https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Debut[edit]
IBM is proud to announce a product you may have a personal interest in. It's a tool that could soon be on your desk, in your home or in your child's schoolroom. It can make a surprising difference in the way you work, learn or otherwise approach the complexities (and some of the simple pleasures) of living.

It's the computer we're making for you.
—?IBM PC advertisement, 1982[52]

After developing it in 12 months—faster than any other hardware product in company history—IBM announced the Personal Computer on 12 August 1981. Pricing started at US$1,565 (equivalent to $4,073 in 2015) for a configuration with 16K RAM, Color Graphics Adapter, and no disk drives. The company intentionally set prices for it and other configurations that were comparable to those of Apple and other rivals;[53][23][5][36][17] one analyst stated that IBM "has taken the gloves off",[1] while the company said "we suggest [the PC's price] invites comparison".[54] Microsoft, Personal Software, and Peachtree Software were among the developers of nine launch titles, including EasyWriter and VisiCalc.[53] In addition to the existing corporate sales force IBM opened its own Product Center retail stores. After studying Apple's successful distribution network, the company for the first time sold through others, ComputerLand and Sears Roebuck.[53][19][4][20][5] Because retail stores receive revenue from repairing computers and providing warranty service, IBM broke a 70-year tradition by permitting and training non-IBM service personnel to fix the PC.

BYTE described IBM as having "the strongest marketing organization in the world", but the PC's marketing also differed from that of previous products. The company was aware of its corporate reputation among potential customers; an early advertisement began "Presenting the IBM of Personal Computers".[52][55][5] The advertisements emphasized the novelty of an individual owning an IBM computer, describing "a product you may have a personal interest in"[52] and asking readers to think of "'My own IBM computer. Imagine that' ... it's yours. For your business, your project, your department, your class, your family and, indeed, for yourself."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz



Bertha Benz (née Ringer, 3 May 1849 – 5 May 1944) was a German automotive pioneer. She was the wife and business partner of automobile inventor Karl Benz. In 1888, she was the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance.[1] In doing so, she brought the Benz Patent-Motorwagen worldwide attention and got the company its first sales.

In August 1888, without telling her husband and without permission of the authorities, Benz drove with her sons Richard and Eugen, thirteen and fifteen years old, in the newly constructed Patent Motorwagen automobile—from Mannheim to Pforzheim—becoming the first person to drive an automobile over a real distance. Motorized drives before this historic trip were merely very short trial drives, returning to the point of origin, made with mechanical assistants. Following wagon tracks, this pioneering tour had a one-way distance of about 106 km (66 mi).

Although the ostensible purpose of the trip was to visit her mother, Bertha Benz had other motives: to prove to her husband—who had failed to consider marketing his invention adequately—that the automobile they both heavily invested in would become a financial success once it was shown to be useful to the general public; and to give her husband the confidence that his constructions had a future.

She left Mannheim around dawn, solving numerous problems along the way.[8] Bertha demonstrated her significant technical capabilities on this journey.[9] With no fuel tank and only a 4.5-litre supply of petrol in the carburetor, she had to find ligroin, the petroleum solvent needed for the car to run. It was only available at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel.[10] At the time petrol and other fuels could only be bought from chemists and so this is how the chemist in Wiesloch became the first fuel station in the world.

She even cleaned a blocked fuel line with her hat pin and used her garter as isolation material.[9] A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. When the wooden brakes began to fail Benz visited a cobbler to install leather, making the world's first pair of brake pads.[2] The thermosiphon system was employed to cool the engine, making water supply a big worry along the trip. The trio added water to their supply every time they stopped.[10] The car's two gears were not enough to surmount uphill inclines and Eugen and Richard often had to push the vehicle.[10] Benz reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim several days later.

Along the way, several people were frightened by the automobile. Some even thought that two young boys and a woman on a hissing, thumping horseless carriage could only be the work of the Devil himself.[11] The novel trip received a great deal of publicity, as she had sought. The drive was a key event in the technical development of the automobile. The pioneering couple introduced several improvements after Bertha's experiences. She reported everything that had happened along the way and made important suggestions, such as the introduction of an additional gear for climbing hills and brake linings to improve brake-power. Her trip proved to the burgeoning automotive industry that test drives were essential to their business.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Quimby



Harriet Quimby (May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912) was an early American aviator and a movie screenwriter. In 1911, she was awarded a U.S. pilot's certificate by the Aero Club of America, becoming the first woman to gain a pilot's license in the United States. In 1912, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Although Quimby lived only to the age of thirty-seven, she had a major influence upon the role of women in aviation.

Early life and early career

A historical marker has been erected near the now abandoned farmhouse in Arcadia Township, Manistee County, Michigan where Quimby was born. After her family moved to San Francisco, California, in the early 1900s, she became a journalist. She moved to New York City in 1903 to work as a theater critic for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly and more than 250 of her articles were published over a nine-year period.[1]

Quimby became interested in aviation in 1910, when she attended the Belmont Park International Aviation Tournament on Long Island, New York and met John Moisant, a well-known aviator and operator of a flight school, and his sister Matilde. On August 1, 1911, she took her pilot's test and became the first U.S. woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator's certificate. Matilde Moisant soon followed and became the nation's second certified female pilot.

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English Channel

On April 16, 1912, Quimby took off from Dover, England, en route to Calais, France and made the flight in 59 minutes, landing about 25 miles (40 km) from Calais on a beach in Équihen-Plage, Pas-de-Calais. She became the first woman to pilot an aircraft across the English Channel. Her accomplishment received little media attention, however, as the sinking of the RMS Titanic the day before consumed the interest of the public and filled newspapers.

Death

On July 1, 1912, she flew in the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts. Ironically, although she had obtained her ACA certificate to be allowed to participate in ACA events, the Boston meet was an unsanctioned contest. Quimby flew out to Boston Light in Boston Harbor at about 3000 feet, then returned and circled the airfield.[8] William Willard, the organizer of the event and father of the aviator Charles Willard, was a passenger in her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane. At an altitude of 1,500 feet (460 m) the aircraft unexpectedly pitched forward for reasons still unknown. Both Willard and Quimby were ejected from their seats and fell to their deaths, while the plane "glided down and lodged itself in the mud".

Harriet Quimby was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. The following year her remains were moved to the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.

Legacy

The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome possesses a flyable Anzani-powered one-seater Blériot XI, which bears the Blériot factory's serial number 56, showing that it was manufactured in 1909. Since Quimby's plane, in 1912, was a brand new two-seater, the idea that the former was the aircraft that she was flying in 1912 seems to be an urban legend.

A 1991 United States airmail postage stamp featured Quimby. She is memorialized in two official Michigan historical markers, one in Coldwater, and one at her birthplace in Manistee County. In 2012 Quimby was inducted into the Long Island Air and Space Hall of Fame.