Compiled by Joseph R. Blackstock
1986 - Updated 1999; Updated 2005 (Tony Alwin)
FROM: Joseph R. Blackstock
SUBJECT: A CHRONOLOGY OF COMPANY HISTORY
It has been one hundred years since Walter Foster left the bicycle racing sporting life of San Francisco to begin selling outdoor advertising space for Thomas H.B. Varney in Oakland.
He met dentist George Kleiser a year later in 1898. The two young men became friends and were soon planning an outdoor advertising partnership which became the Foster and Kleiser Company.
The attached chronology notes some of the significant company events occurring since then. It includes years of operations by the founding Foster and Kleiser partners-and later owners-the W.R. Grace Co., Metromedia, Patrick Media, G.E. Capital, to the present Eller Media Company.
This historic time line, spanning the days of Walter Foster to Karl Eller a century later, was first compiled in 1986 and has been updated to the present era.
- JRB
