WHSmith

WHSmith plc (also known as WHS or colloquially as Smith's) is a British retailer which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers and entertainment products. Its headquarters are in Swindon, Wiltshire. Smith's is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. It was the first chain store company in the world, and was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book catalogue system.

History

Formation

In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established the business as a news vendor in Little Grosvenor Street, London. After their deaths, the business — valued in 1812 at £1,280 —(about £72185 in 2012, adjusted by inflation) was taken over by their youngest son William Henry Smith, and in 1846 the firm became W. H. Smith & Son when his only son, also William Henry, became a partner. The firm took advantage of the railway boom by opening news-stands on railway stations, beginning with Euston in 1848. In 1850, the firm opened depots in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. It also ran a circulating library service for a century, from 1860 to 1961. The younger W. H. Smith also used the success of the firm as a springboard into politics, becoming an MP in 1868 and serving as a minister in several Conservative governments.

Smith

People

Occupations

Smith Magazine

Smith Magazine is a U.S.-based online magazine devoted to storytelling in all its forms. Smith's content is participatory in nature, and the magazine welcomes contributions from all its readers. The magazine has made a name for itself with its original graphic novel projects Shooting War, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, and Next Door Neighbor; and with its series of Six-Word Memoirs projects. Most of these projects have since gone from web to print publication, from such publishers as HarperCollins, Pantheon, and Grand Central Publishing.

History

Smith was founded January 6, 2006 — National Smith Day — by writer/editor Larry Smith and designer Tim Barkow. Previous to launching Smith, Larry Smith was articles editor of Men’s Journal, and has been the executive editor of Yahoo! Internet Life, and senior editor at ESPN Magazine, and a founding editor of P.O.V. and Might magazines. Tim Barkow is a former editor at Wired and the online general manager at Portland Monthly.

The site focuses on "personal media": blogs, memoirs, diaries, viral videos, social networks, "the mash-up between the professional and the amateur, and art projects rooted in personal. It’s all about the highly personal take on everything." Since its 2006 launch, Smith has been heralded as “a vision for the future of populist storytelling,” “a gigantic cocktail party to which everyone is invited to come, listen, and contribute their own personal stories," and “the pulse of today’s cultural narrative."

Smith (Martian crater)

Smith Crater is an impact crater in the Mare Australe quadrangle of Mars, located at 66.1°S latitude and 102.9°W longitude. It is 75.5 km in diameter and was named after William Smith (1769-1839), an English geologist, and the name was approved in 1973 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN).

See also

References