Josephine Frey (1886 - 1975)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Josephine's lifetime.

In 1886, in the year that Josephine Frey was born, on January 5th, Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson's book the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published. Immediately popular, the paperback book was sold for $1 in the U.S. - almost $25 today. Stevenson's stepson said that he wrote the first draft in under 3 days.

In 1890, at the age of just 4 years old, Josephine was alive when on June 1st, the U.S. Census Bureau started tabulating census returns with punch cards. Herman Hollerith's "tabulating machine" used punch cards to more quickly compute census information, taking the time to get census results from 8 years in 1880 to 6 years for the 1890 census. Hollerith's company eventually became IBM.

In 1915, at the age of 29 years old, Josephine was alive when the Superior Court in Fulton County Georgia accepted the charter for the establishment of the new Ku Klux Klan, succeeding the Klan that flourished in the South in the late 1800's. This iteration of the Klan adopted white clothing and used many of the code words from the first Klan, adding cross burnings and mass marches in an attempt to intimidate others.

In 1967, Josephine was 81 years old when on November 7th, President Johnson signed legislation passed by Congress that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which would later become PBS and NPR. The legislation required CPB to operate with a "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature".

In 1975, in the year of Josephine Frey's passing, in January, Popular Mechanics featured the Altair 8800 on it's cover. The Altair home computer kit allowed consumers to build and program their own personal computers. Thousands were sold in the first month.