Technologizer posts about History

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Presidents of the United States

Forty-four presidents (including a new one on Tuesday), forty-four presidential portraits, and forty-four sites about their lives and times.

By  |  Posted at 8:04 am on Monday, January 19, 2009

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Presidential SealOn Tuesday, Barack Obama will make history when he’s sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Let’s pause to reflect on how how we got here: Here are the president-elect and his forty-three predecessors (counting Grover Cleveland as two presidents, of course). Click on any or all of ‘em, and you’ll go to relevant sites around the Web. (I tried to be nonpartisan; many of them are the appropriate presidential libraries.)

And if you’re less interested in presidencies past and more interested in the one that’s about to start, check out my friend and former colleague Mark Sullivan’s guide to following the inauguration on the Web over at PCWorld.com.

George Washington (1789-1797) John Adams (1797-1801) Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) James Madison (1809-1817) James Monroe (1817-1825) John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) John Tyler (1841-1845) William Henry Harrison (1841) James K. Polk (1845-1849) Zachary Taylor (1849-1850) Millard Fillmore (1850-1853) Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) James Buchanan (1857-1861) Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) James A. Garfield (1881) Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885) Grover Cleveland (1885-1889) Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) Grover Cleveland (1893-1897) William McKinley (1897-1901) Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) William Howard Taft (1909-1913) Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) Harry S Truman (1945-1953) Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969) Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974) Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977) Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) Bill Clinton (1993-2001) George W. Bush (2001-2009) Barack Obama (inaugural day January 20th, 2009)


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The Single Greatest Year in Tech History, Part One: The 1970s

We're going to identify the one year that made the biggest difference...and we need your help to do the job.

By  |  Posted at 11:34 am on Monday, December 1, 2008

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With movies, it’s unquestionably 1939, the fabled year that saw the release of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, and Goodbye Mr. Chips. With baseball, there are multiple contenders, including 1924, 1949, and 1998…but I’m a Red Sox fan, so let’s just say it–it was 2004. Rock music? Maybe 1967, the year of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, The Doors’ The Doors, The Who’s The Who Sell Out, and Aretha’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.

But what was the greatest year in technology history–the one that saw the highest number of significant products appear and/or other important events transpire? As far as I know, nobody has ever asked that question, let alone attempted to answer it. Will you join me in trying to figure it out?

In the coming days, Technologizer will recap significant moments, year by year and decade by decade, and give you the chance to vote on the years that made the biggest difference. For reasons of practicality, we’re beginning all this with 1970–we’re pretty sure that the greatest year, whatever it may be, happened in the past 39 years. (If you want to advocate for an earlier year, we’ll give you the chance to do so at some point via write-in votes; anyone know for sure what year the wheel was invented?) We’re also defining technology to cover personal technology relating to information and entertainment: PCs, Web stuff, TVs, MP3s, phones, and GPS, but not airplanes, cars, or clones. Eventually, we’ll winnow down the contenders and determine a winner.

Continue reading this story…



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