Assembly Lines

McDonald's is 50 years old this week.

Well, sort of. Dick and Mac McDonald opened their first drive-through, in San Bernardino, California, in 1948.

The birthday being marked today was the result of a meeting the brothers had with a milkshake-mixer salesman called Ray Kroc. Mr Kroc was so impressed by the amount of business he was doing with the McDonalds that he signed up to be their first franchisee, opening his first restaurant in Illinois, in 1955. By 1961, he had bought them out for $2.7m.

"What Henry Ford did for cars, McDonald's did for burgers," says John Williamson of branding agency Wolff Olins. This demanded intense attention to detail. In 1961, for example, Mr Kroc opened Hamburger University, granting bachelor degrees in hamburgerology.

In the same year, the company ditched its original logo - a little man named Speedee - in favour of the Golden Arches.

Since then, McDonald's uniquely consistent branding, matching the worldwide homogeneity of its food, has been legendary.

It's now in 121 countries, more than half of which were added during the breakneck 1990s. Curiously - but no doubt meaninglessly - no two countries with a McDonald's presence have ever gone to war with each other.