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In 1975 Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard College to form Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen.

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he company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948 they reorganized their business as a hamburger stand using production line principles. Businessman Ray Kroc joined the company as a franchise agent in 1955. He subsequently purchased the chain from the McDonald brothers and oversaw its worldwide growth.

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Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889, originally named Nintendo Koppai. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. In 1960's the company began to experiment in other areas of business. Its first venture into the video-gaming industry was in 1974, but it was the release of Donkey Kong in 1981 that changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically.

4

Nissan Motor was founded in 1934. Initially, it built trucks, airplanes, and engines for the Japanese military. The legendary four-wheel drive Nissan Patrol has been manufactured by Nissan since 1961.

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The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well".

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The trademark Kodak was registered by John Eastman in 1888. In 1892 he coined the advertising slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest."[37] The Kodak company thereby attained its name from the first simple roll film cameras produced by Eastman Dry Plate Company, known as the "Kodak" in its product line.

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Mozilla was originally the codename for the defunct Netscape Navigator software project, along with Netscape's mascot, a cartoon reptile inspired by Godzilla. When Netscape Navigator was released as open source software, Mozilla was the name of the development project and community, along with the project's first product, the Mozilla Application Suite.

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IT giant Apple was established in 1976 by two friends, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Their first office was in a garage, and their first logo had Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.

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Shell was established in 1907. For more than 100 years the word ‘Shell’, the “Pecten” emblem and itsdistinctive red and yellow colours have identified the Shell brand.

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The origin of today’s world famous brand Canon can be traced in Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory that was established back in 1933. The first set of cameras was manufactured as a part of business trial and these early birds were named Kwanon after the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. The company name was changed from Kwanon to Canon and it was registered as the logo trademark name of the company in the year 1935 in order to reach the foreign markets.

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Xerox was founded in 1906 in Rochester as The Haloid Photographic Company, which originally manufactured photographic paper and equipment. The company subsequently changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958 and then simply Xerox in 1961.

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British Airways (BA) was created in 1974. During the next decades the company has expanded through several airline companies acquisitions and today it is one of the most famous airlines in the world.

13

The company which became IBM was founded in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company by Herman Hollerith, in Broome County, New York. IBM adopted its current name in 1924, when it became an international manufacturing company.

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Mazda began as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd, founded in Japan in 1920. The company website states that name "derives from Ahura Mazda, a god of the earliest civilizations in West Asia...the god of wisdom, intelligence and harmony..." Ahura Mazda is the Iranian – Zoroastrian God. The company website also notes that the name "also derives from the name of our founder, Jujiro Matsuda."

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Lay's is the brand name for a number of potato chip varieties as well as the name of the company that founded the chip brand in 1932. Lay's chips has been marketed as a division of Frito-Lay, a company owned by PepsiCo since 1965. Other brands in the Frito-Lay group include Fritos, Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos, Rold Gold pretzels, and Sun Chips.

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