Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1Éleuthère Irénée du PontÉleuthère Irénée du PontBorn 24 Jun 1771Du Pont had trained under the chemist Antoine Lavoisier at the French royal powder works, and his family left revolutionary France for the United States in 1800. Finding American gunpowder poor, he used that training, French machinery and family capital to open mills on Delaware's Brandywine Creek…0i
  2. 2Charles PfizerCharles PfizerBorn 22 Mar 1824Pfizer had apprenticed as a pharmacist in Ludwigsburg before emigrating to New York, and in 1849 he and his cousin Charles Erhart, a confectioner, opened a chemicals business in Brooklyn with a loan from Pfizer's father. Their first hit was a worm medicine made palatable with almond toffee,…0i
  3. 3Domingo GhirardelliDomingo GhirardelliBorn 21 Feb 1817Ghirardelli apprenticed with a confectioner in Italy, ran a sweet shop in Peru and followed the Gold Rush to California, where he set up as a chocolate maker in San Francisco in 1852. A fire and a bankruptcy along the way did not stop him; his sons expanded the firm, and its former factory on the…0i
  4. 4Levi StraussLevi StraussBorn 26 Feb 1829Strauss left Bavaria for New York, where his older half-brothers already ran a dry-goods business, and in 1853 opened a West Coast branch in San Francisco to supply Gold Rush shops. The riveted work trousers came from a Nevada tailor, Jacob Davis, who needed a partner to pay for the patent; Strauss…0i
  5. 5Henry E. SteinwayHenry E. SteinwayBorn 22 Feb 1797Heinrich Steinweg was already an experienced piano maker in Seesen, in Lower Saxony, when he emigrated to New York with most of his family in 1850 after the failed revolutions of 1848. He and his sons worked in other workshops before founding Steinway & Sons in 1853, and their patents, including…0i
  6. 6Adolphus BuschAdolphus BuschBorn 10 Jul 1839The second-youngest of twenty-two children of a prosperous German wine and brewing-supply merchant, Busch came to St. Louis in 1857 and sold brewing supplies before marrying the daughter of the brewer Eberhard Anheuser and joining his business. He pioneered pasteurising beer and shipping it in…0i
  7. 7Andrew CarnegieAndrew CarnegieBorn 25 Nov 1835Carnegie's family left Dunfermline for Pittsburgh in 1848, poor after his father's handloom weaving was undercut by mills. He started as a bobbin boy, became a telegraph messenger and then the protégé of a railroad boss, Thomas Scott, who gave him the inside track on investments. Carnegie Steel's…0i
  8. 8Friedrich WeyerhäuserFriedrich WeyerhäuserWeyerhäuser arrived from Hesse in 1852 at eighteen, worked in a brewery and then at a sawmill in Rock Island, Illinois, which he and his brother-in-law bought when it failed. Buying timberland rather than just milling logs was his big move, culminating in 1900 with the purchase of 900,000 acres…0i
  9. 9Michael MarksMichael MarksMarks was a Jewish refugee from the Russian Empire who arrived in north-east England in the early 1880s with little English. A Leeds wholesaler, Isaac Dewhirst, lent him five pounds of stock to peddle, and in 1884 he opened a market stall under the sign "Don't ask the price, it's a penny." Ten…0i
  10. 10Montague BurtonMontague BurtonBorn Meshe David Osinsky in Lithuania, Burton arrived in Britain as a teenager around 1900 and opened a menswear shop in Chesterfield on borrowed money. Settling in Leeds, he built the largest tailoring factory in Europe and a chain of shops selling made-to-measure suits at prices working men could…0i