People in history - Augustin Mouchot
By Kiron Kasbekar | 20 Mar 2024
There was a man who, more than a century and a half ago, put in years of hard work to create a new technology to harness the power of the sun, something today’s generation has been trying hard to do now, with growing fears of the depletion of the world’s petroleum resources.
HMT watches: No longer the timekeeper to the nation
By Aniket Gupta | 14 Mar 2024
Sadly, there has been one watch brand in India with a rich history, which has been forgotten over time. That brand was not known for its flashy name or design but rather for the simplicity it represented, and to many Indians, the pride of nationalism attached to it. That brand is HMT.
Company story – Quaker Oats
By Kiron Kasbekar | 08 Mar 2024
Quaker Oats is a company whose products I remember from my childhood days. Years before a foreign exchange crisis caused the Indian government to impose curbs on consumer product imports, we used to see a host of foreign brands in the Indian market. Including Quaker Oats, which I remember eating when I was a child, and which has been available for the past two decades or more.
How Quaker Oats grabbed customers’ attention
By Kiron Kasbekar | 07 Mar 2024
Quaker Oats, the American food products giant that was created in 1901 through the merger of many older oat millers, and was acquired by a bigger foods giant, Pepsi, in 2001, has been an innovative company. One example of its innovativeness shows in its packaging – the cereal box it launched in 1915.
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Kodak: A journey from creating memories to bankruptcy
By Aniket Gupta | 06 Mar 2024
Have you ever seen a Kodak camera, or heard the name of this company, the Eastman Kodak Company? If not, ask someone in your family who is over half a century old. The name Kodak doesn’t suggest much today, but there was a time not so long ago when Kodak had a near monopoly in the photography business. Both cameras and film.
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Building through the ages: Kongō Gumi’s 1446-year journey
By Aniket Gupta | 01 Mar 2024
In such a world of harsh competition and obsolescence, there is a company that stands out as a beacon of longevity. A company whose inception was closer to the fall of the Roman Empire than we are to the end of World War I. The company I am talking about is a modest family-run Japanese construction company called Kongō Gumi.
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Economic history – the Roaring Twenties – Part 3
By Kiron Kasbekar | 01 Mar 2024
This part, the third and last part, will look briefly at the new cultural styles that flourished, including jazz and swing in America, and the rebellious art scene in Europe. The world had recovered not only from the First World War, in which an estimated 20 million people were killed, but also from the Spanish Flu, which killed between 25 and 50 million people worldwide.
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Economic history – the Roaring Twenties – Part 2
By Kiron Kasbekar | 29 Feb 2024
In the first part of this story, ‘The Roaring Twenties- Part 1’ we saw how the American and Western European economies bounced back from the devastation of the First World War, created revolutionary new products, such as remarkable new automobiles and aeroplanes, and how road networks were expanded. Now there were new experiences for people to enjoy in their homes.
Economic history – the Roaring Twenties – Part 1
By Kiron Kasbekar | 28 Feb 2024
We know about the two World Wars; and we know that between those two wars, there was a Great Depression when the economies of most countries simply collapsed, causing untold misery to hundreds of millions of people. But there was another very important period between those two World Wars and before the Great Depression that is often not talked about. It was called the Roaring Twenties.
How Ratan Tata turned the tables on Bill Ford
By Aniket Gupta | 27 Feb 2024
Ratan Tata, the great man from the House of Tata, is often lauded for his humility as well as charismatic persona, love for animals, larger-than-life philanthropic endeavors, and decades of hard work to expand the Tata Group. But did you know that there was a time when this Indian business leader had to face humiliation from an American businessman?
The road to automobile innovation: Ford’s quest from 1970 onwards
By Aniket Gupta | 26 Feb 2024
The previous two articles in this 3-part series focused on the establishment of Ford Motor Company and some of the groundbreaking cars it had manufactured in the first 60 years since its inception. But the automobile industry is a tough industry. Like any other carmaker, Ford Motor Company, with all its glorious history, has also had to struggle to survive the challenges it encountered along its way.
The road to automobile innovation: Ford beyond the 1940s
By Aniket Gupta | 23 Feb 2024
In the previous article of this series, we explored the birth and childhood of Henry Ford, the creator of the Ford Motor Company. We also saw how, after several attempts, Henry Ford was finally able to establish the company in 1903. This part will explore Ford’s rise from the 1940s to the 1960s. We will also explore some famous creations by Ford during this era.
Web Stories
TRW: The rise and fall of an automotive giant
01 Apr 2025
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German silver – The alloy that fooled the world
24 Mar 2025
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