American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries, Revised Edition

Charles Carey Jr.

Description

Praise for the previous edition:

"This fun-to-read source will add spice for economics and business classes..."—American Reference Books Annual

"...worthy of inclusion in reference collections of public, academic, and high-school libraries. Its content is wide-ranging and its entries provide interesting reading."—Booklist

"A concise introduction to American inventors and entrepreneurs, recommended for academic and public libraries."—Choice

American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries, Revised Edition profiles more than 300 important Americans from colonial times to the present. Featuring such inventors and entrepreneurs as Thomas Edison and Madame C. J. Walker, this revised resource provides in-depth information on robber barons and their counterparts as well as visionaries such as Bill Gates. 

 Coverage includes:

• Jeffrey Bezos


• Michael Bloomberg


• Sergey Brin and Larry Page


• Michael Dell


• Steve Jobs


• Estée Lauder


• T. Boone Pickens


• Russell Simmons


• Oprah Winfrey


• Mark Zuckerberg.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Emprendedor
• América
• Visionary
• History of the United States
• Business
• American
• United States
• Inventor
• History
• American History
• Entrepreneur

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438182148
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries, Revised Edition
Copyright © 2020 by Charles W. Carey Jr.; Revised by Harry Henderson and Lisa Yount
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Facts On File An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-4381-8214-8
You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobase.com
Contents Introduction Entries Acheson, Edward Amos, Wally Anderson, Joseph R. Anderson, Mary Andreessen, Marc Arden, Elizabeth Armstrong, Edwin Ash, Mary Kay Astor, John Jacob Baekeland, Leo Ba uelos, Romana Barnum, P. T. Beach, Alfred Bechtel, Stephen Bell, Alexander Graham Ben and Jerry Bendix, Vincent Berliner, Emile Bezos, Jeff Birdseye, Clarence Bissell, George, and Edwin Drake Blackton, J. Stuart Blake, Lyman Blanchard, Thomas Blodgett, Katharine Bloomberg, Michael Bloomingdale, Alfred Bluhdorn, Charles G. Bogardus, James Bok, Edward Borden, Gail Brin, Sergey, and Larry Page Brown, John (entrepreneur) Brown, Marie Dutton Brown, Rachel, and Elizabeth Hazen Brush, Charles F. Buffett, Warren Buick, David Burnett, Leo Burroughs, William Busch, Adolphus Bushnell, Nolan Campbell, Joseph W. Candler, Asa Capone, Al Carlson, Chester Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie, Dale Carothers, Wallace Carrier, Willis Cartwright, Alexander Carver, George Washington Case, J. I. Case, Steve Chouteau, Ren Auguste Claiborne, Liz Clark, James H. Colgate, William Colonel Sanders Colt, Samuel Cone, Moses and Ceasar Coolidge, William Cooper, Kent Cooper, Peter Cornell, Ezra Coston, Martha Cottrell, Frederick Curtiss, Glenn Dach , Lilly Daly, Marcus Davenport, Thomas Davis, Benjamin Day, Benjamin De Forest, Lee Deere, John Dell, Michael Disney, Walt Donovan, Marion Dorrance, John Drake, Samuel Drew, Richard du Pont de Nemours, leuth re Ir n e Duke, James Durant, William Duryea, Charles and Frank Eastman, George Edgerton, Harold Edison, Thomas Elion, Gertrude Ellison, Larry Ellison, William Ertegun, Ahmet Evans, Oliver Everleigh, Ada and Minna Fairchild, Sherman Farnsworth, Philo Field, Cyrus Field, Marshall Filo, David, and Jerry Yang Fitch, John Flagler, Henry Flanigen, Edith Fleischmann, Charles Flora, William Forbes, Malcolm Ford, Henry Forten, James Franklin, Benjamin Frasch, Herman Fuller, Alfred Fuller, R. Buckminster Gabe, Frances Gates, Bill Gates, John Warne Gayley, James Genovese, Vito Gernsback, Hugo Getty, J. Paul Giannini, A. P. Gillette, King Glidden, Joseph Godfrey, Thomas (inventor) Goldman, Sylvan Goldmark, Peter Goodyear, Charles Gordy, Berry, Jr. Gorrie, John Gould, Jay Graham, Bette Nesmith Graham, Bill Graham, Katherine Grandin, Temple Gray, Elisha Green, Hetty Gregg, John R. Griffin, Merv Grove, Andrew S. Hall, Charles M. Hall, Robert Hammer, Armand Handler, Ruth Harriman, E. H. Harvey, Fred Hearst, William Randolph Hefner, Hugh and Christie Helmsley, Harry and Leona Henry, Vickie Lea Henson, Jim Hershey, Milton Hewitt, Peter Cooper Hewlett, William, and David Packard Hill, James J. Hilton, Conrad Hollerith, Herman Hopper, Edna Hopper, Grace Houdry, Eugene House, Royal Earl Howe, Elias Hughes, Howard, Sr., and Howard Hughes Jr. Huizenga, H. Wayne Hunt, H. L. Hunt, John Wesley Hyatt, John Icahn, Carl Insull, Samuel Jacuzzi, Candido Jay-Z Jobs, Steve, and Stephen Wozniak Jones, Amanda Joyner, Marjorie Stewart Julian, Percy L. Kaiser, Henry J. Keith, B. F., and E. F. Albee Keith, Minor Cooper Kellogg, John Harvey and W. K. Kelly, William Kennedy, Joseph P. Kettering, Charles King, Don King, Richard Kluge, John Knight, Margaret Knight, Sarah Kemble Kraft, James Lewis Kroc, Ray Kwolek, Stephanie Land, Edwin Latimer, Lewis Howard Lauder, Est e Lear, William Leslie, Miriam Levitt, Abraham Little, Arthur D. Little, Royal Lockheed, Malcolm and Allan Lucas, George Luce, Henry Marriott, J. Willard Marsh, Charles Masters, Sybilla Matzeliger, Jan Mauchly, John, and John Presper Eckert Mayer, Louis B. McCormick, Cyrus McCoy, Elijah McMahon, Vince Mergenthaler, Ottmar Milken, Michael Monaghan, Tom Morgan, Garrett Morgan, J. P. Morris, Robert Morse, Samuel Muller, Gertrude Munsey, Frank Murdoch, Rupert Musk, Elon Naismith, James Newmark, Craig Noble, Edward Norton, Charles Noyce, Robert Oakes, Ziba B. Ochoa, Esteban Olds, Ransom Eli Omidyar, Pierre Otis, Elisha Parker, Colonel Tom Parker, George S. Penney, James Cash Perkins, Thomas Perot, Ross Pickens, T. Boone Pinckney, Eliza Lucas Pinkerton, Allan Pinkham, Lydia Pittman, Robert Polese, Kim Post, C. W. Pritzker, Abram Procter, William and James Gamble Pulitzer, Joseph Pullman, George Pupin, Michael Reuther, Walter Rock, Arthur Rockefeller, John D. Rosenthal, Ida Rozelle, Pete Rudkin, Margaret Sarnoff, David Schwab, Charles Sears, Richard Sholes, Christopher Siebert, Muriel Simmons, Russell Singer, Isaac Slater, Samuel Smith, Frederick Smith, Willi Spalding, Albert Goodwill Sperry, Elmer Stanley, Francis and Freelan Stern, David Stevens, Robert Stewart, Martha Strauss, Levi Strong, Harriett Sutter, John Swift, Gustavus Tesla, Nikola Thompson, J. Walter Thomson, Samuel Thorp, John Tilghman, Benjamin and Richard Torvalds, Linus Trippe, Juan Trump, Donald Tupper, Earl Turner, Ted Van Andel, Jay, and Rich DeVos Vanderbilt, Cornelius Venter, J. Craig Vernon, Lillian Wachner, Linda Wales, James Walker, Madame C. J. Walker, Maggie Lena Waller, Frederic Walton, Sam Wanamaker, John Wang, An Ward, Montgomery Watson, Thomas, Jr. Webster, Noah Wells, Henry Westinghouse, George Weyerhaeuser, Frederick White, Eartha Whitney, Eli Wilson, Kemmons Winfrey, Oprah Woods, Granville T. Woolworth, F. W. Wright, Wilbur and Orville Wrigley, William, Jr. Yale, Linus, Jr. Yerkes, Charles Tyson Zuckerberg, Mark Zworykin, Vladimir
Introduction

The American economy has changed dramatically over the last four centuries. What was primarily an agrarian society has been transformed into an industrial one that depends on products and services that were once inconceivable. These changes came about as a direct result of the efforts of inventors, entrepreneurs, and business visionaries who dreamed of better ways to do or to make things and then made their dreams into reality. The following is a discussion of how the economy changed from one century to the next and the individuals who brought about these changes.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The colonial period was marked by a general economic dependence on Great Britain. The Navigation Acts prohibited Americans from trading directly with anyone other than British merchants, and various other measures such as the Iron Act and the Hat Act prohibited Americans from manufacturing anything that could be made in the home country. As a result, most inventions developed by colonial Americans pertained to agriculture. For example, the first American invention to receive a patent of any sort was Sybilla Righton Masters's corn-refining machine. Patented in 1715, this machine basically duplicated an old American Indian process for grinding corn. Likewise, there was little entrepreneurial activity in colonial America that was not related to agriculture. Most Americans in New England and the Mid-Atlantic colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) lived and worked on family-owned farms, which for the most part produced what the family needed to survive. A few larger holdings in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland produced wheat for the international market, while farmers living around the coastal towns raised vegetables and dairy products for urban dwellers. The South was dominated by plantations, which generally produced a staple crop for the international market. One such crop was indigo, which was introduced from the Caribbean to South Carolina by Elizabeth Lucas Pinckney. Most free southerners, however, earned their living as subsistence farmers.
Outside of being a planter, entrepreneurial activity in colonial America was generally restricted to four areas. A young man between the ages of 14 and 21 could apprentice himself to an artisan and learn a trade, after which he could start his own business. The classic example is Benjamin Franklin, who rose from printer's apprentice to prominent publisher. Although most small businessmen made only a modest living, some, like William Flora, were able to prosper to the point that they could engage in land speculation toward the end of their career. Women were generally discouraged from working outside the home; however, widows, like Sarah Kemble Knight, were permitted to operate taverns, inns, and boardinghouses as a means of supporting themselves. And since land was the basis of agriculture, land speculation was generally open to men and women alike. But the most lucrative activity was being a merchant, and it was thus that nonplanters attained positions of wealth and prestige.
Although the Navigation Acts forced Americans to ship their goods in British vessels, it also defined American ships as British vessels. Barred from manufacturing, the shrewdest colonial Americans bought or built ships and became merchants. By the beginning of the American Revolution, Americans constituted a major part of Great Britain's merchant fleet. Most merchants, like Robert Morris, John Brown, and Thomas Handasyd Perkins, got their start by joining the family mercantile firm and then forming a partnership with an older merchant. During the colonial period American merchants dominated the carrying trade between the 13 colonies and Great Britain, but they also engaged in extensive if illegal trade with French, Spanish, and Dutch traders in the West Indies, Africa, and Europe. After the war, Morris, Brown, and Perkins opened the China trade to American merchants and further extended American mercant