The First Book of Factoids

er joined forces with Joseph B. Harris and Moses A. Meyer to form "Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange" in October 1891. A year later, the first Strowger exchange was installed with great fanfare at La Porte, Indiana. It had less than 80 subscribers.

Strowger died in 1902 but his company still survives as AG Communications Systems.

http://www.roserpark.net/greenwood/strowger.html

http://www.strowger.com/history.html

http://www.agcs.com

B

Barbie

Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler in 1959. It was modelled on a minuscule German sex doll called "Lilli". Barbie was the nickname of Ruth's daughter, Barbara. Ruth proceeded to found Mattel with her husband, Elliott. It is now one of the world's largest toy manufacturers (revenues - c. $5 billion annually, a third of which in Barbie sales). More than 1 billion Barbies were sold by 1996. Mattel commemorated this event by manufacturing a "Dream Barbie".

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~tsawyer/barbie/barb.html