“Men who Built America”

3rd hour Kaleb Simmons

andNeenu Thomas

Howard Hughes

• Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business tycoon, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, inventor, filmmaker and philanthropist. During his lifetime, he was one of the wealthiest people in the world.• He produced and directed movies in the '30s. He had a playboy

lifestyle and love of aviation. After a plane accident in 1946, he became reclusive.• He inherited his family's successful oil tool business and began

investing in films

• After a terrible plane crash in 1946, Hughes began to retreat from the world. He bought part of RKO Pictures in 1948, but he never visited the studio. In the 1960s, he lived on the top floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada, and conducted all of his business from his hotel suite. Few people ever saw him, which led to much public speculation and rumors about his activities. It was thought that he suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and had a drug problem. Hughes eventually left Las Vegas and began living abroad.• Hughes died on April 5, 1976. After his death, numerous fake versions

of his will surfaced, leading to a battle over his fortune. In 2004, Hughes' life returned to the spotlight with the feature film The Aviator, which depicted his early days. • His legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical

Institute.

John D. Rockefeller

• John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist. Born into modest circumstances in upstate New York, he entered the then-fledgling oil business in 1863 by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio, refinery. In 1870, he established Standard Oil, which by the early 1880s controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. • In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court found Standard Oil in violation of

anti-trust laws and ordered it to dissolve. During his life Rockefeller donated more than $500 million to various philanthropic causes.

• In 1865, Rockefeller borrowed money to buy out some of his partners and

take control of the refinery, which had become the largest in Cleveland. Over the next few years, he acquired new partners and expanded his business interests in the growing oil industry. At the time, kerosene, derived from petroleum and used in lamps, was becoming an economic staple. In 1870, Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, along with his younger brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913) and a group of other men. John Rockefeller was its president and largest shareholder.• Rockefeller’s enormous wealth and success made him a target of muckraking

journalists, reform politicians and others who viewed him as a symbol of corporate greed and criticized the methods with which he’d built his empire. As The New York Times reported in 1937: “He was accused of crushing out competition, getting rich on rebates from railroads, bribing men to spy on competing companies, of making secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Standard Oil Company under threat of being forced out of business, building up enormous fortunes on the ruins of other men, and so on.”

Henry Ford

• Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.• Henry Ford was responsible for transforming the automobile from an

invention of unknown utility into an innovation that profoundly shaped the 20th century and continues to affect our lives today.• Ford could have followed in his father’s footsteps and become a farmer. But

young Henry was fascinated by machines and was willing to take risks to pursue that fascination. In 1879 he left the farm to become an apprentice at the Michigan Car Company, a manufacturer of railroad cars in Detroit. Over the next two-and-one-half years he held several similar jobs, sometimes moving when he thought he could learn more somewhere else.

• In 1927 he reluctantly shut down the Model T assembly lines and

began designing an all new car. It appeared in December of 1927 and was such a departure from the old Ford that the company went back to the beginning of the alphabet for a name—they called it the Model A.• When World War II began in 1939 Ford, who always hated war, fought

to keep the United States from taking sides. But after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Ford Motor Company became one of the major US military contractors, supplying airplanes, engines, jeeps and tanks.• The influence of the aging Henry Ford, however, was declining. Edsel

Ford died in 1943 and two year later Henry officially turned over control of the company to Henry II, Edsel’s son. Henry I retired to Fair Lane, his estate in Dearborn, where he died on April 7, 1947 at age 83.

Steve Jobs

• Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak. Under Jobs' guidance, the company pioneered a series of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone and iPad.• Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24,

1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits before starting Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak in 1976.

. Bill Gates

Mark Zuckerberg

Milton Hershey

Adolphus Busch

John Deere

William Harley

Fred Smith

Donald Trump

Ben Franklin

Thomas Edison

Nikola Tesla