Articles & Newsletters
Fire at the American Business History Center
American Business History Center subscribers, On Monday, October 3rd, 2022, the home and library of our Founder and Executive Director, Gary Hoover, burned to the ground. Thankfully, he made it out alive and is now surrounded by good friends and neighbors who...
Magnanimous Merchant: Julius Rosenwald
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series.\ In this American Originals series, we’ve recounted the life stories of men and women who created great inventions and enterprises. None of them had more energy and drive than the shy...
The Wonders of Chain Stores and Franchises
This article was originally published by the Archbridge Institute. I often hear people say that they dislike chain stores or chain restaurants, “big box” stores, or franchises. America has long had a love-hate relationship with the big chains. Understanding the...
Back to School! Expand Your Mind with Peter Drucker and History: Automobiles, Airlines, Computers, and Retailing
Autumn is the time many Americans put on their thinking caps and start learning again, after a summer break. So we’re offering zoom courses with Gary Hoover. We are excited to add new industry-specific, very affordable classes on the automobile, airline,...
A Visual Tour of American Architecture
(Photo above: Guardian Building, Detroit, Michigan) America’s great skyscrapers, museums, hotels, train stations, churches, and other structures reflect the ambitions and dreams of our society. Funded by the wealth generated by our economic system, they are...
Learn from History’s Great Innovators!
For four successive Tuesday evenings, starting August 23, I will moderate small group Zoom discussions about some of the most important entrepreneurs and innovators in American business history. This series follows our successful Great Leaders course which...
America’s Largest Hotels through Time
The world couldn’t function without the lodging industry. Wayside inns for the traveler have been with us for centuries. The American West was built on stagecoach stops and hotels near the train depot. Today, most Americans have experienced hotels and motels,...
Largest Employers 1994-2021
This week we present our animated chart of the largest employers in America among our big, public companies. In the last three weeks, we have published similar charts based on revenues, on profits, and on market capitalization, all of which can be found by clicking...
Most Valuable U.S. Companies 1995 Through 2022
Two years ago, we created animated charts showing the change in America’s largest companies, first by size (revenues), then by profits, market capitalizations, and number of employees. The new Fortune magazine “Fortune 500” list of the biggest public companies...
Highest Profit US Companies 1994 Through 2021
(Our original post listed this as the 25 highest profit companies but should have said 20 highest profit companies.) Two years ago, we created animated charts showing the change in America’s largest companies, first by size (revenues), then by profits, market...
2022 UPDATED Largest Companies Charts
Two years ago, we created animated charts showing the change in America’s largest companies, first by size (revenues), then by profits, market capitalizations, and number of employees. The new Fortune magazine “Fortune 500” list of the biggest public companies...
New “Lessons of the Greats” Zoom Course
We’re introducing two short zoom courses in which we explore the lessons we can learn from great business leaders and innovators. Each of the two courses consists of four successive Tuesday evening 90-minute sessions, led by me, Gary Hoover. The first...
The Rise and Fall of Big Boy Hamburgers
Few industries touch our daily lives more than the restaurant business. Serving food to friends and neighbors is the most basic form of capitalism, found in every village on earth. Sharing food and dining experiences, from ballpark hotdogs to the finest...
Americans Leaving Older Cities for Greener Pastures
In the twelve months ended on July 1, 2021, Dallas-Fort Worth and their suburbs attracted almost 75,000 people from around America, while the greater San Francisco Bay area witnessed more than 170,000 folks running to other parts of the country. These population...
Learning History Through Advertising and Design: The Airlines
We can learn much about the history and evolution of technology, business, geography, fashions, and design by studying the advertising materials of companies. The passenger transportation industries have produced some of the most vivid posters, ads, and...
From Dog Dung to Plexiglas: the Rohm and Haas Story
Few industries are more important to modern life than the chemical industry. Almost everything we touch, the clothes we wear, and much of what we eat contains chemicals or was processed by chemicals. Yet the companies are usually out of sight of...
Drucker Zoom Study Group with Gary Hoover: 8-Week Course Limited to 9 Participants
SOLD OUT Do you want to engage in a serious discussion about the purpose of business and the roles of leaders and managers? Do you want to expand your understanding by studying the ideas of the great business thinker, Peter Drucker? No scholar or professor of...
A Tale of Entrepreneurial Failure: TravelFest Austin Part Two
If you read Part One of this story, published in our last newsletter, you know that TravelFest was an immediate success with customers. The store was not big enough to handle the traffic, so we decided to build larger stores. The original 6,000 square foot...
A Tale of Entrepreneurial Failure: TravelFest Austin: Part One
Read the second part of this two-part story here. Two years ago, we started our “Share Your History” page on our website. We solicited contributions from our readers, telling us of their history with enterprises large or small. To start the page, we seeded...
Flexible Apparel Giant: VF Corporation
No industry touches us more frequently or intimately than the apparel industry. Yet few if any books document the history of this important industry. There are plentiful books about costume and fashion trends, but not about the enterprises which made the...
Not So American Anymore: Book Publishing (Part Two of Two)
Read the first part of this two-part story here. In our last newsletter, we told the story of the great publishing house Harper Brothers, founded in 1817. In this issue, we continue our story with the tale of two powerhouse book publishers that arose over 100...
Not So American Anymore: Book Publishing (Part One of Two)
Read the second part of this two-part story here. The history of book publishing in America goes back to the earliest days of the country. Thousands of book publishing companies have existed, mostly small but with an outsized impact on education, culture, and...
The Sordid Saga of Mr. Singer and his Sewing Machine
Isaac Merritt Singer (1811-1875) had a dream: to become a great actor on the stage, performing Shakespeare to accolades. For almost the first forty years of his life, he failed to achieve any success in this pursuit. Continually tinkering with machines, he...
Free Download Gift
We at the American Business History Center wish all our fans, readers, and donors a Happy New Year! We love beautiful, nostalgic images. When we published our new book Bedtime Business Stories earlier this month, we left out the great color pictures in the...
Seeing Change Through History’s Lens
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards” – Steve Jobs The American Business History Center wishes happy holidays to all of our readers. As another year comes to a close, it’s a great time to think back over time,...
Our Collection of Great Business History Stories now on sale on Amazon!
Our new book is now available on Amazon for $19.95 for the paperback and $9.95 for Kindle version. There is no other book quite like it, full of diverse, short, unknown tales of business adventures (and misadventures). The many color pictures that go with...
The First Zoom Course on American Business History
Premiering our Introduction to American Business History Zoom Course The American Business History Center and Gary Hoover are pleased to introduce our first zoom course in American business history. We have been unable to unearth any other online or zoom course...
It’s Giving Tuesday! Why Support Our Work?
Here we are at Giving Tuesday! We’re sure you are inundated with messages like this today, and perhaps every day. But we sure would appreciate any contribution you might make to help us continue our work here at the American Business History Center. Each week,...
John Hertz: His Innovations Touch Millions but Few Know His Story
Sandor Herz was born in or near Vrutky, Austria-Hungary (now Slovakia) on April 10, 1879, the oldest of the six children of Jakob and Katie Herz. When he was three years old, the family emigrated to America, and by 1884, at the age of five, young Sandor (now...
Recipe for Success: The Campbell’s Story
In this week’s newsletter, we publish one of the best essays from our high school essay contest, by one of our honorable mention winners. This excellent history of the Campbell Soup Company was written by Diya Patel of Woodland Park, New Jersey. Diya...
Announcing Our Forthcoming Business History Book!
We are pleased to announce our first book, Bedtime Business Stories: Short Sagas of Business Creation, Success, and Failure. The book is our response to many reader requests for our articles in book form. It will be available for purchase next month, on Amazon...
The Greatest Businessman in American History: Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Many management scholars consider Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. as the greatest business leader in American history. If we exclude company founders, Sloan has few...
From Olympic Swimmer to Small Business Owner: The Tale of Calphin
American business and entrepreneurial energy extends to every industry. Many great businesses have been created by immigrants from around the globe. The excellent company history below, which won third prize in our Essay Contest for High School students,...
How to be Visionary: First Principles & Learning from History
Today I write a more personal note, which we don’t often do in these newsletters. My lifelong study of businesses, working in them and starting them, has led me to think about how one sees the future clearly. The many great business leaders we profile on...
A Family of Brands in a Family Business: The Story of National Safety Apparel
This week we proudly present another one of the top essays submitted by high school students. You can see that we had many great essays and picking the top ones was difficult. This essay won our second highest prize. Gary Hoover Executive Director...
Why Cars Don’t Have to be Black
Henry Ford was happy to sell you a Model T in any color you wanted, as long as it was black. Yet few know the real story of his exclusion of color, or how we came to have colorful automobiles. Ford Model T, first introduced in 1908 Today, cars come in every...
High School Essay Contest Winners and First Prize Essay: The Champion Bridge Story
We are very proud to announce the winners in our first annual Student Essay Contest, open to American residents eighteen or under who submitted a history of a local company. Thanks to our donors, we are able to give out $7500 in prizes, including a $3000 first...
Six Simple Steps to Building A Great Lasting Company
One of our key goals at the American Business History Center is to learn lessons from the successes and failures of the past. In most of our weekly articles, we leave it to our readers to draw their own lessons, although we occasionally touch on what can be...
U.S. States Population Animated Chart 1790-2020
This week we present another of our popular animated charts. In this one, we show the populations of the states of the United States from the Census, every ten years from 1790 through 2020. The list is long, including all fifty ultimate states. The data...
Uneeda Business History: the Nabisco Story
From its founding in 1898 at the height of the trust era, the National Biscuit Company quickly rose to become the largest of the big branded food companies. By the 1920s the company was far larger than such well-known companies as HJ Heinz, Campbell Soup,...
Gas Station Wars: Rockefeller to Dinosaurs to Tigers in Tanks
In the twentieth century, no industry created more giant American companies than the petroleum industry. In 1917, big oil represented six of the fifty largest American companies. By 1955, eleven oil companies made the top fifty industrial firms in Fortune...
The First Giant Restaurant Chain: Howard Johnson’s: Rise and Fall
In the 1950s and 1960s, Howard Johnson’s rose to become the largest American restaurant chain, the first giant in the industry. The company’s familiar orange roofs and steeples covered much of the U.S. highway system. “HoJo’s” was also a leader in the development of...
The American Bicycle Industry: A Short History
There are an estimated one billion bicycles in the world today, almost half of them in China and another one hundred million in the United States. About one hundred million new ones are manufactured each year, over half in China and many others in Taiwan, around...
Can Companies Re-invent Themselves? The Target Story
Much has been written about the idea of "reinventing" your company. However, in my 50+ years of studying big business, I have rarely seen it happen -- successfully. Here, from the treasure trove that is business history, one of the few cases of a great company which...
Kimberly-Clark: From Commodities to Powerhouse Brands
Early in the twentieth century, the Kimberly-Clark paper company pioneered “sanitary napkins” with their Kotex brand. Magazine publishers resisted running ads for the innovative but very private product and retailers hesitated to display Kotex. The company...
A Real Goldmine: The Homestake Story
For over 125 years, South Dakota’s Homestake Mine churned out ore loaded with gold and silver. Thousands of men worked the strike down to over a mile and a half below the earth’s surface, the deepest mine in the Western hemisphere as well as the American mine...
Six Very Short Stories about Business History
Today we republish an excerpt from the book I wrote twenty-one years ago, including some short but sweet diverse business history stories. The original has been slightly edited and we have added a few more pictures. (The complete book, expanded but only available as...
Gimbel Brothers Department Stores: Dust to Dust
The retailing industry is a continuous story of the rise and fall of companies. No enterprise stays on top forever in this highly competitive field that touches our lives every day. Today we look at a company, now long forgotten, named Gimbel...
Father of Modern Sales: The Remarkable Mr. Patterson
In our article on the three greatest companies in American history, we listed both General Motors and IBM. Neither of those companies would have been the great successes they were without the contributions of proteges of John Henry Patterson, though he did not...
Two Billion Passengers a Day: The Otis Story
On this 4th of July, it is appropriate to honor the long history of one of America’s great companies. Elisha Otis perfected the first commercially successful elevators, both for freight and passengers, before the Civil War. The organization he founded, the...
Fast Food Before Fast Food: The Original Food Trucks
In the nineteenth century, restaurants were patronized by the wealthy and by travelers (at stagecoach stops, inns, and on trains and in train stations). Most workers brought their lunch from home. Over time, especially in cities, diners had more options....
America’s Largest Airlines 1950-2019 in Two Animated Charts
The United States airline system, one of the technological and business wonders of the twentieth century, evolved in the 1920s and 1930s. With early subsidies from the Post Office for carrying mail, airplanes began connecting US cities. With successive air...
Two Books: The American West and Business History
July 9 is the deadline for our high school essay contest, with $7500 in prizes, including $3000 for the best essay. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! .... and, by the way, this is the 100th issue of our free weekly newsletter! Today we recommend two books for our fellow...
Gone with the Wind: Amazon Spends $8.45 Billion but Doesn’t Get the Best of M-G-M
In order to bolster their Amazon Prime Video streaming service, Amazon is buying the legendary M-G-M, probably the most famous of the great movie studios, for $8.45 billion. This will be the second biggest acquisition in Amazon’s history, exceeded only by its...
Ahmet Ertegun: America’s Greatest Music Man
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Ahmet Ertegun did as much as anyone to shape the popular music that serves as the soundtrack for our daily lives. As the founder and leader of Atlantic Records for almost sixty years,...
Business History on the Rise
On May 8, 2019, two years ago, four of us launched the American Business History Center. As enumerated below, we are pleased with the growth of our weekly newsletter and our website traffic (shown above). Your donations have helped us continue our work and will help...
Americans Vote with Their Feet
Last week, the Census Bureau published their annual estimates of population, as of July 1, 2020. Population trends underly all economic activity, so we study that data as soon as it is released. The fastest growing and shrinking cities and metropolitan areas...
Superwealth: A Historical Perspective
Few business subjects fascinate people as much as the very wealthy. Our obsession with celebrity goes back centuries but seems to have accelerated in recent decades. Forbes produced its first list of the richest Americans in 1982 and later started publishing it...
Success Lost & Found: Sherwin-Williams
While most big companies disappear over time (as shown in our recent newsletter), some figure out how to survive and prosper decade after decade, even century after century. But is the journey from founding to long-term durability a straight path? Today...
Big Rich, Big News, & A Short Book
Big Rich Forbes magazine just released their annual list of the richest people in the world, topped by Jeff Bezos at $177 billion and Elon Musk at $151 billion. Computer scientist and founder of the incubator Y Combinator Paul Graham has written an excellent...
Bye Bye, New York
One of the most significant shifts in American business over the last several decades has been the shrinking number of big corporations headquartered in New York City. At first, some moved “upstate” to the New York suburbs and to Connecticut. But more...
What Became of That Railroad?
On March 21, 2021, the Canadian Pacific Railroad announced that it was buying the Kansas City Southern Railroad for $25 billion. To understand the strategic and geographic implications of this very important business deal, we must first go back in time. ...
Giant Companies Rarely Survive
A careful study of this week’s list will show you the huge American industries which once dominated stock markets, employment, and community life, but which are not as important in the age of Amazon and Google. Our readers know we love lists. There are few other...
Retailing Trends 1992 through 2020
The $6.3 trillion US retailing industry has evolved continuously since the end of the Civil War, when the first chain grocery stores and first department stores began to develop. This chart, based on data from the US Census, shows how the different types of...
From Milk Duds to Samsonite: The Beatrice Foods Saga
In setting the stage for this story, I interject myself, because “I was there.” Setting the Stage The year is 1975. I am two years out of college, a junior securities analyst for institutional investor Citibank in New York. My veteran analyst boss Pete...
Business History Podcast and Video
Friends of Business History, I have been doing a lot of podcasts and interviews recently. I always make plenty of historical references. But when they are primarily about the present and future, I put them up on my other website, https://hooversworld.com/ and...
Student Essay Contest $3,000 First Prize
The American Business History Center is proud to introduce our first annual Business History Essay Contest for High School Students. This is a chance for students to learn about businesses and how they are built, that they are human ventures and have human stories and...
Upcoming Event on Sun March 7 at 9 PM EST
Tune in to the History Channel on Sunday, March 7, at 9 PM Eastern time, to see my appearance in their series The Food That Made America in an episode about “the Cola Wars.” I will see it at the same time you do, so I make no predictions about how nice I will look or...
Forgotten Business Giant: Charles M. Schwab
We are all familiar with the visionary entrepreneur Charles R. Schwab who pioneered the discount stock brokerage industry in the 1970s. But almost no one remembers the unrelated Charles M. Schwab, one of the most important business leaders in American history....
American Business History Center On the History Channel
We at the American Business History Center are delighted to announce that we will soon make our first appearance on national television! Last year, the producers of the History Channel series “The Food that Built America” approached us for research on several stories...
Tech Wars: RCA and the Television Industry
From the telegraph to the modern age, high technology has seen continuous innovation, followed by the rise of numerous competitors, then consolidation into fewer companies, and finally decline. Here is one of our favorite stories. The advent of television rivals...
What Became of My Stockbroker?
Few industries have seen as many acquisitions, mergers, and name changes as the American stock brokerage and investment banking industries. Perhaps only the equally old railroad industry has seen more such activity. These firms have been called wire houses...
Malcolm McLean: Unsung Innovator Who Changed the World
Written before we founded the American Business History Center, this post is more relevant than ever. In 1937, 24-year old Malcolm McLean (later changed to Malcom) delivered a load from the south to the New Jersey docks for export. He had been in the trucking business...
From Hero to Hated: America’s Most Tragic Entrepreneur
This article was first published on the Archbridge Institute website. Few business leaders or entrepreneurs in American history have done more to enable progress and prosperity than Samuel Insull, a name little known today. Yet eighty years ago, he was one of the most...
Office Machines, Forerunners of the Computer
Welcome to 2021! In 2020, our first full calendar year of operation, these American Business History newsletters have been read over 90,000 times. The number of pages viewed on our website rose from 1,500 per month at the beginning of 2020 to 4-5,000 a...
Two Entrepreneurs Who Helped Create Florida
Every state has a fascinating history, including the role of business and entrepreneurship. The swamp that was much of Florida did not develop until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two men, both named Henry, were perhaps the most important in that...
Venture Capital: A History
This post was originally published by Advisor Perspectives, http://www.advisorperspectives.com, under the title, “The History and Future of Venture Capital Investing,” on July 8, 2019. Is venture capital a good investment? For long periods in the past, the best VC...
Music for the Millions: The Wurlitzer Story
Rudolph Wurlitzer and his sons Howard and Farny Wurlitzer The Wurlitzer Company is one of the most interesting companies we have studied. At their peak, their slogan was “Music for the Millions.” Here is the story of this formerly great company, based on...
Giving Tuesday: Help Us Encourage the Next Generation
Today is Giving Tuesday, a national event to support non-profit organizations like ours. Many of America’s young people have had little or no exposure to free enterprise beyond buying things. High school students seldom know the real stories of...
Help Us Engage Young People!
It has never been a more important time to engage young people in the free enterprise system, for them to learn about businesses and how they are built, that they are human ventures and have human stories and attributes. Big businesses grow from small seeds. Even...
The Drugstore Shelf and the Stewardship of Brands
“Big pharma” and “biotech” are in the news these days. Politicians attack the industry and the price of drugs. At the same time, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and others hurry along to develop a COVID vaccine. These companies have been among the...
The Unsung 20th Century Technology That Disrupted an Industry
Business history is full of stories of “disruptors” and “disruption,” especially with regard to new technologies (as well as new ways of retailing, lodging, dining, transportation, journalism, and other fields). Many books have been written on innovation, how it...
Forgotten Giant: General Foods
For decades America’s largest food company, General Foods was one of the most highly regarded marketing companies in the world. Formed in the roaring twenties by consolidating companies that led the way in convenience foods, GF became an industry giant. ...
Billiards, Bowling, and Boating: 175 Years of Brunswick
A current buzzword is “pivoting,” which means changing your company’s strategy and direction, often into entirely new businesses. Pivots are frequent in young companies trying to find the best markets and a footing for future opportunities. Here we look at...
The Three Greatest American Companies of All Time
We wrote this five years ago, before the American Business History Center was founded, but we stand by our choices. For the last 52 years, I have been obsessed with understanding what makes a company great. What leads to success; what leads away. This led me to...
Three Fun Books on Business History
Some of us still have too much time alone and at home, so it is a good time to get some reading in. In a prior newsletter, we recommended Alfred Chandler’s Visible Hand as the single most important book to read on business history. Anyone who is literate about...
Battle of the Giant Watchmakers
Every industry tells a story of competition: the rise and fall of companies. Technological industries often see more “changing of the guard” than more stable businesses like food, soap, and beverages. One of the first high-tech industries in America...
The Biggest Companies in the World
Fifty-seven years ago, meatpacking giant Swift was the 15th largest public company in the world. Today that 15th spot is held by American health insurer UnitedHealth. Apple sits in the 12th position formerly held by Texaco, now part of Chevron. ...
What Became of My Bank?
No industry has seen more name changes and mergers and acquisitions than America’s banking industry. Many people don’t realize that BankAmerica, Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo – all among the ten largest banks thirty years ago – were each absorbed...
Business Stories 90 Years Ago
Fortune Magazine, the Wonder of the 1930s In February 1930, the greatest American magazine publisher, Harry Luce, produced the first issue of Fortune magazine. His seven-year-old Time magazine had become a huge success. Luce and his company then created...
What If These Planned Mergers Had Happened?
Mergers and acquisitions have been common throughout business history. Three major waves were particularly important: the building of the trusts, trying to dominate each industry, in the 1890s; another round of industry consolidations in the roaring 1920s; and...
Most Valuable Companies: The Last 25 Years
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. On Market Capitalization as a Measure of Size or Success Your history reporter has been studying big business for fifty-seven years (I started subscribing to Fortune magazine in 1963, when I was twelve years...
Walt Disney: Entrepreneur without Peer
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Preface: A Most Controversial Man In this story, we address the life and work of Walter Elias Disney, one of the most famous men in the world. Telling this story brings...
How Chattanooga Brought Coca-Cola to the World
Here is an unsung but key part of the long and illustrious history of Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most successful and well-known brands. Few realize the links between the company and the patent medicine (quack) products of the 19th century, which connect it to...
America’s Highest Profit Companies 1994-2019
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. This week we present another of our animated charts based on Fortune magazine’s annual lists of the 500 largest US public companies (based on revenues). This time, our focus is on the companies which made...
125 Free Downloadable Books on Business History!
At the American Business History Center, we continually seek new sources of information on business history. We have put a lot of links to other history websites on our links page. This week, we introduce our big selection of 125 free books in PDF form which you...
Big Companies Hiring (and Laying Off) Employees
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. This week we present another of our animated charts based on Fortune magazine’s annual lists of the 500 largest US public companies (based on revenues). This time, our focus is on the largest employers...
Milton Hershey: Chocolate King, Confectioner, and Creator
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Born in rural Pennsylvania in 1857, Milton Hershey attended seven different schools and never made it beyond the fourth grade. At fifteen, he found his passion in a...
Dinosaur Age: Charting Giant Companies 66 Years Ago
“Last week we brought you an unprecedented animated chart of the Fortune 500 list since 1994. Here we go back another 40 years, when steel companies and meatpackers were still giants. Taken together, you can learn a lot from 65 years of history.” Last...
25 Years of the Fortune 500 Animated Chart
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. The saga of American business in one chart! The fall of Enron, the rise of Apple and Amazon, the enduring legacy of John Rockefeller in Exxon and Chevron – see the years fly by! Below the two charts...
Beyond Wall Street: Great Family Businesses
America has hundreds of thousands of privately-held, family-owned businesses. Thousands of them are large. The list of the largest ones is topped by the hundred-billion-dollar grain and commodities dealer Cargill, the diversified Koch Industries, and candy...
Workingman’s Friend, Industry Disruptor: The Walter Chrysler Story
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. The year 1921 was one of the worst years in the history of the American automobile business. Many companies folded in a brief but severe post-war recession as prices dropped...
Who Makes Our Balls?
In these troubling times, it’s important to remember something called “fun.” Our weekly newsletters tend to cover big industries like retailing and automobiles. But we also find smaller, niche industries fascinating. Here is a look at who makes the balls used by...
Forgotten Empire Builders: Cleveland’s Van Sweringen Brothers
This week we present another very brief “bullet point biography.” A classic story of shattered dreams. At the American Business History Center, we focus our energies on those companies (and their founders and leaders) which became household names or large...
Forgotten Industrial Giant: The Allis-Chalmers Story
Our business history articles often focus on the consumer products and services industries with which we all interact – from auto companies to department stores. Yet it’s important not to forget the industrial companies that lie in the background, and make all...
Our Great Department Stores 40 Years Ago
Here is the article closest to my heart, which I had never intended to publish this soon, but once I got rolling on it, I could not stop.Gary Hoover Today, America’s great old department stores are under siege. The reasons for their decline are manifold,...
The Non-Profit Where the World Sleeps: Best Western
The lodging industry is one of the oldest industries on earth, and one of the most important. No one can do business, trade, spread ideas, practice diplomacy, explore the world, or migrate without temporary lodgings. From the lowliest hostel to the finest...
Required Reading for Those Who Want to Understand How We Got Where We Are
Although little-known outside academia and students of management, the late Alfred Chandler, Jr., was the greatest business historian we have yet seen. His Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1977 book The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business is the...
Baseball, Broadcasting, & Compact Cars: Forgotten Mr. Crosley
Over the last two years or so, we in conjunction with the Archbridge Institute have produced a series of “long-form” biographies of great entrepreneurs. Each of these runs five to seven thousand words and takes twenty to thirty minutes to read. In this...
Our Friend the Grocery Store: 40 Years of Change
In these difficult times, few companies are doing more for us than our food retailers. From aggressive steps by the largest food retailer in the world, Walmart, to advance planning by regional firms such as HEB in Texas, the nation’s grocers are continuing to...
Lessons from 21 Amazing American Originals
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Over the last two-and-one-half years, we at the American Business History Center, in conjunction with the Archbridge Institute, have written and published...
The Tortuous Saga of the First Wonder Drug: Aspirin
Ancient Remedies The Mesopotamian Ur III tablet, dating from about 3500 BC, mentions the willow tree (Salix in Latin) as a medicinal remedy. Centuries later, additional references are found in Egyptian papyrus documents. Throughout history, doctors in many...
And the Answers Are….
Last Friday we sent you a link to a business history crossword puzzle, which many of you visited. We promised the answers today, so here they are. If for any reason you missed the puzzle, you can still take it here and fill it out right in your browser. Or look at the...
Stuck at Home?
Like everyone else, we at the American Business History Center have no sports to watch, fewer restaurants to patronize, and even a shortage of exciting primary elections to follow. So what better time to entertain and educate ourselves through reading and...
For History Lovers: The Deep Roots of Business
Entrepreneurship and business are at the core of modern life. Both have given us many great innovations and improvements in life and prosperity. We at the American Business History Center understandably focus our efforts on the United States,...
The Ultimate Rags to Riches Story: Mary Pickford
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. On February 11, 1898, John Charles Smith of Toronto hit his head and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The Irishman left behind his wife, Charlotte; five-year-old...
The Short Story of How ABC TV Helped Create Disneyland
Here is a quick note on an interesting twist in American business history. In 1948, the federal government trustbusters decreed that the big movie studios should not own movie theaters. In the preceding twenty years, the studios had put together big theater...
A Century of Big Brands
We all grow up surrounded by brands. Being part of our daily lives, they often seem as if they have been around forever and will be around forever. Yet, like most everything else, brands have lifecycles. Only the lucky few survive for decade after...
The Little Soft Drink That Could: The Pepsi Story
Happy Valentine’s Day! Here is a sweet story of candy and soda pop, and of incredible persistence which overcame failure and controversy. Caleb Bradham In 1893, young Caleb Bradham bought the drugstore at the corner of Middle and Pollock Streets in New Bern,...
Proud Father of the Modern Airline System: CR Smith and American Airlines
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Few industries have had a greater impact on the world than our airline system. This global network was built over a period of forty years by a handful of leaders who...
The Tragic Story of the Fox in Fox Network and Fox News
Fox News and the Fox Network have become part of the daily lives of millions. Yet few know where the name “Fox” came from, other than the historic Twentieth Century-Fox Studios. That movie-making part of the Fox empire was recently sold by Rupert Murdoch...
Evolution: Hotel and Restaurant Companies Fifty Years Ago
Few industries are more fascinating than the “hospitality” industry, which includes lodging (hotels, motels, BnBs) and foodservice (restaurants, bars, stadium corporate and institutional foodservice). Going to a restaurant convention is one of the most exhilarating...
Same Town, Same Family: The Smucker Saga
In 1752, Amish/Mennonite farmer Christian Schmucker migrated from Switzerland to Pennsylvania. In 2016, his son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son, forty-six-year-old Mark Smucker, became Chief Executive of the J. M. Smucker Company of Orrville,...
New Beginnings in the Roaring Twenties
Here we go again – another decade of the “twenties” – hopefully these twenties roar in the good sense. This is a perfect time to look back at what was going on in business history one hundred years ago. 1920 was an important year in business history. ...
Living Architecture from a Dying Company
We have previously written about the rise of Sears, Roebuck to become the world’s greatest retailer. The company’s subsequent decline now fills the headlines and is apparent across America. Yet important vestiges, physical memorials, of the...
The Persistence of our Paths: From Native American Trails to Hyperloops
The routes travelled by explorers, immigrants, peddlers, and goods are a critical part of history. There would be no business or commercial history without the Silk Road or the great transoceanic shipping lanes. Here is a great story about the evolution of...
A Great New Book About the Future
As you know, I love books and live in a personal library of more than 57,000 of them. Only a few – say 2-300 of them – really capture my excitement and enthusiasm. Fewer, Richer, Greener by Larry Siegel is one of those books. It just...
The Data-Driven Visionary
In 1941, Fred Lazarus, Jr., had some time to kill in Houston. He had come to visit his son Ralph who was serving in the Army at nearby Ellington Field. Twelve years earlier, Lazarus and his family had united their family-owned Lazarus department...
Understanding How Tech Companies Work
Tech companies from Apple to Dell, from Adobe to Oracle, work each day to outsmart their competitors, to develop innovative products and services, and to best market and sell their products and services. No technology company in history has been more successful in...
Which Cities Are Americans Fleeing?
Click here to see the detailed chart or watch it here on youtube. Two weeks ago, we presented an animated chart showing the most popular American cities – the metropolitan areas which received the most domestic migrants in each year from 2010 through...
Where Americans are Leaving
Two weeks ago, we presented an animated chart showing the most popular American cities – the metropolitan areas which received the most domestic migrants in each year from 2010 through 2018. This week, we created an animated chart showing “the...
The Unsung Story of the Greatest Industrial Designer
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Outside of the field of product and transportation design, too few people know who Raymond Loewy was. The best-known industrial designer, founder of the industrial...
What are the Most Popular American Cities to Move To?
This week we present another of our animated charts. This one looks at which cities Americans have been moving to, from 2010 through 2018. Population growth is a key factor in business and where business takes place. Entrepreneurs and innovators often...
Whatever Became of International Harvester?
With this newsletter, we begin a periodic series, “Whatever Became of?” As students of business history, we learn much from both success and failure. About 80% of the largest companies of America in the mid-twentieth century are no longer with us. ...
Gail Borden: Texas Pioneer, Quirky Visionary
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute's American Original Series. Born in upstate New York in 1801, Gail Borden was raised there and in Kentucky and Indiana. As a young man, he moved to Mississippi and then Texas in search of the land...
High Speed Electric Rail Comes to Indiana – 122 Years Ago
I grew up in Anderson, Indiana, which played a special role in the development of America’s original high speed all-electric railroads, the interurbans. Here is a quick look at that story, which reflects one man’s obsession with a new technology, perhaps with...
American Boomtowns and Slowdowns
Dear Friends of History, Here at the American Business History Center, we usually focus on the long-term view, going back decades. But today, for a change of pace, we take a look at very recent history….the 2010’s. Here is one of our “bar race charts” created using...
Henry J. Kaiser: California Dreamer, Workers’ Friend
This article first appeared on June 24, 2019 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. Despite being often forgotten today, Henry J. Kaiser was one of the most unusual and diverse entrepreneurs in American history. Quitting school at...
24 years of Big Company Change
The rise, fall, and disappearance of America’s largest companies tells us much about business and our economy. Since 1955, Fortune magazine has published a list of the 500 largest U.S. companies, ranked by sales (revenues). Until 1995, this list only included...
A Forgotten Company, A Forgotten Human Story
Follow us on twitter @storyofbusiness. New and exciting content forthcoming! Dear business history friends, Recently, our American Business History Center added the "Share Your History" section to our website. Many of us have been part of, or witness to, a...
The Business History of Woodstock
Too often, when we see great entertainment or a great event, we forget that someone had to dream it up, organize it, and finance it. Fifty years ago this month, from August 15 through 18, 1969, the most famous music festival of all time took place in Bethel, New...
American Spending Patterns 1929 to 2018
This week, we present more of our animated “bar race charts” made with Flourish.studio, in which you can see how change takes place over time. We have produced two versions, one for close study that takes five minutes and a very fast one that you can watch in...
James J. Hill: Empire Builder Without Peer
This article first appeared on May 2, 2019 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. The American railroad system played a critical role in the growth and development of the United States, especially the opening of the western frontier. The...
Supermarket: One of the Most Important (and least known) American Inventions of All Time
This Sunday, August 4, is the 89th anniversary of a huge innovation with a global, lasting impact – the supermarket. On August 4, 1930, Michael Cullen opened his “huge” King Kullen store in the Jamaica section of Queens, New York City.While this date is...
We Want Your Stories!
Dear friends of business history,We need your stories and anecdotes about business to enhance our telling of history. What companies have you worked for? What was it like? Did you work on any innovations or observe changes in the company or industry?...
The Bookstop Story by co-founder Gary Hoover
I started collecting books by the time I was 8 years old, starting with a Rand McNally world atlas. I think it cost $1, and I still have it. My addiction has led me to live with my 57,000 books in an odd old commercial building in a small historic Texas...
History of Ibbotson Associates
Ibbotson Associates, an investment research and data firm that is now part of the financial data giant Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN; mid-2019 market cap $6 billion), was founded in 1977 by Roger Ibbotson, then a young University of Chicago professor. I was its...
The Indiana Glass Company in the 1960s and 1970s: The W.C. Hoover story
I really appreciate the history of the Indiana Glass Company provided by The Museum of Glass in West Virginia (and Tom Felt, Monograph #69) and Craig Schenning in his great book about Indiana Glass from Schiffer Publishing. As well as the folks at...
Covering Retailing on Wall Street at Citibank 1973-1975
I fell in love with retailing by the time I was 13. After studying economics in college at the University of Chicago, I wanted to become a securities analyst covering the retail industry on Wall Street (which of course means the industry, not necessarily on that...
Payless Shoe Source: History with the May Department Stores Company
With the final collapse of Payless Shoes in February 2019, I figured I better record a bit of their history as I know it. In my 5 years at May Department Stores’ corporate headquarters in St. Louis from 1977 to 1981, I evolved to become the "strategic planning" guy,...
The Rise and Fall of American Cities
History lovers, Today we present something a little different….an animated chart showing the rise and fall of American cities. If you play (or replay) the graphic linked here, you will see the rise and fall of the thirty most populous metropolitan areas in the...
70 Years of American Car History in Under a Minute (1896-1966)
Few industries have had more impact on American society (and workers) than the auto industry. The famous “Big Three” of General Motors (GM), Ford, and Chrysler evolved from hundreds of small carmakers, a pattern seen in many industries to this day. The...
United: The Little-Known History Behind Another Giant Merger
Last weekend, aerospace giant United Technologies announced that they were doing a “merger of equals” with fellow industry leader Raytheon. According to most estimates, this will create the second largest aerospace and defense company (after Boeing), leaping...
101 Years of Business Success and Survival
Join others around the country who have donated $9,000. Thank you! Donate today .Management and strategy thinkers continually try to understand what makes for success and failure. Why do some companies stand the test of time, while others disappear into the...
Jeep: The Little Brand That Could
Earlier this week, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (“FCA”), technically a Dutch Company, proposed a marriage with the seriously-French automaker Renault. Initial investor reaction to the marriage was strong. If the deal is approved by shareholders and...
An Organizational Idea That Might Help Your Enterprise – or Your University
There have been many great two-person leadership teams in the annals of business history. My favorite might be Walt and Roy Disney, two brothers who laid the foundation for one of the world’s greatest and most beneficial enterprises. Walt was the...
How Baking Powder Changed the World of Horse Racing and Auto Racing
Donate today and become a founding member of the American Business History Center. At the American Business History Center, we are always looking for ways to connect the present to the past. And hopefully learn some lessons along the way. May is a critical month...
Arthur G. Gaston: Entrepreneur Against All Odds
Originally published on ArchbridgeInstitute.org on October 29, 2018 This article first appeared on October 29, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. The grandson of slaves, Arthur George Gaston was born in 1892 in Demopolis, Alabama, to Rosie...
Built to Last — or not? Beware of what you read!
Originally published on Hooversworld.com on July 28, 2016 I was working on a newsletter about Melville Shoe, a retailer I covered as a securities analyst at Citibank in the mid-70s. It was a great company with some unique approaches to opportunity discovery,...
The Most Important Person in History Without a Wikipedia Page?
Originally published on Hooversworld.com on September 30, 2015 Now that’s an interesting question. I look forward to your candidates. I was recently stunned when I went to look up the fellow, whose story follows below, on Wikipedia, only to find no one had...
The Corporate Giant Whose History Almost Nobody Knows
Originally Published on Hooversworld.com on May 22, 2018 Who would have guessed that a medium-sized retailer which never put its name on a store would evolve to become the 7th largest company in America, a place where millions of Americans shop every day? My first job...
George Westinghouse: Servant Leader, Inventor, Captain of Industry
This article first appeared on February 27, 2019 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. His father owned a machine shop, but young George Westinghouse had no interest in doing what he was told. Obsessed with his own inventions and ideas, George...
Adolph Ochs—The Unsung Entrepreneur Who Transformed Journalism
This article first appeared on January 2, 2019 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. Along with five younger siblings, Adolph Ochs was raised in poverty in Knoxville, Tennessee, by his scholarly but financially unsuccessful father and...
Kirk Kerkorian: The Risk Taker Who Rose from Poverty to Change Las Vegas and Armenia
This article first appeared on December 14, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. One of the myths about great entrepreneurs is that they love risk and are big gamblers. In fact, they usually do everything they can to reduce risk and are...
Robert Brooker: Unsung Warrior in One of the Greatest Battles in Business
This article first appeared on October 11, 2017 on Hooversworld.com. "Far greater it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a...
Who is the Greatest Active American Entrepreneur?
This article first appeared on May 31, 2017 on Hooversworld.com. Who is the greatest active American Entrepreneur? My students usually suggest the names of the founders of the new generation of Internet companies, names that are continuously in the news. ...
1969 largest hotel chains
Here is a list of the largest US-based hotel chains in 1969, including the number of hotels and motels (“units”). Source: Institutions Magazine 400 1969 list. 1969 largest hotel chains (XLSX)
General Robert Wood: The Forgotten Man Who Changed Sears and the World
This article first appeared on August 22, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. Before there was Amazon, there was Sears, Roebuck, using the mail-order catalog where the Internet is used today. Before Walmart was the world’s...
Brand Man: The HJ Heinz Story
This article first appeared on July 5, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. It’s December 1875. Thirty-one-year-old Henry John “HJ” Heinz is bedridden the entire month with deep depression. On some days, he cannot even get out...
Jim Casey: The Unknown Entrepreneur Who Built The Great UPS
These days the news and chatter on the Internet are filled with stories of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. In this environment, it can be easy to forget or take for granted the other great enterprises that make the world go ’round.
Olive Ann Beech: Queen of the Aircraft Industry
This article first appeared on May 15, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. There are stories that take tragedy to unearth. When the world bears witness to great ability, new awareness changes the narrative of today and rewrites...
Conrad Hilton: The Dreamer Who Conquered an Industry
This article first appeared on April 24, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. Conrad Nicholson Hilton was born to wealth. His father, “Colonel” A. H. “Gus” Hilton, was the leading merchant and trader in the tiny sun-baked...
Estée Lauder: From One Woman’s Passion to Cosmetics Empire
This article first appeared on February 12, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. Today, the Estée Lauder Companies have become among the most important cosmetics companies in the world—against huge odds and well-established...
George Eastman: The Greatest Technology Entrepreneur in U.S. History?
This article first appeared on January 24, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. The technologies of today are built upon those of the past, and the superstars of our era would be nothing without the great leaders of the past....
J. C. Penney, the Man: A Life of Perpetual Sharing
This article first appeared on December 7, 2017 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. From inauspicious beginnings rose one of the great entrepreneurs in American history, a man with unusual dedication and exceptionally high ideals....
Madam C. J. Walker: The Ultimate Self-Made Woman
This article first appeared on October 31, 2017 in The Archbridge Institute's 'American Originals' series. Her Westchester County neighborhood was the home of Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Astors. Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller had assembled estates nearby....
The Outsider Whose Vision Changed the Way We See
This article first appeared on August 14, 2017 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. It was 1912. The wiry, soft-spoken, short (five-foot five-inch) immigrant with the thick Hungarian accent waited for hours to see the powerful Jeremiah...
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