A biography of the “Owens” in “Owens Corning”—a brilliant but humble inventor with nine companies and forty-nine patents bearing his name. He stands next to Thomas Edison in the pantheon of inventors. Commercial products stamped with his name are ubiquitous in modern life. His inventions are directly responsible for safety glass in car windshields and consistently proportioned medicine jars—and helped to significantly reduce child labor in America. His designs have changed the way we illuminate a dark room and buy pasteurized milk. Michael J. Owens has left an indelible mark in human history, yet his name often has been overlooked publicly, until now. Michael Owens was a driven but unassuming man who shunned the spotlight, wanting only to create. In this first biography of a visionary, artist, and craftsman, Quentin R. Skrabec’s research has uncovered a resourceful, colorful, and dynamic industrialist and inventor. This insightful account sets the stage for Owens by going back to the beginning—the history of glass as an art form. Today, his flourishing legacy includes Owens Corning, employing nearly twenty thousand people in over thirty countries.

The story of Toledo glass—past, present, and future

While other industries chase after the new and improved, bourbon makers celebrate traditions that hearken back to an authentic frontier craft. Distillers enshrine local history in their branding and time-tested recipes, and rightfully so. Kentucky's unique geography shaped the whiskeys its settlers produced, and for more than two centuries, distilling bourbon fundamentally altered every aspect of Kentucky's landscape and culture. Making Bourbon: A Geographical History of Distilling in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky illuminates how the specific geography, culture, and ecology of the Bluegrass converged and gave birth to Kentucky's favorite barrel-aged whiskey. Expanding on his fall 2019 release Bourbon's Backroads, Karl Raitz delivers a more nuanced discussion of bourbon's evolution by contrasting the fates of two distilleries in Scott and Nelson Counties. In the nineteenth century, distilling changed from an artisanal craft practiced by farmers and millers to a large-scale mechanized industry. The resulting infrastructure—farms, mills, turnpikes, railroads, steamboats, lumberyards, and cooperage shops—left its permanent mark on the land and traditions of the commonwealth. Today, multinational brands emphasize and even construct this local heritage. This unique interdisciplinary study uncovers the complex history poured into every glass of bourbon.

(From the Foreword) Graham-Paige Motors Corporation lives again in the pages of the The Graham Legacy: Graham-Paige to 1932. Michael E. Keller's factual account is based upon his thorough research, giving a clear picture of the formation and operations of this former Dearborn, Michigan, automaker. Keller addresses the myriad of Graham others' trucks, Paige, Graham-Paige and Graham automobile types and provides a full recounting of these vehicles' mechanical and styling details. In addition, the book incorporates the history of the three Graham brothers (Joseph, Robert and Ray) who rose from near anonymity to positions of prominence in such diverse fields as farming and glass manufacturing to the production of trucks and fine automobiles. This blending of historical, personal, business and technical aspects result in an informative and thoroughly interesting read.

American Know How in the Heart of It All Ohio was and remains tailor made for commerce, transportation, invention, and manufacturing. Located between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, it was perfect for canals, railways, and, ultimately, highways, which allowed coal, iron ore, and oil into industrial centers such as Cleveland, Dayton, Akron, Youngstown, and Cincinnati. These powerhouses fostered the ingenuity and practical inventiveness that made Ohio a mecca for manufacturing. Beyond heavy industry, the state also nurtured the growth of All-American goods and brands like Quaker Oats and Smucker's jellies and jams, Diamond matches and Sherwin Williams paints, the Etch-A-Sketch and Play-Doh, and many, many more. Author Conrade C. Hinds places a spotlight on dreamers and builders in the Buckeye State.

Scale and Scope is Alfred Chandler's first major work since his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Visible Hand. Representing ten years of research into the history of the managerial business system, this book concentrates on patterns of growth and competitiveness in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, tracing the evolution of large firms into multinational giants and orienting the late twentieth century's most important developments. This edition includes the entire hardcover edition with the exception of the Appendix Tables.

As editor Kenneth E. Hendrickson, III, notes in his introduction: “Since the end of the nineteenth-century, industrialization has become a global phenomenon. After the relative completion of the advanced industrial economies of the West after 1945, patterns of rapid economic change invaded societies beyond western Europe, North America, the Commonwealth, and Japan.” In The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History contributors survey the Industrial Revolution as a world historical phenomenon rather than through the traditional lens of a development largely restricted to Western society. The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History is a three-volume work of over 1,000 entries on the rise and spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world. Entries comprise accessible but scholarly explorations of topics from the “aerospace industry” to “zaibatsu.” Contributor articles not only address topics of technology and technical innovation but emphasize the individual human and social experience of industrialization. Entries include generous selections of biographical figures and human communities, with articles on entrepreneurs, working men and women, families, and organizations. They also cover legal developments, disasters, and the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution. Each entry also includes cross-references and a brief list of suggested readings to alert readers to more detailed information. The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History includes over 300 illustrations, as well as artfully selected, extended quotations from key primary sources, from Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principal of Population” to Arthur Young’s look at Birmingham, England in 1791. This work is the perfect reference work for anyone conducting research in the areas of technology, business, economics, and history on a world historical scale.

Conservative journalist Malkin provides an eclectic journey of American capitalism, from the colonial period to the Industrial Age to the present, spotlighting little-known "tinkerpreneurs" who achieved their dreams of doing well by doing good. Learn how Paul Revere became America's first tech titan, how famous patent holders Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain championed the nation's unique system of intellectual property rights, and more.

Edward Drummond Libbey was a glassmaker, industrialist, artist, innovator and art collector. Both practical and creative, he forever changed the glass industry with the automatic bottle-making machine and automatic sheet glass machine. This work examines the long career of Libbey, particularly his innovation of American flint cut glass, his contributions to the middle-class American table through affordable glassware, and his enormous art glass and painting collections, which eventually formed the basis for the Toledo Museum of Art's collection. Libbey single-handedly revolutionized glassmaking, a craft which had gone virtually unchanged for 2000 years.