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Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 in Scotland to a poor weaver who brought his family to America in 1848. By the time he was eighteen he was working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the private secretary to a railroad official named Thomas Alexander Scott. -
In 1865 Carnegie left the railroad and started his own company making railroad bridges from iron. Eight years later he started his first steel mill.
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In 1911, he gave a gift of $125 million to establish the Carnegie Corporation of America which provides funding to institutions and organizations that conduct research on education and public affairs.