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Automobile and Aviation
Note :
For the time being only the first part of this chapter, about
America's automobile tycoons is
featured here The second part treating about American aviation
pioneers who rose to big
wealth will be added at a later stage.
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The Selden Patent - case of a failed monopoly (coming soon)
The Ford Story
Part I : The rise of Henry Ford
Part II : Edsel Ford and his children - an automotive dynasty
(coming later)
General Motors
William Crapo Durant - the founder of General
Motors
The GM Crowd -
multi-millionaire executives (coming later)
Other automobile tycoons (coming later) :
The
Dodge Brothers and their legacy
Walter Percy Chrysler - founder of the Big Third
John
North Willys' empire
The
Studebakers : from wagon makers to automobile manufacturers
Packard
- rise and fall of an automotive institution
CharlesW. Nash - successful independent
The
Chapins - from Hudson to American Motors
Errett
Lobbean Cord - latecomer among the founders
From the Encyclopedia of American Wealth
Thematic
list : Automobile Tycoons
(1919)
Family
profiles : Dodge
- Fisher - Ford |
If
one technology had to be singled out to mark the beginning of the
Twentieth Century and the ensuing modern American Way of Life, it
would be the automobile. No invention of that time brought more
change to mankind, and America, with its long distances and wide
open spaces was more eager to adopt it than any other nation in the
world. Cars, as horseless carriages first a curiosity, became an
essential factor in the development of our nation, both in relation
to consumption and as the powerful industry they created.
The
automobile was a key factor of social emancipation, as it permitted
the individual (farmer, small businessman and common consumer) to
by-pass the highways of commerce, which at turn of the 20th century
were controlled by an oligarchy of railroad and steamship magnates.
Together with increased government regulation, the popularization of
the automobile (cars and trucks) ended the predominance of the large
railroad trusts in America (and elsewhere) and contributed to the
establishment of a new social order : the emergence of the Middle
Class.
This
development was not that obvious in the beginnings though. Although
the first steam carriage appeared in America as early as 1861 (built
by Sylvester H. Roper in Roxbury, Massachusetts), it would take
another thirty years until functional electric (William Morrison's)
or gasoline (Frank Duryea's) carriages appeared on America's
streets. The establishment of an actual automotive industry, as an
offspring of the wagon and carriage manufacturing business, came
with the Duryea Motor Wagon Company (of Springfield, Massachusetts)
in 1895, the first in America to be organized with the purpose of
manufacturing gasoline powered cars.
Automobile & Aviation
> Index
and Introduction
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