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The First Apps Store was in London in 1871!

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Thursday 2 June 2011

The First Apps Store was in London in 1871!

I have noticed with discomfort the legal battle between Apple and Amazon over the right to use the term "Apps Store". Clearly Apple have an unsupportable claim and Amazon should recognize that the name Apps has been associated with high-tech trading for over 140 years and that they are not just stealing it from Apple. For there was an Apps Store in London when Queen Victoria was still on the throne.




The store was established within John Nash's Western Strand development, close to Trafalgar Square, London at some point in the late 1860's.


For over forty years between 1871 and 1911, according to census records, it traded in the most up to date scientific instruments having developed from an opticians business. The business HQ was 433 Strand London.


Today 433 Strand is occupied by Ryman, the office supplies people. It requires some imagination inside the branch to put oneself back to the time of the previous owner, a Mr Alfred Apps.

Alfred Apps was born in 1839 in Battle, East Sussex. He died in 1913 in Calne, Wiltshire. In 1872 - his occupation was listed as optician & "maker of mathematical & pharmacological instruments"in  the 1872 London Postal book.

Apps' Store was legendary.

It seems he was even selling his instruments through the venerable, and still globally respected and influential, scientific body "The Royal Institution of Great Britain". So clearly, in his time, he was operating at the very cutting edge of technology, just as Apple and Amazon purport to do, and thus by both his name and the industrial connection all claims to the right to use his trading name of "Apps" must belong to his descendants.

Alfred Apps' last address was 5 Calverley Pk Villas, Prospect Rd., Tunbridge Wells, Kent. In his will he left £21,943, did he leave anyone his intellectual property rights and trading name too?

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posted by Peter Berthoud @ 18:52   0 Comments

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