Computer Software

The key to the mass-market success of the microcomputer lay, not in the hardware itself, however small or cheap it became, but in the development of a range of generic applications. Compatible computer hardware meant that there was a huge incentive for companies to develop software that would enable users to exchange data easily. From the beginning to the present day, the business-software industry has been dominated by American companies. The first mass-market applications provided the means of computerizing the tasks that were common to all businesses—accounting and word-processing. In 1979, Software Arts introduced VisiCalc, the first commercial spreadsheet, to run on the Apple II computer. Spreadsheets create files in the form of tables in which numerical data can be sorted and manipulated. Launched in 1982, the Lotus Development Corporation’s 1–2–3 application for PCs, which added database and graphics display functions to the core spreadsheet functions, soon became the market leader. In the same year, Ashton-Tate released dBASE II, the first commercial relational database. While the pre-PC WordStar was the first commercial word-processing package, WordPerfect—launched in 1982—became the market leader of the 1980s.

Japanese Domination of the Camera Market

After World War II, Japanese companies began to compete very effectively in the international camera market. At the top end of the professional camera market, Rolleiflex and other European companies, including Sweden’s Hasselblad and Austria’s Voigtlander, maintained their supremacy. For example, Voigtlander introduced the zoom lens, widely used in motion-picture photography since the 1930s, for still photography in 1958. However, Japanese companies made serious in-roads into the lower end of the professional camera market. Nippon Kogaku launched its first camera, the Nikon I rangefinder 35 mm camera, in 1948. Exceeding a million units in sales, its Nikon F SLR camera of 1959 was the first commercially successful SLR model. In 1953, Nikon was also the first maker to produce a camera with motorized drive, but motorized drives were uncommon until the 1960s. Another Japanese company, Olympus, produced the first compact SLR camera, the Olympus Trip, in 1968. Twenty years later, sales of the Olympus Trip reached 10 million.

Even the smallest SLR cameras could not be described as pocket-size, so there was a gap in the market between low-performance cartridge cameras that were small and lightweight and the bulkier SLR cameras. In the late 1970s, this gap was filled by the introduction of fully automatic, compact 35 mm cameras. These cameras improved in the early 1980s as a result of the development of auto-focus lenses. As cameras gained more electronic functions, their styling reflected this transition by becoming increasingly high tech. The harder lines of the older metal-bodied mechanical SLR cameras gave way to the sleek lines of plastic-bodied electronic compact and SLR cameras.

The serious image of the camera was only challenged by the modern equivalents of the Brownie. Eastman Kodak had continued to periodically reinvent the simple “point and press” camera. The cheap Kodak Instamatic camera of 1963 used easy-to-load film cartridges and achieved sales of 50 million units by 1970. Its successor, a pocket-size model introduced in 1972, was equally successful. In 1982, a new Kodak format, the film disc, was launched. Single-use disposable cameras followed in the late 1980s. Kodak’s colorful Fun Saver disposable cameras achieved dramatic market penetration, reaching sales of 50 million units by 1995. In the United States, single-use cameras accounted for 75 percent of annual camera sales. In keeping with environmental concerns, Eastman Kodak recovers more than 80 percent by weight of the materials in disposable cameras by reuse or recycling.

Cooker Design

While gas-cooker manufacturers tended to be more innovative in design terms than their electric-cooker counterparts during the interwar period, the time lag was much shorter. After 1920, gas and electric cookers gradually evolved their own identity through the use of new materials and surface finishes. Manufacturers began to apply vitreous enamel, which had previously been used sparsely on splashbacks and cooktops, to all surfaces, outside and inside. Although mottled black enamel was used in conjunction with white, mottled grey enamel and white enamel became more common, as a visible break from the traditional black-leaded range. In the 1930s, other colors, such as mottled blue and green, were also popular. Aside from its appearance, the great advantage of the enameled surface was that it was easily cleaned. By 1930, the typical gas or electric cooker stood on four short legs and consisted of an oven, surmounted by a grill compartment, and a cooktop with between two and four boiling rings.

Sheet steel, which was light and more flexible, was available in the 1920s, but was too expensive to be used extensively. The pioneer of the sheet steel cooker was the American designer Norman Bel Geddes, who produced the Oriole cooker design for the Standard Gas Corporation in 1932. Sheet steel was a logical choice for Bel Geddes who, as an advocate of streamlining, sought materials that could provide a seamless profile. The construction process entailed the clipping of bendable sheets to a steel chassis rather than the bolting of rigid plates to a cast-iron frame. The Oriole cooker in white porcelain-enameled steel was notable for its rounded edges, flush front with plinth, and folding splashboard cum tabletop. The plinth served the dual purpose of inhibiting the accumulation of dust and food debris under the cooker and providing storage space. The full-line cooker with a warming drawer below the oven became standard by the 1940s. In Britain, the first white steel gas cooker was the Parkinson Renown, designed for the 1935 George V Jubilee House and produced commercially from 1937. The use of sheet steel encouraged the standardization of core components, which could then be assembled in different combinations, and this standardization lowered production costs.

Instant Foods

The term “instant food” covers any dried product that is prepared for cooking simply by adding a measure of liquid, usually water or milk. The first ready-mix food was Aunt Jemima’s pancake flour, produced in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1889. Other instant baking products, such as cake mixes, had their heyday in the 1960s, when the level of female employment rose. These products were marketed on the basis that home baking was a badge of good housewifery, so instant mixes enabled the busy working woman to cheat a little. In 1946, the R. T. French Company of Rochester, New York, introduced the first instant mashed potato product. General Foods introduced Minute Rice, a dried precooked rice, in 1950.

Before the 1950s, all instant products were produced by traditional air-drying, either at ambient temperature or with added heat. By 1940, a new method, freeze-drying, had been developed in Sweden. Food was rapidly frozen and then placed in a vacuum chamber to dry, because, at low pressures, water passes directly from the solid state to the gaseous state, a process known as sublimation. This was particularly effective for any foods with a high water content, as the water is removed rapidly without damaging the structure of the food. The freeze-dried food is sponge-like in texture and therefore absorbs water rapidly. However, the high speed of freezing and drying required for effective results means that the food pieces need to be no more than 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick. The first factory for freeze-drying food opened in Russia in 1954. Freeze-drying is used commercially for drying vegetables and meat, as well as coffee.