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Elisha Otis
Elisha Graves Otis was an American industrialist, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, and inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails. -
Joel Tiffany
During the years preceding the Civil War, Tiffany achieved prominence as an outspoken advocate of abolition, culminating in his book, A Treatise on the Unconstitutionality of American Slavery, published in 1849. -
Christopher Sholes
Christopher Latham Sholes was an American inventor who invented the first practical typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard still in use today. He was also a newspaper publisher and Wisconsin politician. -
Andrew canegi
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century -
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb -
Ottmar Mergenthaler
Ottmar Mergenthaler was a German-born inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of the Linotype machine, the first device that could easily and quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing presses. -
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and popularized the use of roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream -
Macy's
Macy's, originally R. H. Macy & Co., is a mid-range to upscale chain of department stores owned by American multinational corporation Macy's, Inc. It is one of two divisions owned by the company, with the other being the upscale Bloomingdale's. -
F.W. Woolworth
When on book tour in the US, one of the questions I’m most frequently asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” I usually respond with something along the lines of, “Since the last Woolworths closed I’ve been forced to rely on epiphanies.” If that doesn’t raise at least the hint of a smile somewhere in the audience, I’m not discouraged. Eternal optimist that I am, I take it to mean the assembly is from a generation unfamiliar with institutions once the backbone of American life, and not as an -
Gustavis Swift
Chicago's slaughterhouses were machines, however, but machines of a new type: machines made up almost entirely of human parts. Bourget was fascinated by the businessmen who built this, and other American mass production machines. To him, they were the real makers of America, capitalist conquistadors who had had tamed the continent and built new western cities, like Chicago, in one generation, "a feat," he said, "that would never again be repeated." -
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone -
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. -
social Darwinism
The application of Darwinism to the study of human society, specifically a theory in sociology that individuals or groups achieve advantage over others as the result of genetic or biological superiority.