Peter Studebaker, his brother, their wives and a cousin arrived in America from Germany in 1736. Industrious, they began making farm equipment, then wagons and Army wagons. The families burgeoned and so did the business – Studebaker became the largest wagon manufacturer in the world. They advanced to making fancy horse-drawn carriages. In the 1850s,…
Category: Industry
The Year was 1974
“Mr. Oklahoma,” they called him. Robert S. Kerr of the Kerr-McGee Corporation, born in a log cabin in Indian Territory in 1896, became wealthy through oil and other investments and rose to be governor of Oklahoma, and then senator. Through it all, a devout Baptist, he taught a Sunday school class. But Bob Kerr was…
The Year was 1913
“They’re ruining the country. People are obsessed. They can’t get to work on time.” Or at all! They were spending their time in libraries. What was the evil? Crossword puzzles! The idea began in England but it was in the United States where the idea took off. The first crossword puzzle appeared just before Christmas,…
The Year was 1902
Will there be any little Sweetheart candy hearts for Valentine’s Day this year? No! The first Valentine candy heart with a saying was made by two brothers, Oliver and Silas Chase. They invented and patented a candy-making machine and were in business in 1847. One of them made a new machine that would stamp sayings…
The Year was 2018
A lot of companies are receiving huge tax breaks. Apple – $100 billion Cisco – $25 billion Wells Fargo – $22.6 billion Pepsi – $15 billion* Many more are receiving $10 million or less. What are they doing with this money? The lion’s share will go to stock buybacks and dividends to stockholders. A very…
The Year was 2017
Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, is a cinematic success. But there have been real life wonder women throughout our history. Some were samurai. Tomoe Gozen (c.1157-1247) became an excellent archer and sword handler. In one battle, she threw herself upon an enemy leader and decapitated him. “Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka [Minamoto] sent…
The year was 1884
What did the richest man in the world go to great lengths (pun intended) to hide? John D. Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire, had not been a happy kid. The problem was his father, William, a wandering snake oil salesman and scam artist, who had two wives (plus a couple of kids by a mistress)….
The year was 1903
Langley insisted his contraption was “capable of flight.” Not that it could fly. It couldn’t. Langley wasn’t just anybody. He was Samuel Pierpont Langley, blue blood, Harvard graduate, astronomer. Determined to be first with a manned flying machine, Langley built two ¼-scale models that seemed to succeed. But were they flying? Or were they being…
The year was 1988
“Never trust anybody.” This is what the tobacco mogul drilled into his little daughter’s head. Too bad Doris forgot it. Doris was the adored only child of James Duke. She lived in the kind of luxury that money could buy before there was an income tax, Her father lived in constant fear that Doris might…
The year was 1888
In 1871, Berthe Ringer, 22, was so impressed with her fiancé Karl’s business that she invested her own money and became a partner. A year later, when she married Karl, she lost her status – a wife could not legally own or invest in a business in Germany. Still, Berthe worked side-by-side with Karl for…