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...Biggest American Employers 1994 2021
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 American Companies 1995-2022
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...
20 Highest Profits American Public Companies 1994 2021
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...
Fortune 500 25 Largest American Public Companies 1994 2021 Year by Year
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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. ...
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 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...
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
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...
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...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...Which Metro Areas are People Moving Out Of?
Most Popular Metro Areas to Move To 2010 2018
Largest US Companies Every 4 Years 1994-2018
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
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...
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...
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