100 Most Significant Events in American Business

Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr., PhD, is professor of business and operations management at the University of Findlay, OH.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPrivatization of the Plymouth Colony (1623)Navigation Acts (1651)Wealth of Nations (1776)Patent and Copyright Statutes (1790)"Report on Manufacturing" (1791)Whiskey Rebellion (1794)Jefferson Embargo (1807)First Steamboat to New Orleans (1811)National Road (1811)Erie Canal (1825)Tariff of Abominations (1828)Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (1828)Whig Party Evolves (1834)Panic of 1837Automated Sewing Machine (1846)Revolution, Famine, and Immigration (1848)Clipper Ships (1849)Western Union Telegraph Company (1851)Great Exhibition of 1851Transatlantic Cable (1857)Panic of 1857Overland Travel and Mail Service (1859)Abraham Lincoln Establishes Protectionism (1860)World's Largest Cannon/Civil War Technology (1864)Transcontinental Railroad Completed (1869)Westinghouse Air Brake (1869)Panic of 1873Andrew Carnegie's First Steel Mill (1875)Centennial Exposition (1876)First Commercial Telephone (1877)Great Railroad Strike of 1877World's First Skyscraper (1884)War of the Currents (1885)Sears Mail Order Business (1886)Haymarket Riot (1886)ALCOA Aluminum Formed (1888)McKinley Tariff of 1890Homestead Strike of 1892Panic of 1893Chicago World's Fair (1893)Pullman Strike (1894)Niagara Falls Power Plant (1896)Paternal Capitalism—Homestead and Wilmerding, Pennsylvania (1896)First Electric Sign (Product Branding and Advertising)—H. J. Heinz (1900)First Billion-Dollar Corporation—United States Steel (1901)Henry Ford Wins Race of the Century (1901)Owens Automated Glass Bottle–Making Machine (1904)Upton Sinclair's Jungle (1905)Panic of 1907Highland Park Ford Assembly Line (1910)Scientific Management (1911)Standard Oil Antitrust Lawsuit (1911)Income Tax (1913)Federal Reserve Act (1913)Commercial Flight (1914)Panama Canal Opens (1914)General Motors Corporation Formed (1916)Great Steel Strike of 1919First Commercial Radio (1921)Hawthorne Studies Begin (1924)Talking Movies—The Jazz Singer (1927)Stock Market Crash/Great Depression (1929)Hoover Dam (1931)National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) (1935)Social Security Act (1935)Television at the 1939 World's FairMaslow's Theory of Needs (1946)General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (1947)First Credit Card (1950)UNIVAC I (1951)Shippingport Atomic Power Station (1956)Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956First Mass-Produced Transistor Radio (1957)First Japanese Auto Sold in the United States (1958)Steel Strike of 1959America Targets the Moon (1961)McDonald's Launches Golden Arches (1962)Telstar Communications Satellites (1962)First Wal-Mart (and Kmart) Open (1962)IBM 360 Computer (1964)Unsafe at Any Speed (1965)ARPAnet (Earliest Internet) Formed (1969)Wage and Price Controls (1971)Arab Oil Embargo (1973)First Customer Scan of a Bar Code (1974)The Year of the PC (1977)Three Mile Island Nuclear Failure (1979)IBM Personal Computer (1982)FCC Approves Advanced Mobile Phone System (1G) (1982)Deindustrialization of America—General Tire Akron Closes (1982)CD-ROM (1985)Savings and Loan Crisis (1986)W. Edwards Deming Publishes Out of the Crisis (1986)(1994)Bill Gates Internet Memo (1995)Google Incorporated (1998)First 3G Networks and the Smartphone (2003)RFID at Wal-Mart (2005)Banking Crisis and Great Recession (2008)General Motors Bankruptcy (2009)Appendix: Primary DocumentsBibliographyIndex

This volume will be of interest to just as wide a variety of libraries and patrons; public libraries, community colleges and other two-year programs, as well as universities and other larger institutions. The entries in this encyclopedia provide a starting point for each of the included events, but taken as a whole, they also paint a picture of business history.