America's 5 Greatest Entrepreneurs
America's 5 Greatest Entrepreneurs
America's 5 Greatest Entrepreneurs
(19th -20th Century)
Success breeds success
Even in the best of times, the majority of small businesses fail. Here's a brief examination of 5 some entrepreneurs who not only succeeded but amassed business empires, and the personal riches that came with them.
1. John D. Rockefeller Sr.
John D. Rockefeller Sr,
.( July 8, 1839 May 23, 1937) was, by most measures, the richest man in history. Rockefeller was the second of six children born in Richford, New York, to William Avery Rockefeller (November 13, 1810 May 11, 1906) and Eliza Davison (September 12, 1813 March 28, 1889).
He made his fortune by squeezing out efficiencies that made Standard Oil synonymous with monopoly -- and extensively lowered fuel prices for everyday consumers.
The government broke up Standard Oil in 1911, but Rockefeller's hand can still be seen in spin off companies such as Exxon Mobil (XOM) and ConocoPhillips (COP), which have benefited from the infrastructure and research-and-development advances inherited from their parent.
Rockefeller retired at the beginning of the 20th century .For the next four decades he devoted himself to philanthropy. More than 70 years after his death, he remains one of Wall Street's great figures. Rockefeller's wealth soared, and he became the world's richest man and first American worth more than a billion dollars. Rockefeller spent the last 40 years of his life in retirement. His fortune was mainly used to create the modern systematic approach of targeted philanthropy with foundations that had a major effect on medicine, education, and scientific research. His foundations pioneered the development of medical research, and were instrumental in the eradication of hookworm and yellow fever. He is also the founder of both the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University.
2. Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (25 November 1835 11 August 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, entrepreneur and a major philanthropist. He was one of the most famous leaders of industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He immigrated to the US as a child with his parents. His first job in the US was a factory worker in a bobbin factory. Later, he became a bill logger for the owner of the company. Soon after he became a messenger boy. Eventually he progressed up the ranks of a telegraph company. He built Pittsburg's Carnegie Steel Company, which was later merged with Elber H.Gray's Federal Steel Company and several smaller companies to create U.S.Steel. With the vast fortune he made from business, he later turned to philanthropy and interests in education, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New, Carnegie Endowment for international Peace Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburg, Carnegie loved efficiency. His steel mills were always on the leading edge of technology. Carnegie also had an excellent sense of business timing, snapping up steel assets in every market downturn.
Like Rockefeller, Carnegie gave away most of his money to establish many libraries, schools, and universities in America, the United Kingdom and other countries, as well as a pension fund for former employees. He is often regarded as the second-richest man in the history after John Rockefeller. Carnegie started as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks. He built further wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe.
He earned most of his fortune in the steel industry. In the 1870s, he founded the Carnegie Steel Company, a step which cemented his name as one of the "Captains of Industry". By the 1890s, the company was the largest and most profitable industrial enterprise in the world. Carnegie sold it to J.P.Morgan in 1901, who created U.S.Steel. Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. His life has often been referred to as a true "rags of riches" story. Like Rockefeller, Carnegie spent his golden years giving away the fortune he spent most of his life amassing. Though less well-known than some of his contemporaries, Carnegie built a legacy as a strong and moralistic leader.
3. Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 October 18, 1931) was an American Inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison's Menlo Park laboratory complex is said to live on in California's "invention factory" at Silicon Valley.
Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, and a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.
There is no doubt that Thomas Edison was brilliant, but it was his business sense, not his talent as an inventor, that clearly showed his intelligence.
Edison took innovation and made it the process now known as research and development. He sold his services to many other companies before striking out on his own to create most of the electrical-power infrastructure of the United States.
While Edison was a founder of General Electric (GE), many enterprises today owe their existence to him, including the Edison Electric Institute and New York utility company Consolidated Edison (ED).
Although Edison had far more patents than he did corporate ties, it is the companies that will carry his legacy into the future.
4. Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company and developer of the assembly technique of mass production .His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with " Fordism", that is, mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the company permanently. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. He was among a group of competitors working on motorcars -- and arguably not even the best of the bunch.
His rivals were selling cars at prices that made them affordable only by the rich. Ford put the rest of America on wheels, unleashing the power of mass production in the process.
His Model T was the first automobile mass-produced on assembly lines and marketed to middle-class consumers, as long as they liked black, the only color available.
Ford's progressive labor policies and his constant drive to make each car better, faster and cheaper made certain that his workers and everyday Americans would think of Ford Motor (F) when they shopped for a car.
5. Charles Merrill
Charles Edward Merrill (October 19, 1885 October 6, 1956) was an American philanthropist, stockbroker and co-founder of Myrrill Lynch & Co. (previously called Charles E. Merrill & Co.). Merrill and his friend, Edmund C Lynch, created Merrill Lynch in 1915. Merrill made his money by investing. He orchestrated the 1926 merger which created the Safeway food chain, and Merrill Lynch provided investment banking services to Safeway to finance the acquisition of other chains, growing Safeway to more than 3,500 stores across the United States by 1931.
Merrill's estate funded the Charles E. Merrill Trust, an engine of philanthropy, supporting the Merril Science Center at Amherst College and Merrill at the University of California, Santa Cruz built in 1968.
Mr. Merrill was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1976
Charles Merrill brought Wall Street to Main Street.
After the 1929 stock market crash, the general public had sworn off anything more financially sophisticated than a savings account. Merrill changed that by using a supermarket approach to equities: He sacrificed brokers' large commissions in order to serve more people, making up his money on volume.
Merrill offered free classes on investing to clients of the company that was to become known as Merrill Lynch, and he published rules of conduct for his company that sought to make sure his employees put customers' interests first.
America's 5 Greatest Entrepreneurs
By: alam.md
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