Bob Frankston - American software engineer and businessman

Robert M. Frankston is an American software engineer and businessman who co-created, with Dan Bricklin, the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. VisiCalc is the first personal computer spreadsheet.

Frankston was born on June 14, 1949 and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He received SB degrees in both computer science and mathematics (1970) and master's and engineer’s degrees in computer science (1974), all from MIT.

Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin first met at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT, programming various interactive systems. Frankston was doing graduate work back at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. In 1979, Frankston founded Software Arts with Dan Bricklin to develop and sell VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet program for personal computers.

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program released in 1979 for the Apple II computer. It was easy to use and allowed for data sorting and storing in tabular rows and columns. VisiCalc was created to address and replace the manual spreadsheet management method.

Frankston has worked for a number of companies since then as well, including Lotus Development Corp., Slate Corp., and Microsoft. At Lotus Development, he created the Lotus Express product and a fax facility for Lotus Notes. At Microsoft Frankston championed the effort to integrate the Internet with personal computing and home networking.

In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for advancing the utility of personal computers by developing the VisiCalc electronic spreadsheet.
Bob Frankston - American software engineer and businessman

George Westinghouse (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914)

George Westinghouse was born on the 6th October, 1846, in Central Bridge, New York, the son of George Westinghouse Sr. and Emiline (Vedder). He was eighth out of ten children. His father was the owner of a machine shop and this probably the reason why son George was talented with machinery and in business.

He developed a rotary steam engine, acquiring his first patent in 1865. Moreover, he invented a steel car replacer and frog, for railways, and applied for patents for these inventions.

He served in the Union army and navy during the Civil War and then attended Union College before striking out on his own.

It was not until the early 1880s that George Westinghouse became interested in electrical engineering. By the time he was 40 years old, he had formed the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, developed a system of pipes to conduct natural gas safely into homes, and invented the gas meter.

He organized the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1886, which he used as a base to advocate successfully the ac system. Westinghouse was one of America's greatest inventors andone of the true giants of United States industry.

During the 1870s George Westinghouse spent the greater part of his time in Europe. One of his aims was to sell his air brake system to British railway companies. In 1872 the Westinghouse Continuous Brake Company was established, in New York, to manage the European export business, eventually resulting in the formation of the Westinghouse Brake Company Limited, in England, in 1881.
George Westinghouse (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914)

Henry Drushel Perky

He was an entrepreneur, explorer, lawyer, teacher and inventor of shredded wheat. Henry Drushel Perky born 7th December 1843 Saltcreek township, Homes County, Ohio died 29th June 1906. Perky studied law, was admitted to the bar in Nebraska and elected to the Nebraska State Senate.

In 1892 Perky figured out how to boil an reconstitute wheat into a palatable form, and which his partner, machinist William Henry Ford, they invented the machine shreds whole wheat into crisp packets. It is the first package breakfast cereal.

Perky then set-up a manufacturing operation for shredded in Niagara Falls. He established the Cereal Machine Company in 1895 and promoted his product through a Denver restaurant where every dish on the menu included some form of the cereal.
Henry Drushel Perky

Evan Williams: internet entrepreneur

Evan Williams was born on March 31, 1972. He spent his early life in Clarks, Nebraska. He also pursued his studies at the University of Nebraska,

Evan Williams is an American entrepreneur known for his two top websites he has developed which are blogger and Twitter.

Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan founded Pyra Labs in January 1999. Originally, Pyra intended to build a web-based project management tool that would enable geographically distributed project members to manage and coordinate work.

William developed blogger to manage his personal weblog, and it quickly became an important mechanism for sharing ideas internally at Pyra. He had written some software for his personal weblog that automated the task of posting entries to a blog. On August 23, 1999 Blogger was launched.

Once launched publicly, Blogger grew rapidly and Pyra Labs decided to focus on it full-time. By 2003, Blogger has one million registered. That attracted the attention of Google, who made Pyra their first acquisition in February 2003.

The acquisition allowed premium features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free. Williams left Google in 2004 to cofound a podcasting company called Odeo.
Evan Williams: internet entrepreneur 

Edwin Perkins (1889-1961)

Perkins was born in Lewis, Iowa in 1889 but spent his youth in the village of Hedley in southwestern Nebraska.

When he was a young lad, the family moved to a sod house on a farm in Nebraska.

His father owned a store, so Edwin often saw new products. He especially liked a new food called Jell-O.

When he was older, Edwin married and started a business called Perkins Products Company.

Perkins was interested in inventing and making new products. He had experimented with chemistry since his childhood, creating a number of products like deodorant and foot powder. He sold perfumes and other small items to stores across the country.

After World War I, he invented a tobacco remedy called Nix-O-Tine, the first of his many patent medicines.

Edwin had a new idea and invented Fruit Smack. It was a thick flavored syrup people mixed with water.

He then invented a way to make the drink flavors into powder. In 1927 Perkins reconstituted Fruit Smack into powdered crystals and packaged it in bright paper envelopes.

He called the powder ‘Kool-Ade’ but later changed the name to ‘Kool-Aid’. Perkins initially manufactured and sold Kool-Aid in his hometown of Hasting, Nebraska, moving the company to Chicago once the product was established.

Perkins set the original price of the drink powder at 10 cents per package, and he reduced the cost to 5 cents during the Great Depression, keeping Kool-Ade well within financial reach of most American families.

By the end of the Great Depression, Edwin Perkins owned a suburb mansion and developed hundreds of works in his factory.
Edwin Perkins (1889-1961)