Commercial History Is Our History
I could write a whole pile of posts based on items seen in this fantastic and educational timeline. I sat here at great length, periodically boring Deb by quoting years and events, and sometimes commenting on them. That included reading two items from 1913 and then singing “when it was 1913, it was a very bad year...” in vaguely Sinatra-like fashion.
It is heavily commercially oriented, and particularly in the realm of advertising and marketing, but does not consist exclusively of business items. That gives it more context. Besides, ultimately it all connects.
What kept surprising me were historical items that happened earlier than I thought. For instance, the first transatlantic cable. Or things I didn’t know. For instance, that Quaker Oats was the first commercial breakfast food.
The third item is a “nothing new under the sun” eye opener that made me think of the introduction of the Beatles to America more than 100 years later:
1850 - Phineas T. Barnum brings Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale” to America, employing newspaper ads, handbills, and broadsides to drum up extraordinary interest in this, until now, unknown-to-Americans international singing star. From being relatively anonymous six months prior to her arrival, she is met at the docks by 30,000 New Yorkers - a result of Barnum’s advertising campaign.
As they say in the blogosphere, read the whole thing. Oh wait, this is the blogosphere! So of course you should. I look forward to reading some posts by fellow bloggers, commenting on individual items from the timeline.
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