History Archives - GUJRAT INDIA

National Debt History

Introduction

The United States has a long history of carrying public debt, dating back to the Revolutionary War. In fact, ever since Alexander Hamilton proclaimed “a national debt, if not excessive, will be to us a national blessing,” the US has only been debt-free for one year, between 1834 and 1835. Recently, the national debt has exploded, raising concerns that our country’s budget deficits are unsustainable.

In this article we discuss the United States’ public debt and the factors that contributed to its accumulation. We then compare the US to other heavily indebted countries such as Japan and post-World War II UK.

There are many parallels and a few differences between how the nations accumulated their very substantial debt loads. We review how Japan and the UK dealt with their situations and discuss the implications for the US.

United States

Deficit spending during World War II brought the ratio of total outstanding US national debt to the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio to 121%, its highest level in history. The Debt to GDP ratio is a common way to measure the indebtedness of a country relative to the size of its economy.

From the 1950s to the early 1980s, modest budget deficits increased the national debt more slowly than inflation and productivity gains raised the GDP. As a result, the Debt to GDP ratio declined to a post-war low of 40% in 1982 and increased to about 60% in the late 1990s.

Over the past eight years, large deficits have become the norm as spending on the Iraq War, entitlement programs, and financial bailouts effortlessly outpaced tax revenues. The proposed health care reform and other new spending measures will almost certainly add to our budget deficit and therefore to our national debt.

Neither war spending nor health care reform and bailout packages are likely to be productive investments that will put our economy on a more solid footing. While some of these spending measures may have been necessary, there is virtually no chance that these investments will generate sufficient returns, either through higher future tax revenues or profitable asset sales, to pay off the debt incurred to finance them. We will see that this is a common theme when we look at Japan and the UK.

The most recent estimates put the Debt to GDP ratio at about 84%. This ratio is expected to increase to 100% by 2011. The US currently spends nearly 14% of the national budget in interest payments. Any significant debt issuance or interest rate increase will make the interest payments the largest expense in the US budget, surpassing military spending for the top spot.

The US currently enjoys a historically low cost of borrowing, especially for long-dated bonds. Two broad groups buy virtually all of the US government debt and they are willing to accept very low yields for different reasons.

The single largest buyer of Treasury Bonds is the Social Security Trust Fund, which holds, together with other government entities, about 50% of the national debt. The Social Security Trust Fund is willing to pay more for these bonds than other market participants would. This is a great deal for the government, because high bond prices translate into low interest rates, but it hurts all Social Security participants because low interest rates entail low returns on Trust assets. A key reason why the Trust is willing to overpay for Treasury Bonds may be that the Secretary of the Treasury is also the chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Domestic and foreign non-government entities each hold half of the remaining 50% of the national debt. There is still a prevailing perception that US Treasury Bonds are the safest investment available. Private entities often buy bonds in times of crisis, such as our current recession, which drives the prices up and the yields down. This, together with the high prices paid by the Social Security Trust, has kept long-term interest rates in the US near historical lows.

Japan

In the late 1980s, when Japan’s real estate and stock markets were constantly reaching new highs, the global consensus was that Japan would soon be “eating America’s lunch.” Then, in 1990, the Japanese real estate and stock markets crashed.

Initially, the government responded to the crisis by lowering interest rates to revive the Japanese economy. When this did not yield the desired results, the government attempted to stimulate the economy through massive infrastructure investments, bank bailouts, and similar measures. These programs contributed to several years of outsized budget deficits.

As in the US, only a small fraction of the bailout funds were used for potentially productive investments into useful infrastructure, education, fundamental research and other areas that can improve the competitive position of a country’s economy. Instead a significant portion went towares building infrastructure that nobody needed, the so-called “roads to nowhere.”

The Japanese bank bailouts in the 1990s, like their US counterparts, amounted to passing on the cost of past mistakes to tax payers. Some of these bailouts may have been necessary, but they are unlikely to be profitable investments.

The government’s response to the financial crisis inflated the national debt from 65% of GDP in 1992 to 180% in 2005. The Debt to GDP ratio has held steady near these levels since then.

Currently, Japan spends about 24% of their annual budget on interest payments. Any significant increase in interest rates would push this expense into crippling territory, but so far rates have shown little inclination to rise.

A decade of long-term interest rates in the low single digits should lead to inflation, but in Japan inflation has been very tame. We can understand why this is the case by looking at how money flows through the Japanese economy.

The first major difference between the US and Japan is that the savings rate in Japan is very high and many Japanese invest their savings into government debt. Ninety-three percent of the Japanese national debt is held internally. This would be unthinkable in the US because consumers are themselves over-leveraged and can’t lend much to their government.

Japanese banks tend to use deposits to buy government bonds rather than lending them out to consumers. Presumably this reflects a reluctance of individuals and businesses to borrow, and a reluctance of banks to lend to any but the most credit-worthy borrowers.

In effect, the Japanese population lends its savings to the government, either directly or by keeping its savings in a bank, which uses the deposits to buy bonds. Interest payments are usually reinvested back into government bonds.

This process creates significant demand for Japanese government debt, which keeps bond prices high and interest rates low. It also prevents inflation, because a lot of bank deposits are used to fund the budget deficit rather than consumer and business spending, which could drive up prices.

This unusual arrangement enabled Japan to sustain an inherently unstable situation for the last decade. If the Japanese population decides to spend money instead of saving it, or the banks decide to look for higher returns by lending to individuals and businesses, inflation and interest rates will rise and Japan will have to address its debt burden.

United Kingdom

Another example of an over-leveraged country was the United Kingdom after World War II. The cost of World War I had left the country heavily in debt, and World War II required the British to borrow even more to finance their defense.

An attack by a foreign power is surely one of the most compelling reasons for a government to run a budget deficit. Nevertheless, war spending is similar to the US and Japanese bailout programs in that it was unlikely to generate a return on investment that is sufficient to repay the incurred national debt. Because of this similarity, the post-war UK can shed light on what may be in store for the US.

By 1950, the UK had a Debt to GDP ratio of 250%, up from about 125% before WWII. About half of the run-up in debt occurred during the war and mostly reflects war spending. The other half includes rebuilding loans denominated in dollars that the UK obtained from the US and Canada in 1945. These loans amounted to about 30% of GDP in 1945. This portion of the national debt was used for infrastructure investments that helped restart the peace-time UK economy. Presumably these investments did generate sufficient revenues to pay back the loans.

Over the next forty years, the UK lowered its Debt to GDP ratio to 35%. Most of this decline is due to an average annual GDP growth of 9.4%. About 7% of this growth rate can be attributed to inflation. By 1990, inflation shrank the original debt of 250% of GDP to 5.8%. (We assume that none of the principal was paid back and ignore the exchange rate between the British Pound and the dollar, which is immaterial compared to inflation.)

While inflating away debt has worked for the UK, it has not been a smooth ride. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, the government was struggling to keep inflation from getting out of control while not completely choking off economic activity. The resulting high unemployment caused social tensions and enabled unions to gain power. Frequent strikes and labor unrest further harmed the local economy and limited the ability of businesses to compete internationally. The UK economy lagged far behind those of most other European countries during those years because of the economic turmoil that ultimately stemmed from the need to inflate away an unmanageable debt load.

Conclusion

Both Japan and the US took out loans for projects that were intended to restart their respective economies, but which had little hope of generating enough tax revenue to pay off the debt. The UK, on the other hand, was forced to spend on self-defense during World War II and reconstruction after the war’s conclusion. Nevertheless, all three countries found themselves significantly in debt with dim prospects for paying it off.

The economic similarity between the US and UK suggests that the US will emulate the UK’s strategy of inflating away the national debt. It seems unlikely that the US will follow in Japan’s path. Japan’s ability to remain in a state of suspended animation for over a decade is partly due to high savings rates and a slow flow of money. In the US, banks, businesses, or individuals would eventually end the suspended animation by taking on more risk in exchange for yields higher than the 2.5% currently available in the Japanese government bond market.

If the US follows the same trajectory as the UK did after World War II, we should expect the next 20 to 30 years to bring some of the same difficulties that plagued the UK in the decades after the war. However, one important difference between the aftermath of WWII and the current situation is that there is no pent-up demand from rebuilding Europe to stimulate economic activities. Consequently, we expect that the UK’s economy in the years following its post-war reconstruction, rather than in the years immediately following World War II, will be a more indicative predictor for the United States’s present economic outlook.

Specifically, we should expect inflation significantly above historical averages. This helps devalue the outstanding debt in real terms as long as new deficit spending remains under control. The UK inflation rate of about 7% reduced the debt outstanding in 1950 to 1/16th of its original value by 1990. This is an example of inflation reducing a formerly unmanageable amount of debt to a sum that could be paid off fairly comfortably.

Inflation is very good for debtors, but it can destabilize the economy and it is hard on individuals. Normally, it hits lower-income brackets hardest, because wages tend to change more slowly than prices rise. For low-income families, this can make paying the bills difficult until wages adjust. Perhaps this is the reason why inflationary periods tend to coincide with periods of social unrest, such as the labor unrest in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s. As we work our way out from under our still rapidly expanding national debt, it is likely that inflation will squeeze low-income families, as well as retirees with fixed incomes that do not adjust for inflation.

The US government will have to return to some semblance of fiscal responsibility. If this fails to happen because government officials decide it is good for the country, it will happen because borrowing costs jump when inflation sets in. During the 1970s, 30-year UK government debt yielded around 14% per year compared to just 4% currently. Running large deficits becomes impossibly expensive when interest rates are this high.

In order to pay back existing debt, reduce the budget deficit, and meet the ever expanding list of obligations, the US government will have to raise taxes. In the UK and the US, the top income tax rates until the late 1970s were well in excess of 80%. It is highly likely that tax rates across the board will rise dramatically from the current historically low levels.

Governments have more financial tools at their disposal than individuals do, but even with this expanded toolbox there is no painless way to excape from too much debt. The most useful tool is the ability to print money, which causes inflation and reduces the effective debt load without having to pay back a single penny. The current Debt to GDP ratio of the US is alarmingly high and it is expected to get much worse in the near future. Nevertheless, by printing money, returning to fiscal responsibility and drastically raising taxes, the US should be able return to a sustainable situation.

The History Of Custom Boxes

Custom boxes are a must if you are a company that deals with a lot of shipments every single day. They are a simple way to advertise your business, show your client that you care about them and depict your company’s style. Doing all that with one simple shipment is an incredible achievement, but somehow it’s gotten so simple that, if you don’t use custom boxes you are falling behind. Your competition is miles ahead of you. So, now that we’ve established that they are a crucial part of any company let’s take a look at how it all started.

Way, Way Back

The corrugated material has been approved for shipping since 1903. Nine years after the first corrugated box was made, every business started using them because they were the cheaper alternative. Plus, by using corrugated boxes, businesses avoided major product damages, which was incredibly important to them because they would usually have to pay for the product damages that were caused during the shipment, something that their clients were heavily exploiting. There were over forty companies producing corrugated boxes only seven years later. They took over the packaging world by storm! Every single company in the world quickly learned that this is the cheapest and the most efficient way of packaging, so they made the necessary adjustments and accepted the fact that this is the right and, truth to be told, the only possible way to ship products and make money.

The Customization

As soon as companies started using corrugated boxes, they started putting stickers on them, a simple sticker with their logo on the corner of the box, something to clarify where the package is coming from. Several companies during the fifties wanted to go even a step further. Some of the bigger companies hired designers or used some of the people that were in charge of designing their product and gave them a simple project. They told them to find a way to put the logo on their corrugated boxes, in some playful way. They wanted to turn the process of picking up a package into an experience, turn it into something fun for their clients. This apparently succeeded because several years later every bigger business was using it. The clients loved it too, apparently, because the shipping companies were making money like never before. This marked the beginning of the usage of custom boxes.

The Present

Every single company nowadays uses custom boxes . Even the smaller companies are using them because it’s a simple way to show your customers that you are interested in providing them with quality products. In a way, you have to use them because if you don’t, you are falling behind. It’s one of the cheapest ways to demonstrate the quality of your products. It doesn’t matter what you order, or which company in sending you their product, they will all have unique packaging with their name and their logo. And these customized packages are not going anywhere. Why would they? Companies are profiting out of them, and the clients love them. It’s a win-win situation. To be honest, anything is better than those plain white boxes. Less is more, sure, but not in this case.

Search Engine History – Web Search Before Google

Did Google always dominate the web search market? In the second of three posts on the history of the Search Engines, I look at the pioneers of the early search market, including the very first web crawler, WWW Wanderer. Did you know that Disney used to be one of the biggest players in the business? Or that Altavista was more technically advanced, in many ways, in 1998 than Google is now? Read on!

The pioneering Web Search Engines

Really, the point at which modern search engines first begin to appear is after the development and popularisation of the MOSAIC browser in 1993. In 1994, Internet Magazine was launched, together with a review of the top 100 websites billed as the ‘most extensive’ list ever to appear in a magazine. A 28.8Kbps modem was priced at $399 and brought the internet within the reach of the masses (albeit slowly)!

At this point and for the next 4-5 years, it was just about possible to produce printed and web-based directories of the best sites and for this to be useful information for consumers. However, the rapid growth in the number of www sites (from 130 in 1993 to over 600,000 in 1996) began to make this endeavour seem as futile as producing a printed yellow pages of all the businesses, media and libraries in the world!

Whilst WAIS was not a lasting success, it did highlight the value of being able to search – and click through to – the full text of documents on multiple internet hosts. The nascent internet magazines and web directories further highlighted the challenge of being able to keep up with an internet which was growing faster than the ability of any human being to catalogue it.

In June 1993, Matthew Gray at MIT developed the PERL-based web crawler, WWW Wanderer. Initially, this was simply devised as a tool to measure the growth of the world wide web by “collecting sites”. Later, however, Gray (who now works for Google) used the crawled results to build an index called “Wandex” and added a search front-end. In this way, Gray developed the world’s first web search engine and the first autonomous web crawler (an essential feature of all modern search engines).

Whilst Wanderer was the first to send a robot to crawl web sites, it did not index the full text of documents (as had WAIS). The first search engine to combine these two essential ingredients was WebCrawler, developed in 1994 by Brian Pinkerton at the University of Washington. WebCrawler was the search engine on which many of us early pioneers first scoured the web and will be remembered with affection for its (at the time) attractive graphical interface and the incredible speed with which it returned results. 1994 also saw the launch of Infoseek and Lycos.

However, the scale of growth of the web was beginning to put indexing beyond the reach of the average University IT department. The next big step required capital investment. Enter, stage right, the (then huge) Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and it’s super-fast Alpha 8400 TurboLaser processor. DEC was an early adopter of web technologies and the first Fortune 500 Company to establish a web site. Its search engine, AltaVista, was launched in 1995.

Founded in 1957, DEC had during the 1970s and 1980s led the mini-computer market. In fact, most of the machines on which the earliest ARPANET hosts ran were DEC-PDP-10s and PDP-11s. However, by the early 1990s, DEC was a business in trouble. In 1977, their then CEO, Ken Olsen, famously said that “there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”. Whilst somewhat taken out of context at the time, this quote was in part symptomatic of DEC’s slow response to the emergence of personal computing and the client-server revolution of the 1980s.

By the time Altavista was being developed, the company was besieged on all sides by HP, Compaq, Dell, SUN and IBM and was losing money like it was going out of fashion. Louis Monier and his research team at DEC were “discovered” internally as the ultimate PR coup; the entire web captured – and searchable – on a single computer. What better way to showcase the company as an innovator and demonstrate the lightning fast speed and 64-bit storage of their new baby?

During 1995, Monier unleashed a thousand web crawlers onto the young web (at that time an unprecedented achievement). By December (site launch) Altavista had indexed more than 16 million documents comprising several billion words. In essence, Altavista was the first commercial-strength, web-based search engine system. AltaVista enjoyed nearly 300,000 visits on its first day alone and, within nine months, was serving 19 million requests a day.

Altavista was, indeed, well ahead of it’s time technically. The search engine pioneered many technologies that Google and others later took years to catch up with. The site carried natural search queries, Boolean operators, automatic translation services (babelfish) and image, video and audio search. It was also lightning fast (at least in the beginning) and (unlike other engines) coped well with indexing legacy internet resources (and particularly the then still popular UseNet newsgroups).

After Altavista, Magellan and Excite (all launched in 1995), a multitude of other search engine companies made their debut, including Inktomi & Ask Jeeves (1996) and Northern Light & Snap (1997). Google itself launched in 1998.

Of these early engines, each enjoyed its own enthusiastic following and a share of the then nascent search market. Each also had its own relative strengths and weaknesses. Northern Light, for example, organized its search results in specific folders labeled by subject (something arguably still to be bettered today) and acquired a small – but enthusiastic following as a result. Snap pioneered search results ranked, in part, by what people clicked on (something Yahoo! and Google are only toying with now!)

In January 1999 (at the beginning of the dotcom boom), the biggest sites (in terms of market share) were Yahoo!, Excite, Altavista and Disney, with 88% of all search engine referrals. Market share was not closely related to the number of pages indexed (where Northern Light, Altavista and a then relatively unknown Google led the pack):

Search Engine Share of search referrals (Dec 99)

Yahoo! – 55.81%

Excite Properties (Excite, Magellan & WebCrawler) – 11.81%

Altavista – 11.18%

Disney Search Properties (Infoseek & Go Network) – 8.91%

Lycos – 5.05%

Go To (now Overture) – 2.76%

Snap / NBCi – 1.58%

MSN – 1.25%

Northern Light

The Owosso Sugar Company – A History

No sooner had Saginaw’s lumber tycoon, Wellington R. Burt, celebrated his 70th birthday on August 26, 1901 than did he set out to employ a portion of his lumber wealth in the awakening beet sugar industry.

The mantra of real estate agents everywhere is “location, location, location.” However, in the business world in general it should be, “timing, timing, timing.” Wellington Burt’s timing so far as his interest in sugar was concerned, was poor.

Like others who had filled their days in the once fast-paced but now moribund lumber industry, he had time on his hands and money in the bank. At first, also as had others, he devoted some years to politics. He had served a term in the state senate (1893-1894) then sought a U.S. Congressional seat but had the ill fortune to run as a Democrat in 1900, the year the Republican star was rising. Ranked as one of America’s wealthiest men, Burt cast about for new investment ideas and then homed in on the sugar industry. His set his eyes on Owosso, Michigan, a village situated some thirty miles southwest of Saginaw where several holdovers from the lumber industry resided in mansions arrayed along Washington Avenue. Among Owosso’s many attributes was the influence of Joseph Kohn, a sugarbeet technologist residing in Bay City, Michigan. Kohn presided over the Michigan Chemical Company which had been put in place to purchase and then process molasses generated by that city’s growing number of sugar beet factories. His success at Michigan Chemical encouraged investors to draw close when he spoke of investing in beet sugar factories.

For Kohn it was simple, the more sugar beet factories the more molasses for Michigan Chemical, which could be distilled into alcohol, a circumstance that built enthusiasm for the construction of another factory. Fat with profits, Michigan Chemical and its parent, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, sought to build a factory in Owosso on its own and didn’t need the interference of another millionaire with time on his hands and money in his pocket. Wellington R. Burt was not invited to join in a venture with Michigan Chemical and his ambitions to go on his own languished behind a curtain of international events

The United States had agreed upon the conclusion of the Spanish-American War to reduce the import duty on Philippine sugar 75 percent of the general rate and to allow the importation of sugar from Puerto Rico, a U.S. possession, entirely free of duty. The Philippines had the additional advantage of shipping up to 300,000 tons duty free and Congress was dithering with proposed legislation that if passed, would approve a treaty of reciprocity with Cuba. The agreement would grant that country a 20 percent tariff preferential.

The nation’s newspapers devoted considerable space to the plan, dampening the spirits of those who had at first shown much excitement about Burt’s proposed factory. He could find few others to join him in a venture in Owosso, although he pledged $200,000 of his personal fortune and claimed others had subscribed another $50,000 in stock. He had convinced farmers to sign up to grow sugarbeets on three thousand acres and contracted with the experienced firm of Fuehrman and Hapke to begin construction when it fell apart because investors had not come forth with the balance of the required investment – about $600,000.

Michigan Chemical Company waited in the wings while additional investors failed to materialize. Elsewhere, excitement for beet sugar factories hardly slowed. Sixteen were built in the United States between 1900 and 1902, eight in Michigan. Burt’s attention turned to Alma, Michigan where he met more success by combining his money and talents with those of Aimee Wright, another Saginaw industrialist.

Owosso, in 1902, was as good a candidate for a beet factory as any town in Michigan, perhaps better. It had rail lines, established industry, a managerial class and trained workers in addition to an excellent farming region. Burt stepped aside, allowing the project to die stillborn. Fuehrman and Hapke went on to construct the Sebewaing factory in the next year, creating one of the most successful beet factories of the era. Michigan Chemical emerged from the shadows and picked up the reins.

Owosso was home to two families with notable achievements in American politics. Both would play various roles in the establishment of a beet sugar factory in Owosso. The Bentley family, headed by Alvin Bentley, whose grandson, also named Alvin, achieved fame at great personal expense in 1954 when as a junior Congressman, he became the most seriously injured of five victims of an armed assault on Congress while it was in session. Four Puerto Rican terrorists discharged thirty rounds from the visitor’s gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives to the floor of that chamber while the Representatives were debating an immigration bill.

The Dewey family had been engaged in Republican politics since the party’s formation in nearby Jackson, Michigan in 1854. In Owosso, in accordance with tradition, a leading representative of the political party then in power held the postmaster’s position. Edmund O. Dewey, uncle to Thomas Edmund Dewey, a future New York governor and twice an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. presidency, held that position beginning with the presidency of William McKinley and ending with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. His brother George, the father of Thomas Edmund Dewey, secured the appointment in 1921.

Edmund Dewey, in 1902, revived Wellington Burt’s plan for a beet sugar factory in Owosso. He arranged the purchase of a suitable 40-acre site at the west end of Oliver Street, raised $10,000 and urged the county board of commissioners to pass a bond issue sufficient to meet the cost of the land. The county denied the bond, causing the idea to fail for a second time and for the same reason – a lack of enthusiasm.

Joseph Kohn stepped forward and in doing so introduced into Michigan’s fired up sugar industry one the nation’s wealthiest families, the Pitcairn family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pitcairn family controlled the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company (today known as PPG Industries) headquartered in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The glass company had all but ended America’s dependence on Europe for large sheets of glass suitable for storefronts, display cases and mirrors. During the opening days of the 20th century, the company produced 20-million square feet of glass annually.

In seeking a source of potash for its glassworks, Pittsburgh Plate Glass turned to Kohn who made an effort to extract it from beet sugar molasses and instead found he could earn assured profits by converting molasses into alcohol. He had also served the German-American Sugar Company (later named Monitor Sugar Company) as a consultant and before that held a similar position with Kilby Manufacturing who was much involved in turnkey beet sugar factory construction projects. Kohn’s Bay City distillery, owing to the large volume of molasses emerging from three sugar factories and more promised from the German-American Sugar Company’s factory then under construction, was turning over substantial profits to Pittsburgh Plate Glass.

John Pitcairn saw America’s shores first as five-year old immigrant brought to America by his parents John and Agnes along with two sisters and a brother. Pitcairn accumulated a personal fortune in railroads, coalmines, oil, and in the founding of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company in partnership with John Ford. He was sixty-years old when Kohn drew his attention to the potential in Owosso and the failed effort of first Wellington Burt, then Edmund Dewey to form a beet sugar company.

Three’s the charm for Owosso. On October 29, 1902, the Owosso Sugar Company came into existence, capitalized at one million dollars. More than 75 percent of the shares were owned by members of the Pitcairn family and friends. John Pitcairn owned 62,500 of the outstanding shares outright. A handful of Owosso residents added their names to the shareholder list, including the aforementioned Alvin Bentley and the brothers Edmund and George Dewey. George Dewey’s son, Tom, the future presidential candidate, would one day spend school vacations working in the new sugar company’s packaging room.

The company presidency was turned over to Charles W. Brown, the owner of newly minted 5,600 shares of stock. Brown was also the president of Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Day to day financial duties went to 36-year old Edward Pitcairn, one of John Pitcairn’s many nephews. Edward would, by 1910, become treasurer of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, a position he would hold for the balance of his career. Carmen Smith, an attorney with a long association with Charles Brown, stemming from a period when the pair resided in Minneapolis, assumed responsibility for the general management of the new firm. In addition, he assumed the title of Secretary-Treasurer. He had recently moved his wife Isabella and three children, Margaret, Carmen, and Cedric to Bay City where he served as the treasurer of Michigan Chemical Company. Joseph Kohn accepted the role of general factory superintendent.

Educated at the Prague Institute of Technology, Kohn graduated in 1883 with degrees in mechanical and chemical engineering. Following his schooling, he was employed at Breitfeld-Danek of Prague and later gained experience at a sugar factory in Moravia, a region in what is now the Czech Republic but was then a part of the Austrian-Hungary empire, and also worked with the evaporator designer, Hugo Jelenik. In Moravia, he worked with Carl Steffen, the inventor of the molasses desugarization process that carries his name. While employed by Kilby Manufacturing Company, Kohn developed the Kilby standard factory arrangement.

Kilby Manufacturing won contracts to construct two 1,000-ton factories in Michigan; one at Owosso and another at Menominee. The two would hold the record as the largest beet factories built in Michigan until a 1,200-ton factory was built at Mount Pleasant in 1920. In addition to the two 1,000-ton factories, Kilby had an order for a standard 600-ton factory for East Tawas. It would be a busy year for Kilby who had also received orders for three factories in Colorado, one each for Fort Collins, Longmont, and Windsor with Fort Collins gaining the largest factory built by Kilby-1,200 tons a day slicing capacity. The price for the Owosso factory, at $675,000, on a per ton of sugarbeets sliced basis, was low at $675 compared $1,197 at East Tawas and $785 at Menominee. In fact, the Owosso factory cost less per ton of slice than any factory built in Michigan.

The Owosso factory came to life on December 9, 1903 without the usual fanfare assigned to new beet sugar factories which usually included marching bands, parades, and much merriment followed by speaking opportunities for local luminaries and politicians. In a quieter fashion, Charles W. Brown, arrived from Pittsburgh and brought with him as an honored guest, James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture. He rose to national prominence when President William McKinley appointed him Secretary of Agriculture in 1897. His stature was such that presidents Roosevelt and Taft retained him as secretary, and it was only when in 1912 in a move to sweep Republican appointees from office, Woodrow Wilson ended his tenure. He had served as Secretary of Agriculture from March 4, 1897 to March 3, 1913, the longest duration served by any American cabinet official.

After a brief ceremony, Secretary Wilson pulled the whistle cord that called forth the beets from the flumes. Unlike many of the beet factories built in Michigan, there was no central local figure that had put his money and reputation on the line for the factory. The majority ownership was far away in Pennsylvania, its officers and guiding management lived elsewhere, Bay City in the case of Joseph Kohn and Carmen Smith and the environs of Pittsburgh for Brown and Pitcairn. It was not unusual for absentee owners to overlook the obvious – input from farmers. When a lack of farmer interest made itself known, it caused no palpitations in the boardroom of Pittsburgh Plate Glass. After all, twenty years earlier John Pitcairn had forged a new American industry out of the rubble of similar but failed efforts when he wrestled the plate glass market away from the Europeans and developed one of the world’s largest and most modern factories of its kind.

Farmer apathy was a mild inconvenience, not a crushing blow to someone who had turned the making of plate glass into a unique American industry. The answer lay near at hand and Carmen Smith, his appointed emissary, had probed the possibilities even as the factory walls reached toward the sky to the amazement of Owossians who had gathered on weekends throughout the summer of 1903 to take in the breadth and dimensions of the industrial goliath growing in their midst. Clearly, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass people thought big. They thought even bigger than the factory’s sidewalk superintendents imagined, bigger than had any beet factory organizer up until that time. Not only were they building a beet factory destined to be twice the size of nearly all the sugar factories in the United States, they were at the same time on the verge of establishing the largest sugarbeet farm in the United States and the largest single farm operation east of the Mississippi River.

South and west of Saginaw, Michigan lay a vast marsh formed during the last ice age. The marsh adjoined the convergence of several large river systems that became the Saginaw River that then and now flows 22 miles northward to Lake Huron. The eighteen thousand acre marsh served as an important stopover point and brooding ground for migrating waterfowl, ducks, geese, swans. It was the largest natural wildlife habitat in the American Midwest. It was protected by characteristics that made it unappealing to farmers – frequent flooding. But that changed when Harlan B. Smith, a Saginaw buggy manufacturer who also speculated in real estate, entered into a partnership with two attorneys Charles H. Camp and George B. Brooks, to acquire and then develop approximately 10,000 acres of the marsh. Their efforts, spanning fifteen years, resulted in a large drainage ditch that extended nearly two miles across the prairie, permitting them to convert hundreds of acres of marsh into farmland.

When Carmen Smith searched for a large tract in which to install a demonstration sugarbeet farm while at the same time assuring the Owosso factory would have all the beets it would want, he quickly targeted the Prairie Farm. Smith completed the purchase on February 22, 1903 and soon, a steam-powered dredge, a monster designed for digging into mucky earth, was soon barged down the Saginaw River to the prairie. It bit into the earth in the front, forming a 20-foot high dike and creating a canal, which it used to transport itself until acre-by acre, it claimed land that had waited a half a million years for the arrival of the mechanical behemoth.

Eventually, Owosso Sugar Company created thirty-six miles of dikes, some of them eighty feet wide at the bottom, forty at the top and twenty feet high. Others were of lesser dimensions but all designed for the same purpose – draining and then keeping the land dry. Roads crowned the tops of the dikes and the sides turned to grass for use as a sheep pasture. Half the land was drained via open ditches and half was drained with the aid of large pumps that sent their burden to the nearby Flint River. Once it was dry, the reclaimed land was laid out much like a giant checkerboard in twelve lines of sixteen forty-acre parcels. Almost overnight, for a capital outlay of $400,000, Smith transformed the Prairie Farm from a losing proposition into the largest beet sugar estate in Michigan, and probably in the United States, if not the world – ten thousand acres. The new factory could now set aside worry about an adequate supply of beets.

Owosso Sugar Company’s First Campaign

The first operating campaign for the Owosso Sugar Company, as was customary with Kilby designed turnkey factories, achieved the guaranteed slice rate of 1,000 tons of sliced beets each twenty-four hours. Construction contracts typically required that a new factory meet its guaranteed rate for a specified period of time, set by negotiation, at between one and ten days and usually occurred under the supervision of Kilby’s engineers some days after the startup. The same engineers would withdraw once the new owner signed the certificate of completion, handing the factory over to the company’s management staff. The slice rate at Owosso declined after the factory reached the guaranteed rate most likely for the same reasons slice rates in most new beet factories declined – inexperienced operators.

Because the Prairie Farm was yet in its infancy, it produced fewer beets than it would in the following years causing the processing period, referred to as a “campaign” by the industry, to last only 48 days, ending on January 26, 1904. During its maiden run the new factory sliced an average of 542 tons, well short of the scheduled 1,000 tons per day. The second campaign was five days shorter but the slice rate nearly doubled, reaching 930 tons per day for 43 days.

While the Owosso factory was under construction, the Lansing beet factory, built by Benjamin Boutell, a major investor in several Michigan beet sugar factories, and others two years earlier, suffered from a lack of managerial oversight. Diagnosed with cancer early in 1902, Boutell’s wife, Amelia died on November 27 at the age of 52 despite his best efforts to discover a cure. Having no heart for his business interests, he sold the Lansing factory to the Owosso Sugar Company.

Kohn and Smith now had four major operations: two sugar factories, the Prairie Farm, and Bay City’s Michigan Chemical Company under their control whereas one year earlier they had only the chemical company to occupy their time and thoughts. The Prairie Farm employed 160 workers and 58 teams of draft horses and each of the two beet factories employed hundreds more in addition to workers at the chemical factory and in the Bay City headquarters. The two managers, each 45 years old, were in constant motion, visiting the properties, the corporate office in Pittsburgh, and attending industry conventions in addition to meeting with members of Congress and the Department of Agriculture. In 1910, Joseph Kohn was the first to reckon the cost of such a pace. He suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 52.

In the year preceding Kohn’s death, 8,500 Prairie Farm acres had been diked and equipped with gravity drainage and pumping systems and for the first time, grew a square mile of sugarbeets. Peppermint provided additional revenue (35,000 pounds of peppermint oil in 1909) while cabbage followed in importance behind sugarbeets.

For the six years following Kohn’s death, Carmen Smith continued on as before, shouldering Kohn’s responsibilities in addition to his own, until 1916 when he placed the two sugar factories under the supervision of Charles D. Bell who had served as the factory manager at Alma before joining the Owosso staff in 1907. Bell remained at Owosso for sixteen years, leaving only after Michigan Sugar Company acquired the Owosso and Lansing factories in 1924 whereupon he returned to the family ranch in Los Alamos, California where he promptly discovered oil and retired in wealth.

In 1920, at age 62, Carmen Smith, much like his friend and associate, Joseph Kohn, succumbed suddenly to a heart attack while traveling home by train from Chicago. With Carmen Smith passed a pioneering era. Joseph Kohn in 1910, Joseph Kilby in 1914, John Pitcairn in 1916, and Carmen Smith in 1920 – those who had lived the dream of building one of the world’s largest and most modern beet sugar factories and then topping it with the country’s single largest beet farm, had passed from the scene. Sadly, what they had wrought would not last.

According to Daniel Gutleben’s history of the Michigan beet sugar industry (The Sugar Tramp -1954), Pittsburgh Plate Glass, likely concerned that Michigan’s beet factories, built too small to compete with major refineries designed to process raw sugar imported in quantity, couldn’t compete against the volume of duty-free sugar entering the country. It opted to sell both the Owosso and Lansing factories to Michigan Sugar Company at a price reported in the press at $2,000,000 plus preferred stock. The Prairie Farm remained in the hands of John Pitcairn’s heirs.

Michigan Sugar Company operated Owosso for the next four years until diminishing interest on the part of farmers combined with the flood of imported sugar caused the factory to close in 1928. Michigan Sugar lacked the chief advantage once held by the former owners – the Prairie Farm thus could not command farmers to grow beets when other crops, corn and soybeans attracted favorable prices for less investment and less work. It re-opened again for one year in 1933, then shut down but was kept in hopeful readiness. Hope finally surrendered to reality that the farmers would not return. The factory and buildings were sold in 1948. Proof that the eventual failure of the Owosso Sugar Company did not rest upon the shoulders of management lay in the appointment of Owosso’s secretary, Edward Bostock, to the chairmanship of the board of directors of Michigan Sugar Company.

Sources:

DENSLOW, William R, and TRUMAN, Harry S., 10,000 Famous Freemasons from A to J Part One (in reference to Charles W. Brown career with Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company)

MILLER, Ed, and BEACH, Jean R.., The Saginaw Hall of Fame, Published by the Saginaw Hall of Fame, 2000. (In reference to Wellington R. Burt)

GUTTLEBEN, Daniel, The Sugar Tramp – 1954 printed by Bay Cities Duplicating Company, San Francisco, California

LE CUREUX, KEITH, Albee Township History, Saginaw, County, Michigan, Chapter V, Prairie Farm.

BETZOLD, Michael, Detroit Free Press Magazine, December 26, 1993, Utopia Revisited – an article describing the history of the Prairie Farm.

About the Author: Thomas Mahar served as Executive Vice President of Monitor Sugar Company between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Food Processing, a sugar packaging company, from 1993-1998. He retired in 1999 and now devotes his free time to writing about the history of the sugar industry. He authored, Sweet Energy, The Story of Monitor Sugar Company in 2001, and Michigan’s Beet Sugar History (Newsbeet, Fall, 2006).Contact: Thomas Mahar E-mail

History of Trade Associations

It does not matter what business you are in, whether you are a small retailer, importer, exporter or a manufacturer you will always benefit from the support and services of a Trade Association. Simply in every field of trade and industry in every country you will find regional, national and international Trade Associations. It is estimated that there are more than 90,000 Associations around the world.

By looking at the numbers, you see their popularity but what are Trade Associations and why they are so important?

In this article you will learn more about Associations and their role in the modern business world.

First Let’s Explain What They Are:

A Trade Association is a member based organization which is funded by a group of people or businesses in a specific industry to facilitate collaboration between companies. They defend their members’ interests by advertising, producing standards for industry, lobbying, publishing magazines or newsletters, producing exhibitions or conferences, networking, finding new customers or potential suppliers for member businesses by arranging trips and meetings and last but not least education by offering educational materials or courses. Trade Associations are governed by bylaws and managed by officers who usually are members.

Now let’s talk about the history of Trade Associations and review their evolution throughout history.

The first Society, the Academia Secretorum of Naples was born in 1560. During the next century other societies spread throughout Europe in London, Paris and Italy.

In 16th century, United Kingdom’s first associations were born by name Guild, to protect interests of merchants and craftsmen. The well-known Royal Society of London, which was founded in 1662, is one of the examples. They set rules for wages and work hours and they also offered education by training skills. In 1800s, Guilds were working closely with local governments.

The first Association which remains in existence was formed in 1768 by 20 merchants in New York and they named it Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. Another example is American Seed Trade Association which was founded in 1883. After this time more regional associations came into existence around the country but most of them were local Associations. After the civil war and the vast expansion of the country’s industrial capabilities, many local and national Associations were formed in order that manufactures could find new markets and expand their businesses. By 1900 almost 100 national and state Associations were active across United States to ensure their competitiveness in the market.

Although the Trade Associations services were helping businesses to stay competitive in the market, with growing demands for products, soon they decided to take advantage of the situation and use it to create monopolies and price fixings. This matter changed with the introduction of antitrust laws and the decision of US Supreme Court, ruling on the openness of pricing exchange information.

World Wars I and II drastically increased the number of Associations and they became a valuable resource by providing industry statistics to the government.

Today Trade Associations continue to maintain their essential role as intermediaries between government and businesses and also in helping businesses to expand by finding new markets while improving products’ quality by setting standards and educating people.

How the History of eCommerce Has Cleared the Way For Entrepreneurs

The history of eCommerce is not only interesting but has proven to be one of the greatest developments of humankind over time. eCommerce also known to as electronic commerce, can be used to refer to the act of conducting business transactions and communication over electronic device such as computers. It involves the buying and selling of goods and services over digital communication networks and encompasses electronic transactions such as smart cards and electronic money transfers.

There has been a lot of confusion regarding the difference between eCommerce and e business. To explain the difference between the two, one will need to look at the manner and location in which the business is conducted. E business involves the conducting of business over internet networks. It is purely an internet affair and encourages buying, selling and collaboration with partners online so that unlike eCommerce where the business is conducted at a specified location, e business is conducted online anywhere and anytime. This difference as we will see later has its bearing on the history of eCommerce.

The first form of eCommerce was conceived in the late 20th century when electronic technology was used for the transfer of information and for conducting business transaction between different business entities. The enabling technologies at the time were the electronic funds transfer and the electronic data interchange. Drawing from this part of the history of eCommerce, many businesses came up with ways through which they could expand their influence within the market and these efforts and innovation gave birth to what are now used as automatic teller machines (atm’s), credit cards and telephone banking systems.

A time went by and with the introduction of high-speed internet connections and relevant security mechanisms; the history of eCommerce was fast tracked for the business idea to become what is it is today. More businesses and especially those within the banking industry saw a lot of growth over short periods of time. However, the eCommerce businesses experienced their lowest points during the ‘dot-com’ collapse that saw a great number of internet businesses crumble to their knees.

Calm was restored a few years later when most of the businesses and especially those in europe began to embrace eCommerce. History was written once again when business transactions, driven by the desire to serve the increasing worldwide customer service demands and regardless of size and nature were conducted over the internet. The most remarkable companies during this time were amazon, eBay and dell that despite conducting small internet transactions have grown to become the most formidable electronic business entities in the history of eCommerce.

eCommerce has made life much easier than it was two centuries ago. It has taken into account how busy life has become so that not many people enjoy the luxury of shopping from one store to another without any time constraints. Buyers are now able to shop for whatever they want just by a click of a button. You are also able to compare prices of goods and services from stores worldwide but from the comfort of your home. Like all things good, eCommerce has enlightened most people on the importance of technology. It has also made it possible for businesses to appreciate just how much a simple invention can change the face of your business. Such is the history of eCommerce.

History of Educational Technology

There is no written evidence which can tell us exactly who has coined the phrase educational technology. Different educationists, scientists and philosophers at different time intervals have put forwarded different definitions of Educational Technology. Educational technology is a multifaceted and integrated process involving people, procedure, ideas, devices, and organization, where technology from different fields of science is borrowed as per the need and requirement of education for implementing, evaluating, and managing solutions to those problems involved in all aspects of human learning.

Educational technology, broadly speaking, has passed through five stages.

The first stage of educational technology is coupled with the use of aids like charts, maps, symbols, models, specimens and concrete materials. The term educational technology was used as synonyms to audio-visual aids.

The second stage of educational technology is associated with the ‘electronic revolution’ with the introduction and establishment of sophisticated hardware and software. Use of various audio-visual aids like projector, magic lanterns, tape-recorder, radio and television brought a revolutionary change in the educational scenario. Accordingly, educational technology concept was taken in terms of these sophisticated instruments and equipments for effective presentation of instructional materials.

The third stage of educational technology is linked with the development of mass media which in turn led to ‘communication revolution’ for instructional purposes. Computer-assisted Instruction (CAI) used for education since 1950s also became popular during this era.

The fourth stage of educational technology is discernible by the individualized process of instruction. The invention of programmed learning and programmed instruction provided a new dimension to educational technology. A system of self-learning based on self-instructional materials and teaching machines emerged.

The latest concept of educational technology is influenced by the concept of system engineering or system approach which focuses on language laboratories, teaching machines, programmed instruction, multimedia technologies and the use of the computer in instruction. According to it, educational technology is a systematic way of designing, carrying out and evaluating the total process of teaching and learning in terms of specific objectives based on research.

Educational technology during the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age

Educational technology, despite the uncertainty of the origin of the term, can be traced back to the time of the three-age system periodization of human prehistory; namely the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

Duringthe Stone Age, ignition of fire by rubbing stones, manufacture of various handmade weapon and utensils from stones and clothing practice were some of the simple technological developments of utmost importance. A fraction of Stone Age people developed ocean-worthy outrigger canoe ship technology to migrate from one place to another across the Ocean, by which they developed their first informal education of knowledge of the ocean currents, weather conditions, sailing practice, astronavigation, and star maps. During the later Stone Age period (Neolithic period),for agricultural practice, polished stone tools were made from a variety of hard rocks largely by digging underground tunnels, which can be considered as the first steps in mining technology. The polished axes were so effective that even after appearance of bronze and iron; people used it for clearing forest and the establishment of crop farming.

Although Stone Age cultures left no written records, but archaeological evidences proved their shift from nomadic life to agricultural settlement. Ancient tools conserved in different museums, cave paintings like Altamira Cave in Spain, and other prehistoric art, such as the Venus of Willendorf, Mother Goddess from Laussel, France etc. are some of the evidences in favour of their cultures.

Neolithic Revolution of Stone Age resulted into the appearance of Bronze Age with development of agriculture, animal domestication, and the adoption of permanent settlements. For these practices Bronze Age people further developed metal smelting, with copper and later bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, being the materials of their choice.

The Iron Age people replaced bronze and developed the knowledge of iron smelting technology to lower the cost of living since iron utensils were stronger and cheaper than bronze equivalents. In many Eurasian cultures, the Iron Age was the last period before the development of written scripts.

Educational technology during the period of Ancient civilizations

According to Paul Saettler, 2004, Educational technology can be traced back to the time when tribal priests systematized bodies of knowledge and ancient cultures invented pictographs or sign writing to record and transmit information. In every stage of human civilization, one can find an instructional technique or set of procedures intended to implement a particular culture which were also supported by number of investigations and evidences. The more advanced the culture, the more complex became the technology of instruction designed to reflect particular ways of individual and social behaviour intended to run an educated society. Over centuries, each significant shift in educational values, goals or objectives led to diverse technologies of instruction.

The greatest advances in technology and engineering came with the rise of the ancient civilizations. These advances stimulated and educated other societies in the world to adopt new ways of living and governance.

The Indus Valley Civilization was an early Bronze Age civilization which was located in the northwestern region of the Indian Subcontinent. The civilization was primarily flourished around the Indus River basin of the Indus and the Punjab region, extending upto the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley and the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, (most of the part is under today’s Pakistan and the western states of modern-day India as well as some part of the civilization extending upto southeastern Afghanistan, and the easternmost part of Balochistan, Iran).

There is a long term controversy to be sure about the language that the Harappan people spoke. It is assumed that their writing was at least seems to be or a pictographic script. The script appears to have had about 400 basic signs, with lots of variations. People write their script with the direction generally from right to left. Most of the writing was found on seals and sealings which were probably used in trade and official & administrative work.

Harappan people had the knowledge of the measuring tools of length, mass, and time. They were the first in the world to develop a system of uniform weights and measures.

In a study carried out by P. N. Rao et al. in 2009, published in Science, computer scientists found that the Indus script’s pattern is closer to that of spoken words, which supported the proposed hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.

According to the Chinese Civilization, some of the major techno-offerings from China include paper, early seismological detectors, toilet paper, matches, iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the suspension bridge, the wheelbarrow, the parachute, natural gas as fuel, the magnetic compass, the raised-relief map, the blast furnace, the propeller, the crossbow, the South Pointing Chariot, and gun powder. With the invent of paper they have given their first step towards developments of educational technology by further culturing different handmade products of paper as means of visual aids.

Ancient Egyptian language was at one point one of the longest surviving and used languages in the world. Their script was made up of pictures of the real things like birds, animals, different tools, etc. These pictures are popularly called hieroglyph. Their language was made up of above 500 hieroglyphs which are known as hieroglyphics. On the stone monuments or tombs which were discovered and rescued latter on provides the evidence of existence of many forms of artistic hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt.

Educational technology during Medieval and Modern Period

Paper and the pulp papermaking process which was developed in China during the early 2nd century AD, was carried to the Middle East and was spread to Mediterranean by the Muslim conquests. Evidences support that a paper mill was also established in Sicily in the 12th century. The discovery of spinning wheel increased the productivity of thread making process to a great extent and when Lynn White added the spinning wheel with increasing supply of rags, this led to the production of cheap paper, which was a prime factor in the development of printing technology.

The invention of the printing press was taken place in approximately 1450 AD, by Johannes Gutenburg, a German inventor. The invention of printing press was a prime developmental factor in the history of educational technology to convey the instruction as per the need of the complex and advanced-technology cultured society.

In the pre-industrial phases, while industry was simply the handwork at artisan level, the instructional processes were relied heavily upon simple things like the slate, the horn book, the blackboard, and chalk. It was limited to a single text book with a few illustrations. Educational technology was considered synonymous to simple aids like charts and pictures.

The year 1873 may be considered a landmark in the early history of technology of education or audio-visual education. An exhibition was held in Vienna at international level in which an American school won the admiration of the educators for the exhibition of maps, charts, textbooks and other equipments.

Maria Montessori (1870-1952), internationally renowned child educator and the originator of Montessori Method exerted a dynamic impact on educational technology through her development of graded materials designed to provide for the proper sequencing of subject matter for each individual learner. Modern educational technology suggests many extension of Montessori’s idea of prepared child centered environment.

In1833, Charles Babbage’s design of a general purpose computing device laid the foundation of the modern computer and in 1943, the first computing machine as per hi design was constructed by International Business Machines Corporation in USA. The Computer Assisted instruction (CAI) in which the computer functions essentially as a tutor as well as the Talking Type writer was developed by O.K. Moore in 1966. Since 1974, computers are interestingly used in education in schools, colleges and universities.

In the beginning of the 19th century, there were noteworthy changes in the field of education. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), right from its start of school broadcasts in 1920 had maintained rapid pace in making sound contribution to formal education. In the USA, by 1952, 20 states had the provision for educational broadcasting. Parallel to this time about 98% of the schools in United Kingdom were equipped with radios and there were regular daily programmes.

Sidney L. Pressey, a psychologist of Ohio state university developed a self-teaching machine called ‘Drum Tutor’ in 1920. Professor Skinner, however, in his famous article ‘Science of Learning and art of Teaching’ published in 1945 pleaded for the application of the knowledge derived from behavioral psychology to classroom procedures and suggested automated teaching devices as means of doing so.

Although the first practical use of Regular television broadcasts was in Germany in 1929 and in 1936 the Olympic Games in Berlin were broadcasted through television stations in Berlin, Open circuit television began to be used primarily for broadcasting programmes for entertainment in 1950. Since 1960, television is used for educational purposes.

In 1950, Brynmor, in England, used educational technological steps for the first time. It is to be cared that in 1960, as a result of industrial revolution in America and Russia, other countries also started progressing in the filed of educational technology. In this way, the beginning of educational technology took place in 1960 from America and Russia and now it has reached England, Europe and India.

During the time of around 1950s, new technocracy was turning it attraction to educations when there was a steep shortage of teachers in America and therefore an urgent need of educational technology was felt. Dr. Alvin C. Eurich and a little later his associate, Dr. Alexander J. Stoddard introduced mass production technology in America.

Team teaching had its origin in America in the mid of 1950’s and was first started in the year 1955 at Harvard University as a part of internship plan.

In the year 1956, Benjamin Bloom from USA introduced the taxonomy of educational objectives through his publication, “The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain”.

In 1961, Micro teaching technique was first adopted by Dwight W. Allen and his co-workers at Stanford University in USA.

Electronics is the main technology being developed in the beginning of 21st century. Broadband Internet access became popular and occupied almost all the important offices and educational places and even in common places in developed countries with the advantage of connecting home computers with music libraries and mobile phones.

Today’s classroom is more likely to be a technology lab, a room with rows of students using internet connected or Wi-Fi enabled laptops, palmtops, notepad, or perhaps students are attending a video conferencing or virtual classroom or may have been listening to a podcast or taking in a video lecture. Rapid technological changes in the field of educational have created new ways to teach and to learn. Technological changes also motivated the teachers to access a variety of information on a global scale via the Internet, to enhance their lessons as well as to make them competent professional in their area of concern. At the same time, students can utilize vast resources of the Internet to enrich their learning experience to cope up with changing trend of the society. Now a days students as well teachers are attending seminars, conferences, workshops at national and international level by using the multimedia techno-resources like PowerPoint and even they pursue a variety of important courses of their choice in distance mode via online learning ways. Online learning facility has opened infinite number of doors of opportunities for today’s learner to make their life happier than ever before.

Newspaper History – The Origin of Newspapers in India & Around the World

Origin of Newspapers:

The History of newspapers is probably one of the most notable episodes of human experience. The origin of newspapers dates back to Renaissance Europe. It was during this period that local European merchants began the habit of distributing handwritten newsletters amongst each other. However, it was the German people who introduced the earliest forms of printed newspapers way back during the 1400s. Since then the outlook of newspapers has undergone tremendous evolution. In recent times the total number of newspaper count has increased to a mammoth 6580. A normal newspaper of today comprises of various sections like editors’ columns, forecasts, comic strips, entertainment section, newspaper classified ads, newspaper display ads and much more. Unfortunately the financial downturn has hampered the growing rate newspaper classified advertising, simultaneously encouraging the rise of web -based newspapers or e-papers.

History and origin of newspapers in India:

The history of newspapers in India is equally intriguing. The introduction of newspapers in India was actually the result of spreading sense globalization amongst the countrymen. These countrymen craving for updates around the world demanded for a source that gratified their thirst for knowledge. Finally the first newspaper of the country was introduced in Calcutta (Kolkata). Titled Calcutta General Advertise or Hickey’s Bengal Gazette this newspaper was the brainchild of an eccentric Irishman called James Augustus Hickey during the 1780s. Soon newspapers like Bombay Herald and Bombay came into being following the success of their precursor. Over the years the country has witnessed the rise of multiple newspapers dailies out of which broadsheets like Times of India, The Telegraph, Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Statesman, Economic Times, Ananda Bazar Patrika, The Tribune etc have become the highest circulated newspapers in India. The idea of booking classified ads and display ads also grew along with the growth of these national broadsheets.