California business has a long and colorful history.
Long before Google, Yahoo, Apple and eBay became world-famous California corporations, there was a string of profitable, well-known companies from San Diego and Los Angeles to the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here are some key dates and events from halls of California business. The first California oranges planted for commercal production was in 1841. The ship California arrived in San Francisco in 1849, carrying the first of the gold-seekers. The Ralphs Grocery Company was established by two brothers, George and Walter Ralphs in 1873. Frederick and Jacob Beringer purchased 215 acre parcel of land in 1875 for $14,500 in Napa Valley and called their winery, “The Brothers.” Caterpillar Tractor was started by Benjamin Holt who produced his first horse-drawn “Link-Belt Combined Harverster in 1875. The Sunset Magazine (named in honor of Sunset Limited railroad line) was launched by Southern Pacific Railroad in 1898. Thomas Tally was the first permanent movie theater in 1902, dubbed “The Electic Theater,” and admission was about 10 cents. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the computer circuit boards in Jobs’s parents’ Los Altos, CA garage and named the product Apple I. The internet was created in 1969 at UCLA, Stanford Research Institute. Yahoo! (acronym for Yet Another Hierarchiacal Officious Oracle) was created in 1994 by two Stanford University Ph.D students named Jerry Yang and David Filo. eBay originated with a developer services engineer, Pierre Omidyar as an online service called Auction Web, based out of his San Jose living room. Google Inc. opened in 1998 (refers to number represented by numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.
California has risen to global stature and is the second largest economy on the planet, as of 2011, with it’s 53 Fortune 500 company headquarters.
