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...20 Most Valuable Fortune 500 Companies 1995-2020
Most Valuable Companies: The Last 25 Years
An updated 2023 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...Fortune 500 20 Most Profitable Companies 1994 to 2019
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...Largest Fortune 500 Employers 1994 Through 2019
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...Dinosaur Age: Charting Giant Companies 66 Years Ago
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...Largest US Companies 1994-2019 Animated Chart
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,...1979 Department Store Database
Click here to download the excel file.
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...
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