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 the...
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
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 the highest dollar profits, from 1994 through 2019. You can...
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...
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...Support Us
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