service, Deutsche Luftschiffahrts – the world’s first airline – began in 1910 and by 1914 it had carried nearly 40,000 people on 1,600 flights. In the First World War around 100 Zeppelins were used in aerial [...] the American Civil War. In Minnesota he met the German-born balloonist John Steiner and made an aerial ascent in a tethered hot-air balloon. Having taking part in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the [...] Zeppelin developed and manufactured the most successful rigid airships of all time and created the world’s first air-transportation business. His original ‘Zeppelin’ was launched in 1900 and his airships

Britain, Russia, Spain and Italy. During the First World War, his factories supplied cartridges, shells and canned meat and coffee. With the end of the war, the factory contracted from 30,000 to only 400 [...] ist in several sectors during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time of the First World War he employed some 30,000 people, principally in manufacturing armaments. Weiss came from a family

substantial landowner but both he and his companies suffered severe losses in the years after the First World War, and he did not live to see the subsequent prosperity of Czech industry. [...] banking, having been a founder of the Wiener Bankverein (Vienna union of banks) in 1869. He made a world tour in 1898 to promote the Empire’s exports and was subsequently knighted. He was also a substantial

especially after racial laws were passed in 1937. He was imprisoned at the outbreak of the Second World War and many of his industrial interests were confiscated. In 1942, the Altonescu regime freed him in [...] death in absentia for supporting an unsuccessful anti-fascist coup in 1944. He returned after the war but the new communist regime revoked his citizenship and his Romanian properties were nationalised

Second World War when, as a Jew, his share in the rights for Chanel No 5, reverted to her, but he regained them after 1945. She had a ten-year affair with the British aristocrat Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke [...] with her workforce, who were all summarily dismissed on the outbreak of war in 1939 when she decided to close her shops. During the war she collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, who made use of her many c

Juhlke was one of many millions of East Europeans whose lives were changed utterly by the Second World War. He was born at Tuchola near Bydgoszcz in Poland, the son of a farmer, and expected to train as

bridges. He was the only son of George Stephenson and his wife Frances, who died when Robert was aged 2. After elementary school, he attended Bruce’s Academy in Newcastle upon Tyne and was made a member of [...] 1829. He continued to make innovations at Robert Stephenson & Company, which was recognised as the world’s first locomotive works and grew to employ 1,500 people. After helping his father with the civil

drug antipyrin from 1895 and the sugar substitute saccharine from 1899. During and after the First World War, it advanced its international business due to the isolation of German manufacturers who were its [...] Basel in Switzerland is one of the world’s centres of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Edouard Sandoz created one of the leading companies in the sector in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

machine-tools to manufacture it. The typewriter went into production in 1911. During the First World War, the company made aeronautic equipment. After it, Olivetti brought out the M20 typewriter and opened [...] century for high-quality typewriters and calculating machines found in offices and homes around the world. Camillo Olivetti was an electrical engineer in northern Italy who began the company and designed [...] remained a leader in typewriters, calculators and computers and is still a global brand. Ivrea is a World Heritage site, where both the Laboratory-Museum and the Olivetti Historical Archive present Olivetti’s

cotton and linen and later printing wallpaper. As early as 1764 his factory covered an area of nearly 2 ha and ten years later it employed 900 people. He developed mechanization and integrated production [...] brother Frédéric with a canvas-printing factory, also in Corbeil. The disruption of the Napoleonic Wars caused a decline in business and the invasion by Russian and Prussian forces in 1815 resulted in the [...] the factory closing. Oberkampf died soon afterwards. His son Émile restarted it after the war. The printing works continued until 1843 and the spinning and weaving factory until 1894. The name Oberkampf

cultural causes. The Weifert businesses were inherited by his nephew and nationalised after the Second World War. He is commemorated by his portrait on Serbian banknotes.

campaigned for shared distribution, a trade association and high import duties. During the First World War, the industry was highly profitable. At this time Urgoiti developed his interests in publishing [...] with depression. In 1932 he moved to a sanatorium in Switzerland where he remained during the Civil War. 'El Sol' was closed by the Franco government in 1939. His last years were devoted to a medical institute

into the Sota y Aznar company with some 25 steamships. Many of these were torpedoed in the First World War while leased to the British government but the contract was highly profitable and de la Sota was [...] politics as a Basque nationalist and was elected to the Spanish Cortes. At the outbreak of the Civil War he arranged for his ships to evacuate people from Bilbao. The fascists ordered him to leave the country

Charlottenburg and Spandau. The works museum, founded in 1922, moved with the company after the Second World War to Munich, where company archives can be studied at the Werner von Siemens Institute of Siemens

his knowledge to Łodz in Poland. The factory he built there in 1855 was one of the biggest in the world, covering 168 hectares. The population of Łodz as an industrial city grew from 18,000 in 1851 to 100 [...] in the city of Łodz. By 1870, his company was the largest of its kind in Poland and employed nearly 2,000 people. He continued to acquire other businesses and converted them all into a joint stock company

seaplane accident. Giovanni Agnelli did military service in Russia and North Africa during the Second World War after which Fiat was managed by Vittorio Valletta (1883-1957). He inherited control of Fiat and

were responsible for innovations that profoundly changed the nature of ironmaking throughout the world. Abraham Darby I (1678-1717) The first Abraham Darby was born to a Quaker family near Dudley, and [...] and fountains, appear first to have been made in iron at a foundry in Berlin during the Napoleonic Wars, and were subsequently made in Belgium, Sweden and elsewhere. Abraham Darby IV was principally important

at the same time, raises his profile as a fierce advocate of German national interests. During World War I he provides the electric steel for the first German steel helmet and produces shells made from [...] memorandum under the heading "Thoughts on the Preparation for the War and Its Implementation", is one of 15 German "Wehrwirtschaftsführer" (heads of war economy) and becomes part of the top-level management of [...] thousands of civilians deported from Russia and Ukraine as well as French, Italian and Soviet prisoners of war. Whoever violates the strict rules of his rigid ‘work discipline’ is transferred to a prison camp run

Hans-Ulrich Schaffgotsch and continued to manage the Godulla enterprises. Under communism after World War Two the estates were confiscated. Godulla was forgotten and his mansion was demolished. More recently [...] Ballestrem’s new Carl zinc smelter at Ruda, which he expanded to become one of the largest in the world. Count von Ballestrem rewarded Godulla with shares in the works. The income from this enabled him [...] to be used in galvanising in around 1840. Upper Silesia and Godulla’s mines and smelters dominated world production. He was known as the ‘king of zinc’. When he died Godulla owned numerous zinc mines, coal

became Maybach-Motorenbau. However, airship production was forbidden in Germany after the First World War and Maybach turned instead to the manufacture of luxury limousines from 1921. When he died in 1929