Men who built America

Sam Walton

• Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton was an American businessman and entrepreneur born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma best known for founding the retailers Walmart and Sam's Club

Sam Walton

• Sam Walton was born to Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. There, he lived with his parents on their farm until 1923. Sam's father decided farming did not generate enough income on which to raise a family, so he decided to go back to a previous profession of a mortgage man. He and his family (now with another son, James, born in 1921) moved from Oklahoma to Orlando, Florida. There they moved from one small town to another for several years. While attending eighth grade in Shelbina, Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in the state's history. In adult life, Walton became a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Eventually the family landed in Columbia, Missouri.

Sam Walton

• In 1945, after leaving the military, Walton took over management of his first variety store at the age of 26. With the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus $5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. The store was a franchise of the Butler Brothers chain.

• It was here that Walton pioneered many concepts that became crucial to his success. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods. His second store, the tiny "Eagle" department store, was down the street from his first Ben Franklin and next door to its main (Newport) competitor. Walton leased the space mainly to preempt his competitor from expanding. It held its own, but didn't fare as well

Howard Hughes

• Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, film maker and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world.

Howard Hughes

• Hughes' birthplace is recorded as either Humble or Houston, Texas. The date is also uncertain, though Hughes claimed his birthday was Christmas Eve. A 1941 affidavit birth certificate of Hughes signed by his aunt Annette Gano Lummis and Estelle Boughton Sharp states he was born on December 24, 1905, in Harris County, Texas. However, his baptismal record of October 7, 1906, in the parish register of St. John's Episcopal Church, in Keokuk, Iowa, has his birth listed as September 24, 1905, without reference to the place of birth

Howard Hughes

Aviation1938 flight around the world

Hughes was a lifelong aircraft enthusiast and pilot. At Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, he learned to fly from pioneer aviators, including Moye Stephens. He set many world records and commissioned the construction of custom aircraft to be built for himself while heading Hughes Aircraft at the airport in Glendale. Operating from there, the most technologically important aircraft he commissioned was the Hughes H-1 Racer. On September 13, 1935, Hughes, flying the H-1, set the landplane airspeed record of 352 mph (566 km/h) over his test course near Santa Ana, California (Giuseppe Motta reached 362 mph in 1929 and George Stainforth reached 407.5 mph in 1931, both in seaplanes). A year and a half later, on January 19, 1937, flying the same H-1 Racer fitted with longer wings, Hughes set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to Newark in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes). His average ground speed over the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h).

Milton Hershey

• Milton Snavely Hershey was an American confectioner, philanthropist, and founder of The Hershey Chocolate Company and the "company town" of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Milton Hershey

• Milton Hershey was born on September 13, 1857, to Veronica "Fanny" Snavely and Henry Hershey. His family were members of Pennsylvania's Mennonite community. Being a youngster in rural Pennsylvania, there was work to be done. Like many rural young people of the time, Milton was expected to help out on the family farm, and he learned early on of the value of hard work and perseverance.

Milton Hershey

• With the proceeds from the 1900 sale of the Lancaster Caramel Company, Hershey initially acquired some 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) of farm land about 30 miles northwest of Lancaster, near his birthplace of Derry Church. There, he could obtain the large supplies of fresh milk needed to perfect and produce fine milk chocolate. Excited by the potential of milk chocolate, which at that time was a Swiss luxury product, Hershey was determined to develop a formula for milk chocolate and market and sell it to the American public. Through trial and error, he created his own formula for milk chocolate. The first Hershey's Bar was enjoyed in 1900. Hershey's Kisses were developed in 1907, and the Hershey's Bar with almonds was introduced in 1908.

William Harley

• William Sylvester Harley was a co-founder of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1880, and received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1907.

William Harley

• He co-founded Harley-Davidson with Arthur Davidson (motorcycling) in 1903 and served as chief engineer until his death in 1943.Harley was the son of a Littleport, Cambridgeshire man who emigrated to the United

William Harley

• Because Harley, Arthur Davidson, William A. Davidson, and Walter Davidson, "used and believed in its products and relied on the dedication of its employees to produce quality motorcycles", the four men were inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame

Nikola Tesla

• Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electrical supply system.

Nikola Tesla

• Tesla started working in the telephony and electrical fields before immigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories/companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop an alternating current system. Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs which included patented devices and theoretical work used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

Nikola Tesla

• In 1898, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug for internal combustion gasoline engines. He was awarded U.S. Patent 609,250, "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", for this mechanical ignition system. Tesla invented an electro-mechanical oscillator—Tesla's oscillator—a steam-powered mechanical oscillator. At his Houston Street lab, while experimenting with mechanical oscillators, Tesla allegedly generated a resonance of several buildings, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew, it is said that the machine oscillated at the resonance frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to use a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the police arrived. In February 1912, an article—“Nikola Tesla, Dreamer” by Allan L. Benson—was published in World Today, in which an artist's illustration appears showing the entire earth cracking in half with the caption, “Tesla claims that in a few weeks he could set the earth's crust into such a state of vibration that it would rise and fall hundreds of feet and practically destroy civilization. A continuation of this process would, he says, eventually split the earth in two.”