over the wedding was Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen Buddhist monk. Their son, Reed, was born September 1991, followed by daughters Erin in August 1995, and Eve in 1998.[170] The family lives in Palo Alto, California.[171] Shoulder-high portrait of two middle aged men, the one on left wearing a blue dress shirt and suitcoat, the one on right wearing a black turtleneck shirt and with his glasses pushed back onto his head and holding a phone facing them with an Apple logo visible on its back Jobs demonstrating the iPhone 4 to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on June 23, 2010 In the unauthorized biography, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan" (Dylan was the Apple icon's favorite musician). In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children. Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60 Minutes, he replied: My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.[172] In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2 singer Bono. Jobs never moved in.[173][174] In 1984, Jobs purchased the Jackling House, a 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m2), 14-bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion designed by George Washington Smith in Woodside, California. Although it reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for almost ten years. According to reports, he kept a 1966 BMW R60/2 motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. From the early 1990s, Jobs lived in a house in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto. President Clinton dined with Jobs and 14 Silicon Valley CEOs there on August 7, 1996, at a meal catered by Greens Restaurant.[175][176] Clinton returned the favor and Jobs, who was a Democratic donor, slept in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House.[177] Jobs allowed Jackling House to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007, Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision.[178] The court decision was overturned on appeal in March 2010, and the mansion was demolished beginning in February 2011.[179] Jobs usually wore a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by Issey Miyake (that was sometimes reported to be made by St. Croix), Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers.[180][181] Jobs told Walter Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style." [182] He was a pescetarian.[183] Jobs's car was a silver Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG, which did not display its license plates, as he took advantage of a California law which gives a maximum of six months for new vehicles to receive plates; Jobs leased a new SL every six months.[184] In a 2011 interview with biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs revealed at one point he met with U.S. President Barack Obama, complained of the nation's shortage of software engineers, and told Mr. Obama that he was "headed for a one-term presidency." Jobs proposed that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at a U.S. university should automatically be offered a green card. After the meeting, Jobs commented, "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done.... It infuriates me." [185] Jobs contributed to a number of political candidates and causes during his life, giving $209,000 to Democrats, $45,700 to associated special interests and $1,000 to a Republican.[186] Health issues Jobs addressing concerns about his health in 2008. In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer,[187] and in mid-2004, he announced to his employees that he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.[188] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor;[189] Jobs stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[188] Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for mainstream medical intervention for nine months,[153] instead consuming a special alternative medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Dr. Ramzi Amir, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death."[187] According to Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined."[190] "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004."[191] He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to successfully remove the tumor.[192][193][194] Jobs apparently did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy.[188][195] During Jobs's absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.[188] In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His "thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery,[196][197] together with his choice to delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and Internet speculation about his health.[198] In contrast, according to an Ars Technica journal report, Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) attendees who saw Jobs in person said he "looked fine".[199] Following the keynote, an Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust."[200] Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs's 2008 WWDC keynote address.[201] Apple officials stated Jobs was victim to a "common bug" and was taking antibiotics,[202] while others surmised his cachectic appearance was due to the Whipple procedure.[195] During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings, participants responded to repeated questions about Jobs's health by insisting that it was a "private matter". Others, however, voiced the opinion that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs's hands-on approach to running his company.[203][204] The New York Times published an article based on an off-the-record phone conversation with Jobs, noting that "While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug', they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer."[205] On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate news service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily stockpile up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's death.) Although the error was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it,[206] intensifying rumors concerning Jobs's health.[207] Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008 Let's Rock keynote by quoting Mark Twain: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."[208] At a subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions about his health.[209] On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about Jobs's health.[210][211] In a statement given on January 5, 2009, on Apple.com,[212] Jobs said that he had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months.[213] On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had "learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought", and announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who previously acted as CEO in Jobs's 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple,[214] with Jobs still involved with "major strategic decisions."[214] In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee.[215][216] Jobs's prognosis was described as "excellent".[215] On January 17, 2011, a year and a half after Jobs returned from his liver transplant, Apple announced that he had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his decision was made "so he could focus on his health". As during his 2009 medical leave, Apple announced that Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved in major strategic decisions at the company.[217][218] Despite the leave, he made appearances at the iPad 2 launch event (March 2), the WWDC keynote introducing iCloud (June 6), and before the Cupertino city council (June 7).[219] Jobs announced his resignation as Apple's CEO on August 24, 2011. "Unfortunately, that day has come," wrote Jobs, for he could "no longer meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple's CEO". Jobs became chairman of the board and named Tim Cook his successor.[220][221] Jobs had worked for Apple until the day before his death.[222] Death Flags flying at half-staff outside Apple HQ in Cupertino, on the evening of Steve Jobs's death. Memorial candles and iPads to Steve Jobs outside the Apple Store in Palo Alto California shortly after his death Jobs died at his California home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer,[2][223][224] resulting in respiratory arrest.[225] He had lost consciousness the day before, and died with his wife, children and sister at his side.[226] Both Apple and Microsoft flew their flags at half-staff throughout their respective headquarters and campuses.[227][228] Bob Iger ordered all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World and Disneyland, to fly their flags at half-staff, from October 6 to 12, 2011.[229] His death was announced by Apple in a statement which read: We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.[230] For two weeks following his death, Apple's corporate Web site displayed a simple page, showing Jobs's name and lifespan next to his grayscale portrait.[231] Clicking on the image led to an obituary, which read: Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.[231] An email address was also posted for the public to share their memories, condolences, and thoughts.[232][233] Over a million tributes were sent, which are now displayed on the Steve Jobs memorial page. Also dedicating its homepage to Jobs was Pixar, with a photo of Jobs, John Lasseter and Edwin Catmull, and the eulogy they wrote:[234] Steve was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend, and our guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to 'make it great.' He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity, and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be part of Pixar's DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.[234] A small private funeral was held on October 7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to Jobs's family.[235] Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such messages.[236] Sunday, October 16, 2011, was declared "Steve Jobs Day" by Governor Jerry Brown of California.[237] On that day, an invitation-only memorial was held at Stanford University. Those in attendance included Apple and other tech company executives, members of the media, celebrities, close friends of Jobs, and politicians, along with Jobs's family. Bono, Yo Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the service, which lasted longer than an hour. The service was highly secured, with guards at all of the university's gates, and a helicopter flying overhead from an area news station.[238][239] A private memorial service for Apple employees was held on October 19, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino. Present were Cook, Bill Campbell, Norah Jones, Al Gore, and Coldplay, and Jobs's widow, Laurene, was in attendance. Some of Apple's retail stores closed briefly so employees could attend the memorial. A video of the service is available on Apple's website.[240] Jobs is buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, the only non-denominational cemetery in Palo Alto.[241][242]. He is survived by Laurene, his wife of 20 years, their three children, and Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter from a previous relationship.[243] His family released a statement saying that he "died peacefully".[244][245] He "looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them" (Mona Simpson). Steve Jobs's death broke news headlines on ABC, CBS, and NBC. [246] Numerous newspapers around the world carried news of his death on their front pages the next day. Several notable people, including US President Barack Obama,[247] British Prime Minister David Cameron,[248] Microsoft founder Bill Gates,[249] and The Walt Disney Company's Bob Iger commented on the death of Jobs. Wired News collected reactions and posted them in tribute on their homepage.[250] Other statements of condolence were made by many of Jobs's friends and colleagues, such as Steve Wozniak and George Lucas.[251][252] After Steve Job's death, Adult Swim aired a 15-second segment with the words "hello" in a script font fading in and then changing into "goodbye". Major media published commemorative works. Time published a commemorative issue for Jobs on October 8, 2011. The issues cover featured a portrait of Jobs, taken by Norman Seeff, in which he is sitting in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh computer, first published in Rolling Stone in January 1984. The issue marked the eighth time Jobs has been featured on the cover of Time.[253] The issue included a photographic essay by Diana Walker, a retrospective on Apple by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by Walter Isaacson. Isaacson's essay served as a preview of his biography, Steve Jobs.[254] Bloomberg Businessweek also published an commemorative, ad-free issue, featuring extensive essays by Steve Jurvetson, John Sculley, Sean Wisely, William Gibson, and Walter Isaacson. On its cover, Steve Jobs is pictured in gray scale, along with his name and lifespan. Although reporters wrote glowing elegies after Jobs died, Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey reported that they "came courtesy of reporters who—after deadline and off the record—would tell stories about a company obsessed with secrecy to the point of paranoia. They remind us how Apple shut down a youthful fanboy blogger, punished a publisher that dared to print an unauthorized Jobs biography and repeatedly ran afoul of the most basic tenets of a free press."[255] Free software pioneer Richard Stallman drew attention to the tight corporate control Apple exercised over consumer computers and handheld devices, how Apple restricted news reporters, and persistently violated privacy: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died".[256][257] Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker asserted that "Jobs's sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him ... and ruthlessly refining it."[258] Apple "has taken stances that, in my opinion, are outright hostile to the practice of journalism," said longtime Silicon Valley reporter Dan Gillmor.[255] Under Jobs, Apple sued three "small fry" bloggers who reported tips about the company and its unreleased products and tried to use the courts to force them to reveal their sources. Under Jobs, Apple even sued a teenager, Nicholas Ciarelli, who wrote enthusiastic speculation about Apple products beginning at age 13. His popular blog, ThinkSecret, was a play on Apple's slogan "Think Different." [255] Rainey wrote that Apple wanted to kill ThinkSecret as "It thought any leaks, even favorable ones, diluted the punch of its highly choreographed product launches with Jobs, in his iconic jeans and mock turtleneck outfit, as the star." [255] Honors and public recognition Steve Jobs with the first generation iPad tablet After Apple's founding, Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry. When Time named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", the magazine published a long profile of Jobs as "the most famous maestro of the micro".[259][260] Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, with Steve Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the honor),[261] and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (also known as the Samuel S. Beard Award) in 1987.[262] On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune magazine.[263] On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.[264] In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior Achievement,[265] having previously been named Entrepreneur of the Decade 20 years earlier in 1989, by Inc. magazine.[266] On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by Fortune magazine.[267] In November 2010, Jobs was ranked No.17 on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People.[268] In December 2010, the Financial Times named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay [269] by stating, "In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.'".[270] The Financial Times closed by rhetorically asking of this quote, "How wrong can you be."[269] At the time of his resignation, and again after his death, Jobs was widely described as a visionary, pioneer and genius[271][272][273][274]—perhaps one of the foremost—in the field of business,[267][275] innovation,[276] and product design,[277] and a man who had profoundly changed the face of the modern world,[271][273][276] revolutionized at least six different industries,[272] and who was an "exemplar for all chief executives".[272] His death was widely mourned[276] and considered a loss to the world by commentators across the globe.[274] After his resignation as Apple's CEO, Jobs was characterized as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his time.[278][279] In his The Daily Show eulogy, Jon Stewart said that unlike others of Jobs's ilk, such as Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, Jobs died young. He felt that we had, in a sense, "wrung everything out of" these other men, but his feeling on Jobs was that "we're not done with you yet."[280] Statue of Jobs at Graphisoft Park, Budapest[281] On December 21, 2011, Graphisoft company in Budapest presented the world's first bronze statue of Steve Jobs, calling him one of the greatest personalities of the modern age.[281] In January 2012, when young adults (ages 16 – 25) were asked to identify the greatest innovator of all time, Steve Jobs placed second behind Thomas Edison.[282] On February 12, 2012, Jobs was posthumously awarded the Grammy Trustees Award, an award for those who have influenced the music industry in areas unrelated to performance.[283] In March 2012, global business magazine Fortune named Steve Jobs the "greatest entrepreneur of our time", describing him as "brilliant, visionary, inspiring", and "the quintessential entrepreneur of our generation".[284] The Disney movie John Carter is dedicated to Jobs[285], as well as the Pixar film Brave. Portrayals and coverage in books, film, and theater The Little Kingdom (1984) by Michael Moritz, documenting the founding of (then) Apple Computer. The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (2001), by Alan Deutschman iCon: Steve Jobs (2005), by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon iWoz (2006), by Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple. It is an autobiography of Steve Wozniak, but it covers much of Jobs's life and work at Apple. Steve Jobs (2011), an authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson. Inside Apple (2012), a book by Adam Lashinsky that reveals the secret systems, tactics, and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to work. The Machine That Changed the World – Part 3 of this 1992 five-part documentary, called The Paperback Computer, prominently featured Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple. Triumph of the Nerds – a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home computer/personal computer. Nerds 2.0.1 – a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to Triumph of the Nerds) which chronicles the development of the Internet. iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World – a 2011 Discovery Channel documentary hosted by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.[286] Steve Jobs: One Last Thing – a 2011 PBS documentary produced by Pioneer Productions.[287] A slightly shortened and localized[288] version of the show was broadcast[289] in the United Kingdom the following day titled, Steve Jobs: iChanged the World – on Channel 4.[290] Steve Jobs – A Sony Pictures film version of the biography by Walter Isaacson, with a screenplay and directed by Aaron Sorkin. Jobs – an upcoming independent film by Joshua Michael Stern. Jobs will be portrayed by Ashton Kutcher.[291] Pirates of Silicon Valley – a 1999 TNT film which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Jobs is portrayed by Noah Wyle.[292] The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs - The Public Theater, New York City, 2012, starring Mike Daisey. ... ...... Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.[1] Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–96, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York).[2][citation needed] His father had to escape from Canada because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837.[citation needed] Edison reported being of Dutch ancestry.[3] In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother taught him at home.[4] Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union. Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.[5][6] Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined;[7] his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. He also studied qualitative analysis, and conducted chemical experiments on the train until an accident prohibited further work of the kind.[8] He obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers.[8] This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.[9][10] Telegrapher Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.[11] In 1866, at the age of 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead–acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison was fired.[12] One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U.S. Patent 90,646),[13] which was granted on June 1, 1869.[14] Marriages and children On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell (1855-1884), whom he had met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children: Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot"[15] Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash"[16] William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.[17] Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9, 1884, of unknown causes: possibly from a brain tumor[18] or a morphine overdose. Doctors frequently prescribed morphine to women in those years to treat a variety of causes, and researchers believe that some of her symptoms sounded as if they were associated with morphine poisoning.[19] Mina Edison in 1906 On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller (1866-1947) in Akron, Ohio.[20] She was the daughter of the inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children together: Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane.[21][22] Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father's death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey.[23] He also took charge of his father's experimental laboratories in West Orange. Theodore Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), credited with more than 80 patents. Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.[24][25] Beginning his career Photograph of Edison with his phonograph (2nd model), taken in Mathew Brady's Washington, DC studio in April 1878. Mary Had a Little Lamb Thomas Edison reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" Problems listening to this file? See media help. Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder, but had poor sound quality and the recordings could be played only a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph." Menlo Park (1876–1881) Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, removed to Greenfield Village at Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. (Note the organ against the back wall) Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was built with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid. He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000,[citation needed] ($202,000 USD 2010) which he gratefully accepted. The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success, and Menlo Park became the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results. William Joseph Hammer, a consulting electrical engineer, began his duties as a laboratory assistant to Edison in December 1879. He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions. However, Hammer worked primarily on the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests and records on that device. In 1880, he was appointed chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In his first year, the plant under General Manager Francis Robbins Upton turned out 50,000 lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was "a pioneer of incandescent electric lighting". Thomas Edison's first successful light bulb model, used in public demonstration at Menlo Park, December 1879 Nearly all of Edison's patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17-year period and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14-year period. As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented as describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds.[26] Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light.[27] Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer,[28] William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially.[29] In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although the English inventor Joseph Swan had used the term prior to this. Swan developed an incandescent light with a long lasting filament at about the same time as Edison, as Swan's earlier bulbs lacked the high resistance needed to be an effective part of an electrical utility. Edison and his co-workers set about the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. In Britain, Joseph Swan had been able to obtain a patent on the incandescent lamp; though Edison had already been making successful lamps for some time, his patent application was incompletely prepared and failed.[29] Unable to raise the required capital in Britain because of this, Edison was forced to enter into a joint venture with Swan (known as Ediswan). Swan acknowledged that Edison had anticipated him, saying "Edison is entitled to more than I ... he has seen further into this subject, vastly than I, and foreseen and provided for details that I did not comprehend until I saw his system".[30] By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application, and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity. In just over a decade, Edison's Menlo Park laboratory had expanded to occupy two city blocks. Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material". A newspaper article printed in 1887 reveals the seriousness of his claim, stating the lab contained "eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels ... silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark's teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell ... cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock's tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores ..." and the list goes on.[31] Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous quotation: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."[32] This slogan was reputedly posted at several other locations throughout the facility. With Menlo Park, Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application. Carbon telephone transmitter In 1877–78, Edison invented and developed the carbon microphone used in all telephones along with the Bell receiver until the 1980s. After protracted patent litigation, in 1892 a federal court ruled that Edison and not Emile Berliner was the inventor of the carbon microphone. The carbon microphone was also used in radio broadcasting and public address work through the 1920s. Electric light Main article: History of the light bulb Edison in 1878 Building on the contributions of other developers over the previous three quarters of a century, Edison made improvements to the idea of incandescent light, and entered the public consciousness as "the inventor" of the lightbulb, and a prime mover in developing the necessary infrastructure for electric power. After many experiments with platinum and other metal filaments, Edison returned to a carbon filament. The first successful test was on October 22, 1879;[33] it lasted 13.5 hours.[34] Edison continued to improve this design and by November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires".[35] Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways",[35] it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that could last over 1,200 hours. The idea of using this particular raw material originated from Edison's recalling his examination of a few threads from a bamboo fishing pole while relaxing on the shore of Battle Lake in the present-day state of Wyoming, where he and other members of a scientific team had traveled so that they could clearly observe a total eclipse of the sun on July 29, 1878, from the Continental Divide.[36] U.S. Patent#223898: Electric-Lamp. Issued January 27, 1880. In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family. Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."[37] Lewis Latimer joined the Edison Electric Light Company in 1884. Latimer had received a patent in January 1881 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of carbon filaments for lightbulbs. Latimer worked as an engineer, a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights.[38] George Westinghouse's company bought Philip Diehl's competing induction lamp patent rights (1882) for $25,000, forcing the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp.[39] On October 8, 1883, the US patent office ruled that Edison's patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was therefore invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric-light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison's, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain. Mahen Theatre in Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic) was the first public building in the world to use Edison's electric lamps, with the installation supervised by Edison's assistant in the invention of the lamp, Francis Jehl.[40] In September 2010, a sculpture of three giant light bulbs was erected in Brno, in front of the theatre.[41] Electric power distribution Edison patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880, which was essential to capitalize on the invention of the electric lamp. On December 17, 1880, Edison founded the Edison Illuminating Company. The company established the first investor-owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street Station, New York City. It was on September 4, 1882, that Edison switched on his Pearl Street generating station's electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.[42] Earlier in the year, in January 1882, he had switched on the first steam-generating power station at Holborn Viaduct in London. The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private dwellings within a short distance of the station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey. War of currents Main article: War of Currents Extravagant displays of electric lights quickly became a feature of public events, as in this picture from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits through establishment of mass-production systems and intellectual property rights. George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries because of Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users. In 1887, there were 121 Edison power stations in the United States delivering DC electricity to customers. When the limitations of DC were discussed by the public, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to convince people that AC was far too dangerous to use. The problem with DC was that the power plants could economically deliver DC electricity only to customers within about one and a half miles (about 2.4 km) from the generating station, so that it was suitable only for central business districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with marginal loss of power, Edison waged a "War of Currents" to prevent AC from being adopted. The war against AC led him to become involved in the development and promotion of the electric chair (using AC) as an attempt to portray AC to have greater lethal potential than DC. Edison went on to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC;[43][44] alternating electric currents are slightly more dangerous in that frequencies near 60 Hz have a markedly greater potential for inducing fatal "cardiac fibrillation" than do direct currents.[45] On one of the more notable occasions, in 1903, Edison's workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, after she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death.[46] His company filmed the electrocution. AC replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Low-voltage DC distribution continued to be used in high-density downtown areas for many years but was eventually replaced by AC low-voltage network distribution in many of them.[47] DC had the advantage that large battery banks could maintain continuous power through brief interruptions of the electric supply from generators and the transmission system. Utilities such as Commonwealth Edison in Chicago had rotary converters or motor-generator sets, which could change DC to AC and AC to various frequencies in the early to mid-20th century. Utilities supplied rectifiers to convert the low voltage AC to DC for such DC loads as elevators, fans and pumps. There were still 1,600 DC customers in downtown New York City as of 2005, and service was finally discontinued only on November 14, 2007.[47] Most subway systems are still powered by direct current. Fluoroscopy Edison is credited with designing and producing the first commercially available fluoroscope, a machine that uses X-rays to take radiographs. Until Edison discovered that calcium tungstate fluoroscopy screens produced brighter images than the barium platinocyanide screens originally used by Wilhelm Röntgen, the technology was capable of producing only very faint images. The fundamental design of Edison's fluoroscope is still in use today, although Edison himself abandoned the project after nearly losing his own eyesight and seriously injuring his assistant, Clarence Dally. Dally had made himself an enthusiastic human guinea pig for the fluoroscopy project and in the process been exposed to a poisonous dose of radiation. He later died of injuries related to the exposure. In 1903, a shaken Edison said "Don't talk to me about X-rays, I am afraid of them."[48] Work relations Photograph of Thomas Edison by Victor Daireaux, Paris, circa 1880s Frank J. Sprague, a competent mathematician and former naval officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson and joined the Edison organization in 1883. One of Sprague's contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was to expand Edison's mathematical methods. Despite the common belief that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis conducted by his assistants such as Francis Robbins Upton, for example, determining the critical parameters of his electric lighting system including lamp resistance by an analysis of Ohm's Law, Joule's Law and economics.[49] Another of Edison's assistants was Nikola Tesla. Tesla claimed that Edison had promised him $50,000 if he succeeded in making improvements to his DC generation plants. Several months later, when Tesla had finished the work and asked to be paid, he said that Edison replied, "When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke."[50] Tesla immediately resigned. With Tesla's salary of $18 per week, the payment would have amounted to over 53 years' pay and the amount was equal to the initial capital of the company. Another account states that Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week.[51] Although Tesla accepted an Edison Medal later in life, this and other negative events concerning Edison remained with him. The day after Edison died, the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla who was quoted as saying: He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. [...] His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90% of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense.[52] —Nikola Tesla One of Edison's famous quotations about his attempts to make the light globe suggest that perhaps Tesla was right about Edison's methods of working: "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."[53] When Edison was a very old man and close to death, he said, in looking back, that the biggest mistake he had made was in not respecting Tesla or his work.[54] There were 28 men recognized as Edison Pioneers. Media inventions The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and reproducing phonograph in 1878. Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design, while his employee W.K.L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson.[33] In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.[55] On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film. Leonard Cushing Kinetograph 1894.ogv The June 1894 Leonard–Cushing bout. Each of the six one-minute rounds recorded by the Kinetoscope was made available to exhibitors for $22.50.[56] Customers who watched the final round saw Leonard score a knockdown. Officially the kinetoscope entered Europe when the rich American Businessman Irving T. Bush (1869–1948) bought from the Continental Commerce Company of Frank Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Baucus a dozen machines. Bush placed from October 17, 1894, the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894, The Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck[57] of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne. The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the Fairs in early 1895. The Edison's Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895, with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists.[58] On May 14, 1895, the Edison's Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. The businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with Leon Gaumont and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. In 1898 he also became a shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.[58] In 1901, he visited the Sudbury area in Ontario, Canada, as a mining prospector, and is credited with the original discovery of the Falconbridge ore body. His attempts to mine the ore body were not successful, however, and he abandoned his mining claim in 1903.[59] A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him. Other exhibitors similarly routinely copied and exhibited each others' films.[60] To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of photographic paper with the U.S. copyright office. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.[61] Edison's favorite movie was The Birth of a Nation. He thought that talkies had "spoiled everything" for him. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf."[62] His favorite stars were Mary Pickford and Clara Bow.[63] In 1908, Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929. West Orange and Fort Myers (1886–1931) Thomas A. Edison Industries Exhibit, Primary Battery section, 1915 Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone, respectively. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929 Edison moved from Menlo Park after the death of Mary Stilwell and purchased a home known as "Glenmont" in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1885, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida, and built what was later called Seminole Lodge as a winter retreat. Edison and his wife Mina spent many winters in Fort Myers where they recreated and Edison tried to find a domestic source of natural rubber. Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from Edison at his winter retreat in Fort Myers, Florida. Edison even contributed technology to the automobile. They were friends until Edison's death. In 1928, Edison joined the Fort Myers Civitan Club. He believed strongly in the organization, writing that "The Civitan Club is doing things—big things—for the community, state, and nation, and I certainly consider it an honor to be numbered in its ranks."[64] He was an active member in the club until his death, sometimes bringing Henry Ford to the club's meetings. The final years Edison was active in business right up to the end. Just months before his death in 1931, the Lackawanna Railroad implemented electric trains in suburban service from Hoboken to Gladstone, Montclair and Dover in New Jersey. Transmission was by means of an overhead catenary system, with the entire project under Edison's guidance. To the surprise of many, he was at the throttle of the very first MU (Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, driving the train all the way to Dover.[65] As another tribute to his lasting legacy, the same fleet of cars Edison deployed on the Lackawanna in 1931 served commuters until their retirement in 1984, when some of them were purchased by the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum in Lenox, Massachusetts. A special plaque commemorating the joint achievement of both the railway and Edison can be seen today in the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, presently operated by New Jersey Transit.[65] Edison was said to have been influenced by a popular fad diet in his last few years; "the only liquid he consumed was a pint of milk every three hours".[33] He is reported to have believed this diet would restore his health. However, this tale is doubtful. In 1930, the year before Edison died, Mina said in an interview about him, "correct eating is one of his greatest hobbies." She also said that during one of his periodic "great scientific adventures", Edison would be up at 7:00, have breakfast at 8:00, and be rarely home for lunch or dinner, implying that he continued to have all three.[62] Edison became the owner of his Milan, Ohio, birthplace in 1906. On his last visit, in 1923, he was shocked to find his old home still lit by lamps and candles. Thomas Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. He is buried behind the home.[66][67] Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.[68] Mina died in 1947. Views on politics, religion and metaphysics Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a "freethinker".[33] Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.[33] Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity."[33] In an October 2, 1910, interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated: Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.[69] Edison was called an atheist for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he clarified himself in a private letter: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made."[33] Nonviolence was key to Edison's moral views, and when asked to serve as a naval consultant for World War I, he specified he would work only on defensive weapons and later noted, "I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill." Edison's philosophy of nonviolence extended to animals as well, about which he stated: "Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."[70] However, he is also notorious for having electrocuted a number of dogs in 1888, both by direct and alternating current, in an attempt to argue that the former (which he had a vested business interest in promoting) was safer than the latter (favored by his rival George Westinghouse).[71] Edison's success in promoting direct current as less lethal also led to alternating current being used in the electric chair adopted by New York in 1889 as a supposedly humane execution method. Because Westinghouse was angered by the decision, he funded Eighth Amendment-based appeals for inmates set to die in the electric chair, ultimately resulting in Edison providing the generators which powered early electrocutions and testifying successfully on behalf of the state that electrocution was a painless method of execution.[72] Tributes Places and people named for Edison Several places have been named after Edison, most notably the town of Edison, New Jersey. Thomas Edison State College, a nationally known college for adult learners, is in Trenton, New Jersey. Two community colleges are named for him: Edison State College in Fort Myers, Florida, and Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio.[73] There are numerous high schools named after Edison; see Edison High School. In 1883, the City Hotel in Sunbury, Pennsylvania was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. The hotel was renamed The Hotel Edison upon Edison's return to the City on 1922. [74] Edison was on hand to turn on the lights at the Hotel Edison in New York City when it opened in 1931. Three bridges around the United States have been named in his honor (see Edison Bridge). In space, his name is commemorated in asteroid 742 Edisona. The Russian composer Edison Denisov, whose father was a radio-physicist, was named after the inventor. Museums and memorials Statue of young Thomas Edison by the railroad tracks in Port Huron, Michigan. In West Orange, New Jersey, the 13.5 acre (5.5 ha) Glenmont estate is maintained and operated by the National Park Service as the Edison National Historic Site.[75] The Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum is in the town of Edison, New Jersey.[76] In Beaumont, Texas, there is an Edison Museum, though Edison never visited there.[citation needed] The Port Huron Museum, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young newsbutcher. The depot has been named the Thomas Edison Depot Museum.[77] The town has many Edison historical landmarks, including the graves of Edison's parents, and a monument along the St. Clair River. Edison's influence can be seen throughout this city of 32,000. In Detroit, the Edison Memorial Fountain in Grand Circus Park was created to honor his achievements. The limestone fountain was dedicated October 21, 1929, the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the lightbulb.[78] On the same night, The Edison Institute was dedicated in nearby Dearborn. In early 2010, Edison was proposed by the Ohio Historical Society as a finalist in a statewide vote for inclusion in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. Companies bearing Edison's name In 1915 Edison General Electric, merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon Consolidated Edison Edison International Southern California Edison Edison Mission Energy Edison Capital Detroit Edison, a unit of DTE Energy Edison Sault Electric Company, a unit of Wisconsin Energy Corporation FirstEnergy Metropolitan Edison Ohio Edison Toledo Edison Edison S.p.A., a unit of Italenergia Boston Edison, a unit of NSTAR, formerly known as the Edison Electric Illuminating Company WEEI radio station in Boston, established by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company (hence the call letters) Trade association the Edison Electric Institute, a lobbying and research group for investor-owned utilities in the United States Edison Ore-Milling Company Edison Portland Cement Company Awards named in honor of Edison The Edison Medal was created on February 11, 1904, by a group of Edison's friends and associates. Four years later the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), later IEEE, entered into an agreement with the group to present the medal as its highest award. The first medal was presented in 1909 to Elihu Thomson and, in a twist of fate, was awarded to Nikola Tesla in 1917. It is the oldest award in the area of electrical and electronics engineering, and is presented annually "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts." In the Netherlands, the major music awards are named the Edison Award after him. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers concedes the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award to individual patents since 2000.[79] Honors and awards given to Edison The President of the Third French Republic, Jules Grévy, on the recommendation of his Minister of Foreign Affairs Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire and with the presentations of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Louis Cochery, designated Edison with the distinction of an 'Officer of the Legion of Honour' (Légion d'honneur) by decree on November 10, 1881;[80] He also named a Chevalier in 1879, and a Commander in 1889.[81] In 1887, Edison won the Matteucci Medal. In 1890, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Philadelphia City Council named Edison the recipient of the John Scott Medal in 1889.[81] In 1899, Edison was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal of The Franklin Institute.[82] He was named an Honorable Consulting Engineer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's fair in 1904.[81] In 1908, Edison received the American Association of Engineering Societies John Fritz Medal.[81] Edison was awarded Franklin Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1915 for discoveries contributing to the foundation of industries and the well-being of the human race. The United States Navy department awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal in 1920.[81] The American Institute of Electrical Engineers created the Edison Medal in 1923 and he was its first recipient.[81] In 1927, he was granted membership in the National Academy of Sciences.[81] On May 29, 1928, Edison received the Congressional Gold Medal.[81] In 1983, the United States Congress, pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 140 (Public Law 97—198), designated February 11, Edison's birthday, as National Inventor's Day. Edison was ranked thirty-fifth on Michael H. Hart's 1978 book The 100, a list of the most influential figures in history. Life magazine (USA), in a special double issue in 1997, placed Edison first in the list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years", noting that the light bulb he promoted "lit up the world". In the 2005 television series The Greatest American, he was voted by viewers as the fifteenth-greatest. In 2008, Edison was inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame. In 2010, Edison was honored with a Technical Grammy Award. In 2011, Edison was inducted into the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame, and named a Great Floridian by the Florida Governor and Cabinet.[83] On November 6, 1915, The New York Times announced that both Edison and Tesla were to jointly receive the 1915 Nobel Prize but it did not occur.[84] The details of what happened are not known but Tesla who had once worked for Edison quit when he was promised a large bonus for solving a problem and then after being successful was told the promise was a joke.[85] Tesla once said that if Edison had to find a needle in a haystack he would take apart the haystack one straw at a time.[86] The Prize was awarded to Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays". Other items named after Edison The United States Navy named the USS Edison (DD-439), a Gleaves class destroyer, in his honor in 1940. The ship was decommissioned a few months after the end of World War II. In 1962, the Navy commissioned USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610), a fleet ballistic missile nuclear-powered submarine. Decommissioned on December 1, 1983, Thomas A. Edison was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on April 30, 1986. She went through the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Bremerton, Washington, beginning on October 1, 1996. When she finished the program on December 1, 1997, she ceased to exist as a complete ship and was listed as scrapped. In popular culture Main article: Thomas Edison in popular culture Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. His history with Nikola Tesla has also provided dramatic tension and is a theme returned to numerous times. On February 11, 2011, on Thomas Edison's 164th birthday, Google's homepage featured an animated Google Doodle commemorating his many inventions. When the cursor was hovered over the doodle, a series of mechanisms seemed to move, causing a lightbulb to glow.