history

  • Dyson’s Innovative Vacuum Solution

    Dyson is a symbol of innovation around the world, but they got their humble start in a garage, just like so many other important companies of today. James Dyson, the inventor behind the company’s rise to fame and the continuing sole owner of the company, started working on a new way to vacuum after realizing that his Hoover Junior was losing suction over time, as the bag filled with dust and the mesh became clogged. Over 5000 prototypes later, Dyson implemented centripetal cyclones similar to those used in sawmills and build the G-Force, a revolution of a vacuum cleaner that propelled Dyson into the very lucrative vacuum cleaner industry. Now, Dyson sells to over 70 countries, produces vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, fans, and heaters, but the company continues to push the entrepreneurial inventor mindset that it was founded on. All of this, from Dyson’s early prototyping efforts in the coach house attached to his home in Cotswolds, England.

  • Garage Greatness: Building Your Own Nest

    How often do you adjust your home thermostat? Many thermostats are outdated eyesores, installed by contractors who are more interested in getting the lowest possible bid than they are in the comfort of their home’s future inhabitants. Also, most homeowners use their thermostat in an inefficient way, and since home temperature control accounts for as much as 10% of total energy usage in the US, even just slightly wasteful habits can mean hundreds of dollars of cost for each household – hundreds of millions, across the country. Tony Fadell is the man behind Nest, the smart thermostat that is designed to solve these problems, and he is more qualified than anyone to create cutting edge technology: before he was prototyping a thermostat in a Palo Alto garage, he was creating the iPod and iPhone at his previous executive position with Apple.

  • Ring a Bell: Alexander Graham Bell Invents the Telephone

    Alexander Graham Bell lived from 1847 until 1922, and in those years he had a remarkable life of innovation and advocacy. He is best known for being the first person to patent a practical telephone, one of the greatest innovations to human communication of all time, but in his life Bell also addressed many other areas of interest to him, mostly regarding deafness and elocution. Bell’s legacy shaped human history and his inventions were critical to the continuing progress of technology, but what is commonly forgotten about his work is that he got his start in the garage – or, to be more accurate, the carriage house!

  • 3 More Garage Band Success Stories!

    There isn’t always an easy solution to a loud home. With children, television, and the rumbles or beeps that come with any appliance, finding peace and quiet in your home can be difficult. Many of these noises are unavoidable, but sometimes the secret is fairly simple. Loud hobbies or guitar practice are typically sent to the one room in the house where noises can be separated from the rest of your living space – the garage. This tradition, practiced by hobbyist woodworkers and middle-school bandmates alike has given rise to many of the greatest bands of all time. Last Monday, we looked at four chart toppers that begun playing together in the garage – The Who, Nirvana, Ramones, and The Kinks. Today, we’re going to continue the trend by talking about the origins of The Runaways, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Yardbirds. These three classic artists begun playing together in the garage, and from there successfully moved into performing packed amphitheaters around the world.

  • Garage Band Startups

    Garage bands are notorious. Anytime that a child wants to explore music or an adult wants to try a new hobby, they inevitably need a space to make noise. So many middle-school bands have been sentenced to the garage by moms tired of listening to their racket that music made in the garage – garage rock – has long been an accepted genre of music. There is something inimitable about the freedom that musicians can find in the garage, sequestered just far enough away from the house that everyone else can still get some sleep during late-night practices. This bootstrapping process is respected, even coveted, among musicians tired of the heavily produced and styled modern ultra-stars that dominate pop music. Names like “The Who” and “Nirvana” are cited as inspirations and critical thought leaders among the next generation of garage bands.

  • Finding Treasure: Fisher Research Labs

    Who hasn’t fantasized about discovering a buried stash of old valuables, or uncovering a pirate’s treasure from the beach? Children and adults alike love to rediscover the past, and one of the most fun and potentially lucrative ways to do that comes with treasure hunting. Hobbyists and professionals who search through ruins, farmsteads and beaches for relics from another time capture the imagination of us all, and hearing about someone finding a lost wedding ring or handful of colonial-era coins makes you wish that you’d been the one searching your backyard! This desire is exactly the reason that led Dr. Gerhard Fisher to patent the metal detector and found Fisher Research Labs, an ongoing world leader in metal detectors. Fisher founded his company in 1931 in Palo Alto, California, inside the garage attached to his home.

  • The HP Garage

    The Hewlett-Packard Company, usually called HP, is one of the largest information technology companies in the world. They produce a variety of hardware components and software that are used all around the world. HP employs over 300,000 employees and earned more than 110 billion dollars of revenue in 2014. Needless to say, HP is a big deal in the world of electronics, but the company has one high honor that has nothing to do with their commercial success; the garage in which HP first operated has been named “the birthplace of Silicone Valley” and added it to the list of California Historical Landmarks. Hewlett-Packard started in a garage, and for over seventy-five years since then they have been one of the preeminent names in information technology.

  • The Google Garage

    Google is the most omnipresent and omnipotent power that people interact with on a daily basis, which has given some geeks the idea to argue that Googlism – that is, worship of Google as God – is the closest that humans will ever come to interacting with something omnipotent. The farcical religion is more joke than theology, but the believers of Googlism are right about Google’s power over every part of our lives. Google is the most-visited website in the world and handles over half of all internet searches, but Google Inc is also involved in Email, cloud storage, an office software suite, and a host of cutting-edge technologies like self-driving cars and augmented reality headsets. The company is a very big deal, and vying with Apple (another garage startup!) for the coveted position of most valuable brand.

  • Making Mickey: Disney’s Dream Turned Reality

    Walt Disney’s success sounds almost like one of his fairy tales. When the young cartoonist began filming his “Alice Comedy” shorts in his uncle’s garage, no one could have predicted that Disney would spend the next century growing into a multi-billion dollar international king of family entertainment, revolutionizing animation and building some of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, the Disneyland parks in Florida, California, Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong.