50 events that made retail history
The rapid-fire technological innovations of the 20th century gave rise to a new kind of culture, around the products we consume. Companies are constantly trying to patent and market the next big thing, resulting in a never-ending cycle of much-hyped product launches -- some that leave an imprint on the retail world for years to come.Click ahead to read about 50 events that shaped retail history.
The title for the world's first department store likely belongs to Harding, Howell & Co's Grand Fashionable Magazine shop in London, which appealed to fashionable women with the novel idea of offering four separate departments within the same store. This ability to offer more diverse merchandise was the result of the cheap labor and increased productivity sparked by the Industrial Revolution.
An early iteration of the modern mall came with the opening of London's Crystal Palace, which was created to showcase consumer goods from around the globe. The structure was designed to showcase the scope of the British Empire but instead served as a blueprint for the massive indoor malls that gained in popularity over the following centuries.
Thomas L. Tally opened the Electric Theater in Los Angeles just when it seemed American interest in the crude new art of motion pictures was fading. Tally's early movie house offered an entertainment experience showcasing the latest in moving picture technology at the admission price of a nickel, inspiring a wave of imitators around the nation known as nickelodeons and ensuring that the movie industry was here to stay.
Sanitarium superintendent Dr. John Kellogg was only hoping to create a food to deter, um, let's say self-stimulation when he invented corn flakes in 1898. His brother William Keith Kellogg kickstarted the company's sales in 1906 by purchasing the company and adding sugar to the corn flakes recipe.
Upton Sinclair painted a disturbing portrait of harsh conditions and unsanitary practices in America's meatpacking industry with his muckraking novel "The Jungle." His progressive critique led to the passage of both the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act the same year, adding a new measure of accountability to the industry and foreshadowing the formation of the Food and Drug Administration.
Garment workers at New York's Triangle Shirtwaist company were demonstrating in favor of improved conditions when management responded by locking them inside the building. The fire that broke out soon after killed 146 mostly female workers, making it one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history.
Henry Ford cut the price of his Model T automobile by more than half thanks to the idea of using conveyor belts to move parts between factory workers serving more specialized functions. Ford raised wages to retain workers within his new assembly line setup, which revolutionized industrial production while making cars far more affordable for average consumers.
Willis Carrier co-founded Carrier Engineering to promote a new invention allowing users to cool off. His centrifugal chiller, introduced in 1922, made it possible to cool large indoor spaces like movie theaters and department stores.
While fishing in subzero temperatures, Clarence Birdseye realized that food could be preserved indefinitely if it was frozen quickly. After patenting a method of flash-freezing foods, Birdseye, and the Postum Company to which he sold, began selling flash-frozen meals to the public in 1930.
King Kullen in Queens, New York, lays claim to the title of the nation's first supermarket, opened by former Kroger employee Michael J. Cullen. Cullen pitched his idea for "monstrous stores ... with plenty of parking space" in a letter to Kroger's vice president that went unanswered, leaving him to build it himself.
Tampon inventor Earle Cleveland Haas enabled the rise of modern menstrual pads by designing his with a commercial applicator that didn't require the taboo act of touching female genitalia. His invention didn't take off, however, until Tampax founder Gertrude Tenderich bought the patent and began advertising the new product in 1936.
Television was still an experimental medium when the first paid advertisement aired on July 1, 1941, in the New York metropolitan area. The ad for Bulova watches wouldn't reach many households but provided an early test for the commercial potential of television advertising, which would expand to include more than 900 marketers by 1955.
The penicillium mold that would become the world's first "wonder drug" was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it wasn't until 1940 that scientists found a strain of the mold growing within a cantaloupe that could be mass produced. The drug drastically reduced deaths from infection during World War II.
William Levitt's mass-produced Long Island township became an archetype for affluent cookie-cutter suburbs across the nation, as families purchased 300 homes in just the first weekend and 17,000 over the next four years. Unfor