PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: manufacturing
American industrialist
Henry Ford, American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. (Read Henry Ford’s 1926 Britannica essay on mass production.) Ford spent most of his life making...
French chemist
Antoine Lavoisier, prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored the...
American businessman
Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is...
British social reformer
Robert Owen, Welsh manufacturer turned reformer, one of the most influential early 19th-century advocates of utopian socialism. His New Lanark mills in Lanarkshire, Scotland, with their social and industrial...
American industrialist and inventor
George M. Pullman, American industrialist and inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, a luxurious railroad coach designed for overnight travel. In 1894 workers at his Pullman’s Palace Car Company initiated...
Swedish inventor
Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other more powerful explosives and who also founded the Nobel Prizes. Alfred Nobel was the fourth son of Immanuel and...
Scottish inventor
James Watt, Scottish instrument maker and inventor whose steam engine contributed substantially to the Industrial Revolution. Watt was also known for patenting the double-acting engine and an early steam...
naturalized American engineer
Igor Sikorsky, pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. Sikorsky’s father was a physician and professor of psychology. His mother also was a physician...
American industrialist
Walter P. Chrysler, American engineer and automobile manufacturer, founder of Chrysler Corporation. (Read Lee Iacocca’s Britannica entry on Chrysler.) Chrysler was the third of four children of Henry (“Hank”)...
American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer
Howard Hughes, American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer and director who acquired enormous wealth and celebrity from his various ventures but was perhaps better known for his eccentricities,...
American engineer
James B. Eads, American engineer best known for his triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Mo. (1874). Another project provided a year-round navigation channel for New Orleans...
American industrialist and philanthropist
Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the most important philanthropists of his...
American inventor and manufacturer
Eli Whitney, American inventor, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer, best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin but most important for developing the concept of mass production of interchangeable...
American inventor
Oliver Evans, American inventor who pioneered the high-pressure steam engine (U.S. patent, 1790) and created the first continuous production line (1784). Evans was apprenticed to a wheelwright at the age...
American computer programmer, businessman, and philanthropist
Bill Gates, American computer programmer and entrepreneur who cofounded Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal-computer software company. Gates wrote his first software program at the age...
American industrialist and inventor
Cyrus McCormick, American industrialist and inventor who is generally credited with the development (from 1831) of the mechanical reaper. McCormick was the eldest son of Robert McCormick—a farmer, blacksmith,...
English clockmaker
Thomas Tompion, English maker of clocks, watches, and scientific instruments who was a pioneer of improvements in timekeeping mechanisms that set new standards for the quality of their workmanship. Nothing...
American businesswoman
Olive Ann Beech, American business executive who served first as secretary-treasurer (1932–50) and then as president (1950–68) and chairman of the board (1950–82) of Beech Aircraft Corporation, a major...
Japanese businessman
Morita Akio, Japanese businessman who was cofounder, chief executive officer (from 1971), and chairman of the board (from 1976 through 1994) of Sony Corporation, world-renowned manufacturer of consumer...
British cabinetmaker
Thomas Chippendale, one of the leading cabinetmakers of 18th-century England and one of the most perplexing figures in the history of furniture. His name is synonymous with the Anglicized Rococo style....
British inventor
Sir William Siemens, German-born English engineer and inventor, important in the development of the steel and telegraph industries. After private tutoring, Siemens was sent to a commercial school at Lübeck...
American engineer
John Augustus Roebling, German-born American civil engineer, a pioneer in the design of suspension bridges. His best-known work is the Brooklyn Bridge of New York City, which was completed under the direction...
British inventor
George Stephenson, English engineer and principal inventor of the railroad locomotive. Stephenson was the son of a mechanic who operated a Newcomen atmospheric-steam engine that was used to pump out a...
South Korean businessman
Kim Woo Choong, Korean businessman and founder of the Daewoo Group. Kim’s actions leading up to Daewoo’s eventual bankruptcy led to his fleeing the country and to his eventual prosecution on fraud charges....
American engineer and entrepreneur
Gordon Moore, American engineer and cofounder, with Robert Noyce, of Intel Corporation. Moore studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley (B.S., 1950), and in 1954 he received a Ph.D. in...
American businesswoman and philanthropist
Estée Lauder, American businesswoman who cofounded (1946) Estée Lauder, Inc., a large fragrance and cosmetics company. She learned her first marketing lessons as a child in her father’s hardware store:...
American industrialist
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., American corporate executive and philanthropist who headed General Motors (GM) as president and chairman for more than a quarter of a century. The son of a coffee and tea importer,...
English furniture designer
Thomas Sheraton, English cabinetmaker and one of the leading exponents of Neoclassicism. Sheraton gave his name to a style of furniture characterized by a feminine refinement of late Georgian styles and...
Indian businessman
Azim Premji, Indian business entrepreneur who served as chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as a world leader in the software industry....
American inventor and manufacturer
Peter Cooper, American inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist who built the “Tom Thumb” locomotive and founded The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York City. Son of a Revolutionary...
Soviet aircraft designer
Andrey Nikolayevich Tupolev, one of the Soviet Union’s foremost aircraft designers, whose bureau (see Tupolev) produced a number of military bombers and civilian airliners—including the world’s first supersonic...
Scottish artist
James Tassie, Scottish gem engraver and modeler known for reproductions of engraved gems and for portrait medallions (round or oval tablets bearing figures), both made from a hard, fine-textured substance...
American businesswoman
Jill E. Barad, American chief executive officer (CEO) of the toy manufacturer Mattel, Inc., from 1997 to 2000, who at the turn of the 21st century was one of a very small number of female CEOs. Barad received...
American engineer
Glenn Hammond Curtiss, pioneer aviator and leading American manufacturer of aircraft by the time of the United States’s entry into World War I. Curtiss began his career in the bicycle business, earning...
French-British engineer
Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, French-émigré engineer and inventor who solved the historic problem of underwater tunneling. In 1793, after six years in the French navy, Brunel returned to France, which was...
European cabinetmaker
David Roentgen, cabinetmaker to Queen Marie-Antoinette of France; under his direction the family workshop at Neuwied (near Cologne), founded by his father, Abraham Roentgen, became perhaps the most-successful...
American inventor and manufacturer
Samuel Colt, American firearms inventor, manufacturer, and entrepreneur who popularized the revolver. As a teenaged seaman, Colt carved a wooden model of a revolving cylinder mechanism, and he later perfected...
German industrialist
Alfred Krupp, German industrialist noted for his development and worldwide sale of cast-steel cannon and other armaments. Under his direction the Krupp Works began the manufacture of ordnance (c. 1847)....
German diplomat and industrialist
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, German diplomat who married the heiress of the Krupp family of industrialists, Bertha Krupp, and took over operation of the family firm. At the time of their wedding,...
Chinese-born entrepreneur
Morris Chang, Chinese-born engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who founded (1987) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a leading maker of computer chips. Chang originally wanted to...
German industrialist
Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, German industrialist, last member of the Krupp dynasty of munitions manufacturers. Alfried Krupp was the son of Bertha Krupp, the heiress of the Krupp industrial empire,...
American inventor, entrepreneur, and manufacturer
George Eastman, American entrepreneur and inventor whose introduction of the first Kodak camera helped to promote amateur photography on a large scale. After his education in the public schools of Rochester,...
German electrical engineer
Werner von Siemens, German electrical engineer who played an important role in the development of the telegraph industry. After attending grammar school at Lübeck, Siemens joined the Prussian artillery...
American engineer
William Hewlett, American engineer and businessman who cofounded the electronics and computer corporation Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Hewlett’s interest in science and electronics started when he was...
French cabinetmaker
Charles Cressent, French cabinetmaker, whose works are among the most renowned pieces of French furniture ever made. Grandson of a cabinetmaker of the same name and son of the sculptor François Cressent,...
Japanese businessman
Idei Nobuyuki, Japanese business executive who served as chairman (2000–05) and CEO (1999–2005) of Japanese electronics giant Sony Corporation. Idei earned an undergraduate degree in political science...
American businesswoman
Patricia Russo, American businesswoman who served as CEO of Lucent Technologies (later called Alcatel-Lucent) from 2002 to 2008. Russo had six siblings. She was active in sports and captained the cheerleading...
French jeweler
René Lalique, French jeweler and glass designer during the early 20th century whose creations contributed significantly to the Art Nouveau movement at the turn of the century. Lalique was trained at the...
French aviation pioneer
Gabriel Voisin, French aviation pioneer and aircraft manufacturer. Voisin was one of the most colorful figures in the early history of aviation. Trained as an architect and inspired by the work of the...
American furniture designer
Duncan Phyfe, Scottish-born American furniture designer, a leading exponent of the Neoclassical style, sometimes considered the greatest of all American cabinetmakers. The Fife family went to the United...