“To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.” That’s the motto of the University of Georgia, which on this date in 1785 became the young nation’s first state chartered university. Royally chartered private universities existed in America in colonial times, notably Harvard and William and Mary. The University of Georgia opened in 1801 after the similarly chartered University of North Carolina. Today, over 66 million people hold bachelor’s or higher degrees. People with bachelor’s degrees average around 77 percent more lifetime earnings than workers whose education stopped with a high school diploma. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at <www.census.gov>.
Sunday, January 26th. On this date 31 years ago, the infant personal computer was empowered to become something much greater than a glorified word processor with the release of the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3. The popular program drew acclaim as the first “killer application.” Finance and accounting workers were thus freed from hunching over ledger books and switched to hunching before a computer screen. The name “1-2-3” stemmed from the product’s integration of three main capabilities — spreadsheet, charting and graphing, and rudimentary database operations. Today there are over 8,200 packaged software development firms in the U.S., employing almost 390,000 people. You can find current data on the country’s economy by downloading the America’s Economy mobile application at <www.census.gov/mobile>.
Saturday, January 25th. On this date in 1915, east and west were linked by voice in the first transcontinental phone call. This event was a conference call involving Alexander Graham Bell in New York, his assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco, President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, and the president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in Georgia. Using the new commercial service was a major financial commitment. The charge for a three-minute call from New York to San Francisco started at $20.70. That’s over $474 today. Over 97 percent of America’s households have phone service. Users of landline phones pay an average of $434 for a year. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.