改变世界的12家公司

改变世界的12家公司12. 麦当劳快餐业巨头麦当劳（McDonald's ）通过自动化，把食品加工转变成了一种科学技术，让我们习惯看到食品的一致性。

（这要归功于公司创始人雷•克拉克提出的“把汉堡包搬到流水线上”。

）麦当劳（MCD -0.46%）在全球推出了象征美国美食的巨无霸汉堡（Big Mac）和薯条，每天在120个国家的3.5万多家餐厅为7,000万顾客提供服务。

海德堡大学（Heidelberg University）教授、快餐界学者戴维•霍根说：“汉堡是我们这个世界的象征，而麦当劳理所当然是这种观念的形象大使和推广者。

”—Beth Kowitt12. McDonald'sThe fast-food giant turned food production into a science through automation, training us to expect consistency from our food. (Founder Ray Kroc has been credited with saying, "I put the hamburger on the assembly line.") McDonald's MCD -0.46% made the Big Mac and fries synonymous with American cuisine around the world, serving 70 million customers a day in more than 35,000 restaurants in 120 countries. "The hamburger is symbolic of our society," says Heidelberg University professor and fast-food industry scholar David Hogan, "and McDonald's is of course the ambassador and marketer of that concept." —Beth Kowitt11. 莱特兄弟公司莱特兄弟不是研制和驾驶飞机的第一人，但是与研制新飞机相比，他们的莱特兄弟公司（Wright Co.）更重视保护专利权。

（事实上，有人认为莱特兄弟公司的专利战阻碍了新兴航空业务的发展。

）但是他们的第821393号专利涉及三轴控制——俯仰、坡度和偏航运动——的发明，使固定翼飞机变得切实可行。

时至今日，他们的方法依然是飞机制造的标准。

—Tim Smith 11. Wright Co.The Wright brothers were not the first to build and fly airplanes, and their company focused more on defending their patent rights than on developing new aircraft. (In fact, some argue that the Wrights' patent battles impeded the growth of the nascent aviation business). But their patent, no. 821393, described the invention of three-axis control—covering pitch, roll, and yaw—that made fixed-wing aircraft practical. Their method remains standard for airplanes today. —Tim Smith10. Facebook十年前，就读于哈佛大学（Harvard）的本科生马克扎克伯格推出了让世界互联互通的服务。

十年后，Facebook距离13亿活跃用户的目标越来越近，其中五分之三的用户每天登录Facebook。

通过不断滚动的个人更新（许多网站的主打内容）“新闻馈送”，Facebook引入了浏览网页的新方法。

此外，Facebook还利用人际关系，而非页面链接，推出了组织数字信息的新方法。

在这个过程中，Facebook彻底改造了网络品牌营销，用高度针对性的广告取代了广受非议的横幅广告，而这在2013年为它带来了79亿美元的销售额。

刚过而立之年的扎克伯格继续经营Facebook，他慷慨捐款推动教育改革；截至目前，他已经出资2.2亿美元，用来推动新泽西州纽瓦克市和旧金山湾区的学校改革。

——Jessi Hempel10. FacebookA decade after Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard undergrad, launched a service to connect everyone in the world, Facebook FB 0.02% is growing closer to its goal: 1.3 billion active users, three-fifths of whom log on every single day. Facebook introduced a new way to navigate the web—via the scrolling “newsfeed” of personal updates that has become a staple on many websites—and a new way to organize digital information—via personal relationships instead of page links. In the process, the company reinvented brand marketing on the web, replacing the reviled banner ad with highly targeted ads that brought in $7.9 billion in sales in 2013. Even as Zuckerberg, who just turned 30, continues to run Facebook, he’s using his largesse to tackle education reform; he has pledged $220 million so far to school reform efforts in Newark, N.J. and the Bay Area. —Jessi Hempel9. 奥的斯电梯公司1854年，数百人齐聚纽约世博会（World’s Fair）中心由钢和玻璃建成的水晶宫展厅（Crystal Palace），观看艾利莎奥的斯的惊险表演。

他站在四层楼高的平台上，仅靠一根绷紧的绳索将自己吊起。

在向他的助手示意之前，奥的斯度过了激动人心的时刻。

他凭借绳索在空中盘旋，而一把张开的剑把绳索一分为二。

观众随之倒吸了一口冷气。

平台震动起来，但是并未坠落。

因为一组隐藏的弹簧片与护栏相啮合，奇迹般地固定住了奥的斯的“安全电梯”。

吸引观众的窍门要归功于P.T巴纳姆。

在整整一个月的时间里，他聘用奥的斯每天多次表演这一特技。

而这个改变世界的发明要归功于奥的斯。

1853年，他在纽约杨克斯一个破产的弹簧床垫工厂创办了奥的斯电梯公司（Otis Elevator Company）。

安全电梯使建筑高度不断增加：从位于纽约的20层熨斗大厦（Flatiron Building，1902年安装奥的斯电梯）、到10年后的60层伍尔沃斯大厦（Woolworth Building）、再到1931年的103层帝国大厦（Empire State Building）。

正是凭借这种快速可靠的客梯和货梯，使高层办公大厦和城市天际线能够正常运转，使高楼大厦和顶层公寓成为身份的象征，使尴尬的电梯对话成为亿万人的每日通勤仪式。

后来，钢索取代了纤维缆索。

电子按钮在很大程度上取代了人工操作员。

但是，今天的安全电梯与160年前令世界博览会观众喝彩的电梯几乎毫无二致。

在此期间，现隶属于联合技术公司（United Technologies UTX -0.70% ）的奥的斯电梯公司仍然在主导着它所开创的电梯行业。

—Clifton Leaf9. Otis ElevatorThe year is 1854. Hundreds gather in the New York Crystal Palace, the iron-and-glass exhibition hall at the center of the World’s Fair, to watch a man standing on a platform four stories high, suspended by a single taut rope. A few electrifying moments pass before Elisha Otis signals his assistant, hovering by the rope with an outstretched sword, to sever the cable in two. The crowd gasps. The platform jolts—but doesn’t fall, as a pair of hidden leaf springs engage the rails, keeping Otis’s “safety elevator” miraculously in place. Credit the showmanship to P.T. Barnum, who hired Otis to perform this stunt several times a day for a whole month. Credit the world-changing invention to Otis, who founded his elevator company in an old Yonkers, N.Y., bedstead factory the year before. The safety elevator made it possible for buildings to climb ever skyward—from the 20-story Flatiron Building in New York (equipped with Otis elevators in 1902) to the nearly 60-story Woolworth Building a decade later, to the 103-story Empire State Building in 1931. It was this fast, reliable people-and-freight mover thatmade possible the office tower and the city skyline, that made high-rises and penthouses symbols of status, that made awkward elevator talk a daily rite of passage for hundreds of millions of souls. Fiber rope shifted to steel cables. Electronic buttons have largely replaced flesh-and-blood operators. But the safety elevator of today is much the same as the one that wowed the World’s Fair audience 16 decades ago. And for all that time, the Otis Elevator Company, now part of United Technologies UTX -0.70% , has dominated the industry it created. —Clifton Leaf8. 索尼公司二十世纪五十至八十年代，索尼公司（Sony ）从根本上重新定义了人类看待音频和视频产品的方式。