Saturday, September 16, 2006

How Was "Dr. Scholl's" Named?

Dr. Scholl's is a brand of foot-care products manufactured by Schering-Plough and footwear made by Brown Shoe Company. The company was founded by William Mathias Scholl, who was born in 1882 and graduated from Illinois Medical School in 1904, thereby becoming a doctor (podiatrist). Scholl and his company invented a number foot care products, which he marketed with his company after 1906. These include the Foot Eazer, the Zino Pad, rubberless stockings, Foot Wings arch supports, and Ball-O-Foot Cushions. The first company retail store was opened in 1928. William M. Scholl passed away in 1968 at the age of 86, leaving the company to his nephew, William H. Scholl. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 5:59 PM  

How Was "Starbucks" Named?

Starbucks is the world's largest multinational chain of coffee shops, with corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States.

According to Howard Schultz's book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, the name of the company was derived from Moby-Dick, although not in as direct a fashion as many assume. Gordon Bowker liked the name "Pequod" (the ship in the novel), but his creative partner Terry Heckler objected: "No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!" Heckler suggested "Starbo," the name of a mining camp on Mount Rainier. Combining the Moby-Dick idea with "Starbo" resulted in the company being named for the Pequod's first mate, Starbuck.

The company logo is a two-tailed mermaid. The logo has been streamlined over the years. In the first version, the Starbucks siren had bare breasts and a fully-visible double fish tail. In the second version, her breasts were covered by hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original logo can still be seen on the Starbucks store in Seattle's Pike Place Market. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 12:24 PM  

Friday, September 15, 2006

How Was the "FICO Score" Named?

FICO Score
A FICO score is a credit score developed by Fair Isaac & Co. Credit scoring is a method of determining the likelihood that credit users will pay their bills. Fair, Isaac began its pioneering work with credit scoring in the late 1950s and, since then, scoring has become widely accepted by lenders as a reliable means of credit evaluation. A credit score attempts to condense a borrowers credit history into a single number. Fair, Isaac & Co. and the credit bureaus do not reveal how these scores are computed. The Federal Trade Commission has ruled this to be acceptable.

Credit scores are calculated by using scoring models and mathematical tables that assign points for different pieces of information which best predict future credit performance. Developing these models involves studying how thousands, even millions, of people have used credit. Score-model developers find predictive factors in the data that have proven to indicate future credit performance. Models can be developed from different sources of data. Credit-bureau models are developed from information in consumer credit-bureau reports. (Found Here)


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posted by Staff @ 7:42 AM  

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

How Was "Borders" Named?

Border's Book Store
Borders Group is an international bookseller based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Borders is a Fortune 500 company, and is (as of 2005) the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States (after Barnes & Noble), selling a wide variety of books, CDs, DVDs, periodicals, as well as gifts and stationery.

The original Borders bookstore is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it was founded in 1971 by brothers Tom and Louis Borders. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 9:33 AM  

How Was "Shell Oil" Named?

Shell Oil
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is a multinational oil company of Anglo Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest energy corporations in the world, and one of the five "supermajors" (vertically integrated private-sector oil, natural gas, and petrol (gasoline) companies).

The origin of the brand name Shell is linked to the origins of The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company. In 1833, the founder's father, also Marcus Samuel, founded an import business to sell seashells to London collectors. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea area in 1892, the younger Samuel realised there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world's first purpose built oil tanker, the Murex, to enter this market. By 1907 the company had a fleet of oil tankers.

The Shell emblem is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world. Known as the "Pecten" after the sea shell, the giant scallop, Pecten maximus, on which its design is based, the current version of the logo was designed by Raymond Loewy and introduced in 1971. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 9:00 AM  

How Was The "Associated Press (AP)" Named?

The Associated Press
The Associated Press , or, "AP" was formed in May 1846 by representatives of five competitive New York City newspapers, who wanted to pool resources to collect news from Europe. The driving force in its formation was Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun, when he invited the other New York publishers to join the Sun in a cooperative venture in covering the Mexican-American War. The five New York papers joined in the agreement were the Sun, the Journal of Commerce, the Courier and Enquirer, the Herald, and the Express. Until then, newspapers competed by sending reporters out in rowboats to meet the ships as they arrived in the harbor. In 1849 it opened the first bureau outside the U.S., in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to meet ships from Europe before they docked in New York. In 1861, facing censorship in covering the American Civil War, reporters first filed under the anonymous byline "from the Associated Press agent." (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 8:53 AM  

Sunday, September 10, 2006

How Was "Cadillac" Named?

Cadillac
Cadillac is a brand of luxury automobile, part of General Motors, produced and mostly sold in the United States and Canada; outside of North America, they have been less successful. In the United States, the name became a synonym for "high quality", used in such phrases as "the Cadillac of clocks."

Cadillac was formed from the remnants of the Henry Ford Company when Henry Ford departed along with several of his key partners. With the intent of liquidating the firm's assets, Ford's financial backers, William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen called in engineer Henry M. Leland to appraise the plant and equipment prior to selling them. Instead, Leland persuaded them to continue in the automobile business. Henry Ford's departure required a new name, and on August 22, 1902, the company reformed as the Cadillac Automobile Company.

The Cadillac automobile was named after the 17th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan in 1701.


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posted by Staff @ 12:35 PM  

How Was "Bugs Bunny" Named?

Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a fictional street-smart anthropomorphic gray rabbit who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Warner Bros., and is one of the most recognizable characters, real or imaginary, in the world. According to his biography, he was "born" in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York and was originated by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, who created a prototypical version of the character called Happy Rabbit in 1938's "Porky's Hare Hunt" (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 11:53 AM  

How Was "Evel Knievel" Named?

Evel Knievel
Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. (born October 17, 1938 in Butte, Montana) is an American stuntperson, best known for his public displays of long distance, high-altitude motorcycle jumping which often resulted in serious injuries, particularly during the 1960s

After one particular police chase in 1956 in his hometown of Butte, Montana, in which he crashed his motorcycle, Knievel was taken to jail on a charge of reckless driving. When the night jailer came around to check the roll, he said "Hey, we got a guy named Knievel in one cell and another named Knofel in the other. Goddamn! Double the guard! We got Evil Knievel and Awful Knofel here tonight." The nickname stuck. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 10:40 AM  

How Were "Zippo Lighters" Named?

Zippo
A Zippo Lighter is a refillable, metal lighter manufactured by Zippo Manufacturing Company. They are frequently collected and hundreds of different styles and designs have been made in the seven decades since their introduction.

George G. Blaisdell founded Zippo Manufacturing Company (located in Bradford, Pennsylvania) in 1932, and produced the first Zippo lighter in early 1933, being inspired by an Austrian cigarette lighter of similar design. It got its name because Blaisdell liked the sound of the word "zipper" (according to John Ratzenberger's television show Made in America and the Zippo Manufacturing Company's website), and also felt that the sound of the lighter opening resembled the sound of a zipper. On March 3, 1936, patent no. 2032695 was granted for the Zippo lighter. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 10:30 AM  

How Was "Scotch Tape" Named?

Scotch Tape
Scotch Tape is a family of adhesive tapes manufactured by 3M Company. It was developed in the 1930s by inventor Richard Drew. Although it is a trademarked brand name, it is widely used in the USA as a generic term for any transparent adhesive tape.

Use of the term 'Scotch' in the name has a rather pejorative origin. During testing, the tape came loose because it was not fully coated with adhesive. A remark was made that the stingy Scotch bosses need to put more adhesive on it; the name has stuck ever since. Scotty McTape, a kilt-wearing cartoon boy, was the brand's mascot for two decades, first appearing in 1944. The familiar plaid design was introduced to packing soon afterwards in 1945. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 10:22 AM  

How Was "Blaupunkt" Named?

Blaupunkt
Blaupunkt is a German electronic equipment manufacturer, noted for their home and car audio equipment. Founded in 1923 under the name "Ideal", its core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue Punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark and the trademark would become the company name in 1938. (Wikipedia)


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posted by Staff @ 10:13 AM