Friday, August 7th. One of the engines of business and personal life in the 21st century is just 24 years old this month — the World Wide Web. The concept debuted this week in 1991, developed by two scientists at the Cern Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. At 24, the Web is quite a bit younger than the U.S. median age of 37, but in its brief life has come to shape our daily lives. It took some time to get going, though: In 1995, there were just 100,000 sites on the Web, and it reached 1 million in 1997. Last September, it exceeded 1 billion. Nearly 75 percent of the 116 million households in the U.S. have Internet access at home. Ninety percent of college grads have home access, versus only 44 percent of those without a high school diploma. Profile America is in its 19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Saturday, August 8th. On this date in 1930, an offbeat sort of history was made when a stock trade order was placed from a zeppelin off the Atlantic coast. This didn’t start a trend because the stock market had crashed and burned less than 10 months earlier, and a famous zeppelin crashed and burned just six years later. While 810 million shares were traded in 1930, that was down significantly from 1929’s volume of 1.1 billion. The stock market took nearly 30 years, or until 1959, to return to the trading level of 1930. Zeppelins haven’t recovered anywhere near as much. About 14 percent of U.S. families own individual stocks, with a median value of $27,000, but an average of almost $294,000. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.
Sunday, August 9th. With so much modern infrastructure featuring soaring atriums and deep subterranean transit systems, it’s not easy to imagine getting by without escalators. However, this efficient people mover was conceived in a far simpler, down to earth time. The first patent for a moving stairway was obtained on this date in 1859 by Nathan Ames. However, it was never built. The first practical escalator was built by Jesse Reno in 1896 at Coney Island, New York. Reno called his device an “inclined elevator.” The longest escalator in the western hemisphere is 230 feet long, at the Wheaton, Maryland station of the Washington Metro System. Manufacturing escalators and elevators is a $1.8 billion a year business for some 170 companies in the U.S. Profile America is in its 19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.