(p. 78) The tens of thousands of dollars Carnegie earned in the four years he held the Columbia Oil stock were quickly reinvested in other projects.
Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)
(p. 65) Later in life, Scott would be better known for his political skills, but he was, like his mentor Thomson, a master of cost accounting. Together, the two men steadily cut unit costs and increased revenues by investing in capital improvements–new and larger locomotives, better braking systems, improved tracks, new bridges. Instead of running several smaller trains along the same route, they ran fewer but longer trains with larger locomotives and freight cars. To minimize delays–a major factor in escalating costs–they erected their own telegraph lines, built a second track and extended sidings alongside the first one, and kept roadways, tunnels, bridges, and crossings in good repair.
Carnegie watched, listened, learned. Nothing was lost on the young man. With an exceptional memory and a head for figures, he made the most of his apprenticeship and within a brief time was acting more as Scott’s deputy than his assistant. Tom Scott had proven to be so good at his job that when Pennsylvania Railroad vice president William Foster died unexpectedly of an infected carbuncle, Scott was named his successor.
Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)
Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.
(p. A13) Until now there has been no full-scale, modern company history. Joshua D. Wolff’s “Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893” ably fills the bill, offering an exhaustive and yet fascinating account.
. . .
If people today remember anything about Western Union, it is that its coast-to-coast line put the Pony Express out of business and that its leaders didn’t see the telephone coming. Mr. Wolff tells us that neither claim is exactly true. It was Hiram Sibley, Western Union’s first president, who went out on his own, when his board balked, to form a separate company and build the transcontinental telegraph in 1861; he made his fortune by eventually selling it to Western Union. And the company was very aware of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, patented in 1876, but history had supposedly shown that it wasn’t necessary to control a patent to win the technology war. The company’s third president, William Orton, was sure that Bell and his “toy” would not get the better of Western Union: “We would come along and take it away from him.” They didn’t.
. . .
Mr. Wolff contends that the company’s practices set the template for today’s “corporate triumphalism,” not least in the way Western Union bullied the makers of public policy into serving private capital. Perhaps, but telecom competition today is so ferocious and differently arranged from that of the late 19th century that a “triumphant” company today may be toast tomorrow–think of BlackBerry–and can’t purchase help with anything like Western’s Union’s brazenness and scope. Western Union had friends in Congress, the regulatory bureaucracy and the press. Members of the company’s board of directors chaired both the 1872 Republican and Democratic national conventions. It seemed that, whatever the battles in business, politics, technology or the courts, the company’s shareholders won.
For the full review, see:
STUART FERGUSON. “Bookshelf; The Octopus of the Wires.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Dec. 23, 2013): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 22, 2013, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893,’ by Joshua D. Wolff.”)
Book under review:
Wolff, Joshua D. Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
The embed above is provided by YouTube where the video clip is posted under the title “Balaji Srinivasan at Startup School 2013.”
(p. B4) At a startup conference in the San Francisco Bay area last month, a brash and brilliant young entrepreneur named Balaji Srinivasan took the stage to lay out a case for Silicon Valley’s independence.
According to Mr. Srinivasan, who co-founded a successful genetics startup and is now a popular lecturer at Stanford University, the tech industry is under siege from Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood, which he says he believes are harboring resentment toward Silicon Valley’s efforts to usurp their cultural and economic power.
On its surface, Mr. Srinivasan’s talk,called “Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit,”sounded like a battle cry of the libertarian, anti-regulatory sensibility long espoused by some of the tech industry’s leading thinkers. After arguing that the rest of the country wants to put a stop to the Valley’s rise, Mr. Srinivasan floated a plan for techies to build an “opt-in society, outside the U.S., run by technology.”
His idea seemed a more expansive version of Google Chief Executive Larry Page’s call for setting aside “a piece of the world” to try out controversial new technologies, and investor Peter Thiel’s “Seastead” movement, which aims to launch tech-utopian island nations.
For the full commentary, see:
FARHAD MANJOO. “HIGH DEFINITION; The Valley’s Ugly Complex.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 4, 2013): B4.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 3, 2013, and has the title “HIGH DEFINITION; Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem.”)
(p. 37) The first telegraph line had been completed . . . , in 1844, when Samuel F. B. Morse, with $30,000 in federal funding, connected Washington to Baltimore. Morse and his partners had expected to get funding to build additional lines from the federal government, but their experience securing their first $30,000 had been so debilitating that they gave up entirely on the public sector and turned to private capital to fund their new telegraph lines. Henry O’Rielly secured the franchise and agreed to raise the capital to string telegraph poles from east to west. His plan was to extend one line from Buffalo to Chicago, the other across the Alleghenies from Philadelphia through Pittsburgh, to St. Louis, and then north to Chicago, and south to New Orleans.
Although customers were scarce and the first telegraph lines were continually breaking (or being broken by bands of boys who took great joy in throwing stones at the glass insulators that glistened in the sunlight), O’Rielly and the handful of entrepreneurs who believed in the future of telegraphy raised sufficient capital to extend their lines mile by mile. By late 1846, they had also connected Boston to Washington, via New York City and Philadelphia; New York City to Buffalo, through Albany; and in late December, Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, via Lancaster and Harrisburg.
Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)
“Kathy Laclair of Churubusco, N.Y., dislikes the noise from the wind turbine blades and says their shadows give her vertigo.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. A1) Lured by state subsidies and buoyed by high oil prices, the wind industry has arrived in force in upstate New York, promising to bring jobs, tax revenue and cutting-edge energy to the long-struggling region. But in town after town, some residents say, the companies have delivered something else: an epidemic of corruption and intimidation, as they rush to acquire enough land to make the wind farms a reality.
“It really is renewable energy gone wrong,” said the Franklin County district attorney, Derek P. Champagne, who began a criminal inquiry into the Burke Town Board last spring and was quickly inundated with complaints from all over the state about the (p. A16) wind companies.
. . .
. . . corruption is a major concern. In at least 12 counties, Mr. Champagne said, evidence has surfaced about possible conflicts of interest or improper influence.
In Prattsburgh, N.Y., a Finger Lakes community, the town supervisor cast the deciding vote allowing private land to be condemned to make way for a wind farm there, even after acknowledging that he had accepted real estate commissions on at least one land deal involving the farm’s developer.
A town official in Bellmont, near Burke, took a job with a wind company after helping shepherd through a zoning law to permit and regulate the towers, according to local residents. And in Brandon, N.Y., nearby, the town supervisor told Mr. Champagne that after a meeting during which he proposed a moratorium on wind towers, he had been invited to pick up a gift from the back seat of a wind company representative’s car.
When the supervisor, Michael R. Lawrence, looked inside, according to his complaint to Mr. Champagne, he saw two company polo shirts and a leather pouch that he suspected contained cash.
When Mr. Lawrence asked whether the pouch was part of the gift, the representative replied, “That’s up to you,” according to the complaint.
For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS CONFESSORE. “In Rural New York, Windmills Can Bring Whiff of Corruption.” The New York Times (Mon., August 18, 2008): A1 & A16.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date August 17, 2008.)
“To some upstate towns, wind power promises prosperity. Others fear noise, spoiled views and the corrupting of local officials.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.
Source of book image:
http://i1.wp.com/allthingsd.com/files/2013/10/Stone_EverythingStore1.jpg
(p. C5) Mr. Stone, a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and a former reporter for The New York Times, tells this story of disruptive innovation with authority and verve, and lots of well-informed reporting. Although “The Everything Store” retraces early ground covered by Robert Spector’s 2000 book, “Amazon.com: Get Big Fast,” Mr. Stone has conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former Amazon executives and employees, including conversations, over the years, with Mr. Bezos, who “in the end was supportive of this project even though he judged that it was ‘too early’ for a reflective look” at the company.
“The Everything Store” does not examine in detail the fallout that Amazon’s rise has had on book publishing and on independent bookstores, but Mr. Stone does a nimble job of situating the company’s evolution within the wider retail landscape and within the technological revolution that was remaking the world at the turn of the millennium.
For the full review, see:
MICHIKO KAKUTANI. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Selling as Hard as He Can.” The New York Times (Tues., October 29, 2013.): C1 & C5.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 28, 2013.)
The book under review is:
Stone, Brad. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.
“Brad Stone” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited above.
“OFF ROAD; Kits to take the Model T places Henry Ford never intended included tractor conversions, . . . ” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. 1) WHEN Henry Ford started to manufacture his groundbreaking Model T on Sept. 27, 1908, he probably never imagined that the spindly little car would remain in production for 19 years. Nor could Ford have foreseen that his company would eventually build more than 15 million Tin Lizzies, making him a billionaire while putting the world on wheels.
But nearly as significant as the Model T’s ubiquity was its knack for performing tasks far beyond basic transportation. As quickly as customers left the dealers’ lot, they began transforming their Ts to suit their specialized needs, assisted by scores of new companies that sprang up to cater exclusively to the world’s most popular car.
Following the Model T’s skyrocketing success came mail-order catalogs and magazine advertisements filled with parts and kits to turn the humble Fords into farm tractors, mobile sawmills, snowmobiles, racy roadsters and even semi-trucks. Indeed, historians credit the Model T — which Ford first advertised as The Universal Car — with launching today’s multibillion-dollar automotive aftermarket industry.
For the full story, see:
LINDSAY BROOKE. “Mr. Ford’s T: Mobility With Versatility.” The New York Times, Automobiles Section (Sun., July 20, 2008): 1 & 14.
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Mr. Ford’s T: Versatile Mobility.”)
“The whale-oil lamps at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum are obsolete, though at one time, whale oil lighted much of the Western world.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. 20) Like oil, particularly in its early days, whaling spawned dazzling fortunes, depending on the brute labor of tens of thousands of men doing dirty, sweaty, dangerous work. Like oil, it began with the prizes closest to home and then found itself exploring every corner of the globe. And like oil, whaling at its peak seemed impregnable, its product so far superior to its trifling rivals, like smelly lard oil or volatile camphene, that whaling interests mocked their competitors.
“Great noise is made by many of the newspapers and thousands of the traders in the country about lard oil, chemical oil, camphene oil, and a half-dozen other luminous humbugs,” The Nantucket Inquirer snorted derisively in 1843. It went on: “But let not our envious and — in view of the lard oil mania — we had well nigh said, hog-gish opponents, indulge themselves in any such dreams.”
But, in fact, whaling was already just about done, said Eric Jay Dolin, who . . . is the author of “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America.” Whales near North America were becoming scarce, and the birth of the American petroleum industry in 1859 in Titusville, Pa., allowed kerosene to supplant whale oil before the electric light replaced both of them and oil found other uses.
. . .
Mr. Dolin said the message for today was that one era’s irreplaceable energy source could be the next one’s relic. Like whaling, he said, big oil is ripe to be replaced by something newer, cleaner, more appropriate for its moment.
For the full story, see:
PETER APPLEBOME. “OUR TOWNS; Once They Thought Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 3, 2008): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title, “OUR TOWNS; They Used to Say Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too.”)
Dolin’s book is:
Dolin, Eric Jay. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
The conclusions of Gupta and Wang, quoted below, are consistent with research done many years ago by economist Edwin Mansfield.
(p. A15) China’s indigenous innovation program, launched in 2006, has alarmed the world’s technology giants more than any other policy measure since the start of economic reforms in 1978. A recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce even went so far as to call this program “a blueprint for technology theft on a scale the world has not seen before.”
. . .
A comparison with India is illustrative. India has no equivalent to indigenous innovation rules. The government also is content to allow companies to set up R&D facilities without any rules about sharing technology with local partners or the like.
These policy differences appear to have a significant influence on corporate behavior. Consider the top 10 U.S.-based technology giants that received the most patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) between 2006 and 2010: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Micron, GE, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Broadcom and Honeywell.
Half of these companies appear not to be doing any significant R&D work in China. Between 2006 and 2010, the U.S. PTO did not award a single patent to any China-based units of five out of the 10 companies. In contrast, only one of the 10 did not receive a patent for an innovation developed in India.
For the full commentary, see:
Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang. “How Beijing Is Stifling Chinese Innovation.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., September 1, 2011): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the title “Beijing Is Stifling Chinese Innovation.”)
Mansfield’s relevant paper is:
Mansfield, Edwin. “Unauthorized Use of Intellectual Property: Effects on Investment, Technology Transfer, and Innovation.” In Global Dimensions of Intellectual Property Rights in Science and Technology, edited by M. E. Mogee M. B. Wallerstein, and R. A. Schoen. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993, pp. 107-45.
Mansfield’s research on this issue is discussed on pp. 1611-1612 of:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. “Edwin Mansfield’s Contributions to the Economics of Technology.” Research Policy 32, no. 9 (Oct. 2003): 1607-17.
Even just the plausible possibility of a government veto of an acquisition, can stop the acquisition from happening. The feds thereby kill efficiency and innovation enhancing reconfigurations of assets and business units.
(p. 234) . . . , an opportunity arose that Google’s leaders felt compelled to consider: Skype was available. It was a onetime chance to grab hundreds of millions of Internet voice customers, merging them with Google Voice to create an instant powerhouse. Wesley Chan believed that this was a bad move. Skype relied on a technology called peer to peer, which moved information cheaply and quickly through a decentralized network that emerged through the connections of users. But Google didn’t need that system because it had its own efficient infrastruc-(p. 235)ture. In addition, there was a question whether eBay, the owner of Skype, had claim to all the patents to the underlying technology, so it was unclear what rights Google would have as it tried to embellish and improve the peer-to-peer protocols. Finally, before Google could take possession, the U.S. government might stall the deal for months, maybe even two years, before approving it. “We would have paid all this money, but the value would go away and then we’d be stuck with a piece of shit,” says Chan.
Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
