January 20, 2011
McIntosh Laboratory is a manufacturer of high-end audio equipment based in Binghamton, New York. Founded in 1949 by Frank McIntosh, the company is noted for its extremely high build quality and excellent technical specifications. The ‘classic’ vacuum tube components of the 1960s include the MC275 power amplifier, the C22 preamplifier, and the MR67 tuner. Later McIntosh solid state power amps are known for their distinctive blue colored meters. In 1946, McIntosh, a design consultant for broadcast and TV stations, hired Gordon Gow to help him design a high power, low distortion amplifier needed for his clients. This amplifier would become the 50W-1. It included McIntosh’s first patented circuit, the Unity Coupled Circuit, still used by current products.
McIntosh amplifiers were used at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969, and the Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound’ reputedly utilized forty-eight 300-watt per channel McIntosh model MC 2300 solid state amplifiers for a total of 28,800 watts of continuous power. The company was purchased by Japanese car audio maker Clarion in 1990. In a speech shortly after the purchase, Clarion president Yutaka Oyamada told McIntosh employees, ‘…we like McIntosh as it is, and we have no intention of changing what has made it so successful.’ In 2003, McIntosh was sold by Clarion to D&M Holdings, also of Japan.
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January 18, 2011
Daiwa House is Japans largest homebuilder, specializing in prefabricated houses. It was founded in 1955 in Osaka. The Emergency Disaster Vehicle o1 (EDV-01) is a Daiwa concept habitat. It is an easily transported, self-contained shelter and amenities to be deployed during a disaster.
Once in place, the top portion of the EDV expands, doubling the space. This second level is a living area with beds and a desk. The first floor is contains the necessities: a water-free toilet, functional kitchen, refrigerator, and a bathroom with shower. The unit is completely self-sufficient, using roof-mounted solar panels, ambient water-vapor condensers, and fuel cells to provide a livable space. The EDV-01 also generates its own fuel, hydrogen, through electrolysis.
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January 13, 2011
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit corporation headquartered in California that was incorporated in 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, which created the Internet. ICANN manages the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. To date, much of its work is about making new generic top-level domains (e.g. .edu, .com, .gov, etc.).
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January 6, 2011
Hammacher Schlemmer is a retailer and mail order dealer founded in 1848. They claim to be the oldest continuously published catalog in the United States, with annual catalog circulation exceeding 30 million.
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January 5, 2011
Tower Optical is a small, Connecticut-based company which has manufactured a binocular tower viewer used at major tourist sites in the United States and Canada since 1932. The company’s large, silver-colored devices are used at Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge and other locations. Only about 35 of the viewers are manufactured each year, but several thousand are maintained by the company. Tower Optical has various arrangements with owners of the sites where the devices are located. Where the viewers are free, they are leased; at other locations, revenue is shared between the company and the site owner.
Each machine can hold up to 2,000 quarters, and earns somewhere between $1,200 and $10,000 per year. The company was founded by Towers S. Hamilton in 1933 in his Norwalk machine shop. His son, Towers W. Hamilton, later became the owner. His wife, Gladys (Kip) Hamilton, worked with him in the business for many years and on his death in 1989, she took over the company. She died in 2006, and at some point she passed the business on to her daughter, Bonnie Rising, who still owned the company as of 2010, when she had six employees, including her son, Gregory, and her husband, Douglas.
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January 3, 2011
Academi (previously known as Xe Services and Blackwater Worldwide)—is a private military company founded in 1997 by former Navy SEALs Erik Prince and Al Clark. Academi is currently the largest of the U.S. State Department’s three private security contractors, and provided diplomatic security services in Iraq to the United States federal government on a contractual basis. Academi also has a research and development wing that was responsible for developing the Grizzly APC (an armored urban combat vehicle) along with other military technology. The company’s headquarters is located in Arlington County, Virginia.
In explaining Blackwater’s purpose in 1997, Prince stated that ‘We are trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the Postal Service.’ Blackwater USA received its first government contract after the bombing of the USS Cole off of the coast of Yemen in October 2000. Blackwater trained over 100,000 sailors. Documents obtained from the Iraq War documents leak of 2010 argue that Blackwater employees committed serious abuses in Iraq, including killing civilians.
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December 19, 2010
ALDI, short for ‘Albrecht Discount,’ is a discount supermarket chain based in Germany founded by brothers Karl Albrecht and Theo Albrecht in 1913. Karl has since retired and is Germany’s richest man. Theo was Germany’s second richest man until his death in July 2010. The Aldi group operates about 8,210 individual stores worldwide. A new store opens every week in Britain alone.
Originally Aldi stores were ridiculed as being cheap shops selling low-quality goods, and that Aldi’s customers were mostly people who could not afford to shop elsewhere. Gradually many German consumers discovered that the poor reputation of Aldi’s products was either undeserved or economically justifiable. This shift in public perception was boosted by actions like a series of cookbooks that only used Aldi ingredients, which led to the emergence of a kind of Aldi fandom into parts of the German mainstream.
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December 14, 2010
Vestas Wind Systems is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines. It is the largest in the world, but due to very rapid growth of its competitors – GE (US), Sinovel (China), Enercom (Germany), and Gamesa (Spain) – its market share decreased from 28% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2009. Vestas has installed over 41,000 wind turbines in 63 countries on five continents. The company employs more than 22,000 people globally, and has built production facilities in more than 12 countries.
Vestas spent €92 million ($128 million), or 1.4% of revenue, on research and development in 2009. It has filed 787 wind turbine patents (165 in 2009) according to United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO), while General Electric has 666 and Siemens Wind Power has 242. In October 2009, Vestas and QinetiQ claimed a successful test of a stealth wind turbine blade mitigating radar reflection problems for aviation.
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November 22, 2010
Givaudan is a Swiss manufacturer of flavorings and fragrances. As of 2008, it is the world’s largest company in the industry. The company’s scents and flavors are developed most often for food and beverage makers, but they are also used frequently in household goods, as well as grooming and personal care products.
Givaudan’s flavors and solutions are usually custom-made and, like their competitors’ formulas, always sold under strict confidentiality agreements. Major competitors include Firmenich, International Flavors and Fragrances, and Symrise. Givaudan was founded as a perfumery company in 1895 in Zurich by Leon and Xavier Givaudan, although some parts of the modern company date back as far as 1796.
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November 20, 2010
Zero Halliburton is a company which manufactures hard-wearing travel cases and briefcases, mainly out of aluminum that have appeared in over 200 Hollywood movies and television shows, often as a MacGuffin (plot element). In addition to aluminum, Zero Halliburton cases are available in polycarbonate and Texalium (an aluminum-coated fiberglass). Famously, the Nuclear Football, the briefcase containing the launch codes the President of the United States would use to order a nuclear strike, is a modified Zero Halliburton case.
It was originally a Los Angeles metal fabrication company called Zierold, which in 1946 changed its name to Zero Corporation. In 1952 Zero, which until then had no relation to Halliburton, bought the luggage division of Halliburton, the Texas oilfield services company. Today, Zero Halliburton is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese luggage manufacturer ACE. Erle P. Halliburton, the founder of Halliburton, had commissioned the aluminum case in 1938 from aircraft engineers because other luggage could not endure the rough travel through Texas oil fields in a pickup truck. In addition to being more durable than a leather or cloth case due to its rigidity, the aluminum case seals tightly against dust and water.
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November 18, 2010
Troma Entertainment is an American independent film production and distribution company founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974. The company produces low-budget independent movies that play on 1950s horror with elements of farce. Many Troma films contain social commentary and have developed cult followings. Troma films are B-movies known for their surrealistic nature, along with their use of shocking imagery. They typically contain overt sexuality, graphic violence, gore and nudity, so much that the term ‘Troma Film’ has become synonymous with these characteristics.
Troma’s slogan is ‘Movies of the Future.’ Troma is also known for reusing the same props, actors, and scenes over and over again. Examples include a severed leg, a penis Monster, and the flipping/exploding car filmed for the movie ‘Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD,’ which is used in place of any other car that needs to crash and explode. Troma produced or acquired many early films featuring several rising talents, such as Carmen Elektra (‘The Chosen One’), Billy Bob Thornton (‘Chopper Chicks in Zombietown’), Vanna White (‘Graduation Day’), Kevin Costner (‘Sizzle Beach, U.S.A.’), Samuel L. Jackson (‘Def by Temptation’), Marisa Tomei (‘The Toxic Avenger’), Vincent D’Onofrio (‘The First Turn-On!’), ‘Paul Sorvino’ (Cry Uncle), Trey Parker and Matt Stone (‘Cannibal! The Musical’), before they were discovered.
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November 15, 2010
Lee’s Sandwiches is an American fast food restaurant chain specializing in Vietnamese cuisine. While originally famous for selling French baguette bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches), the chain has expanded its offering to many other goods, including packaged spring rolls, desserts, and other food to go items.
The first Lee’s opened in San Jose, California in 1980. There are now over three dozen locations in California, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma, as well as a new restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The company has plans to expand in the Pacific states of Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
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