Emil Skoda was one of the engineers who laid the foundations for the prosperity of heavy industry in the Czech lands in the early twentieth century. He was born, the son of a physician who was active in [...] the army, and heavy guns for the navy. The capacity of the works was greatly increased during the First World War after which it was purchased by Schneider et Cie from Le Creusot. In 1924 the company took

Carl Zeiss, by origin a maker of lenses, was one of the leaders of the photographic industry in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the successors to the company he founded [...] Weimar, studied at the university of Jena, and in 1846 let up a workshop where he made lenses, at first for microscopes and then for cameras. He won a prize at the Thuringia Industrial Exhibition in 1861

Ruskin Hall (now Ruskin College), Oxford, in 1900. While on military service in India during the First World War he learned Sanskrit. He was employed at the railway works, principally as a hammerman, between [...] between 1892 and 1914, when ill-health caused him to seek outdoor employment as a market gardener. His first significant publication, Songs of Wiltshire, appeared in 1902, and A Wiltshire Village, ten years [...] district in which I find myself’, but, unusually, he was also interested in describing large-scale industry. His Life in Railway Factory, published in 1915, provides a vivid record of a management regime

cannon. De Wendel was responsible for the construction of the Fonderie Royale at Le Creusot, the first stage of which included four blast furnaces, and 24 km of iron railway. The last stages of the journey [...] received ?8000 in compensation. William Wilkinson never became a commanding figure in the British iron industry, but his role in transmitting new technologies to France was of great importance.

industrialist 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 [...] take over his father’s grain-trading company. In 1883, he and his brother Berthold established the first canning factory in Hungary with large buildings on Lövölde Square. It produced canned meat under the [...] Two years later he opened a textile factory at Ružomberok (now in Slovakia). By 1890, the arms industry was the most important branch of Weiss’s activities. He opened a subsidiary in Berlin to produce

patronage of Queen Charlotte, and exported to America and the Caribbean. In 1770 he fulfilled the first of many orders for the Empress Catherine of Europe, and in 1771-2 sent a succession of parcels of [...] production, and his flair for marketing were his contributions to the development of the ceramics industry. He was active in the promotion of turnpike roads, and of canals, particularly prominent of the

Enskilda bank after his father’s death. He was also a politician and Swedish foreign minister during the First World War. His half-brother was Markus Laurentius Wallenberg (1864-1943) , who trained in law and [...] Diesel, Saab and Ericsson. The Wallenberg family continues to be closely involved in finance and industry – currently the sixth generation.

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 - to [...] Nicolás María de Urgoiti y Achúcarro was a leader of the Spanish paper manufacturing industry who became an important figure in publishing. After beginning as an engineer he merged several paper mills [...] Europe examining new practices. In 1901 he designed a merger to reduce competition and strengthen the industry. Eleven factories united in a new company, La Papelera Española, which produced 68% of Spanish paper

The pharmaceutical industry is often considered to be concerned primarily with drugs that combat disease, but it also encompasses skin care products, as well as bandages and plasters that intended for [...] establishing a co-operation agreement with Lehn & Fink in the United States in 1892 and opening his first overseas branch in London in 1906, but continuing to work from a manufacturing base in Hamburg. He [...] From 1909 Troplowitz produced a lap balm called Labello in 1909, which two years later became the first product of its kind to be marketed in a squeezable tube. Originally the tubes were made of tin, then

August Thyssen was one of the principal entrepreneurs in the iron and steel industry of the Ruhrgebiet, whose influence spread throughout Europe. He was born in the mining town of Eschweiler near Aachen [...] large gas engines. He acquired coal and iron ore mines to supply the company’s furnaces, and when the First World War broke out had interests in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and South America

the cotton industry in Britain and then helped to establish mechanised textile industries in two regions – the city of Hamburg and lower Austria. He grew up on a farm in Yorkshire. His first job was with [...] Karl Glave-Kobielski, who was also an industrial spy in England. As a result, Thornton built the first water-powered cotton factories in Austria – at Hernals and Pottendorf near Vienna. Investment came

In eighteenth-century Portugal, Guilherme (originally William) Stephens developed the glass industry and gained a national monopoly, with his brother João Diogo (originally John James, 1747–1826). Stephens [...] over the failed royal glass works at Marinha Grande, north of Lisbon. The works had been established first at Coina south of Lisbon in 1719 and was relocated to Marinha Grande in around 1747 by the Irish [...] leading centre for glassmaking in Portugal. The mansion Palácio Stephens is a museum of the glass industry.

Ernest Solvay’s innovations transformed the chemical industry throughout Europe, and were the starting point for a company involved in a wide range of industrial activities that is important in many countries [...] chloride. The sodium bicarbonate is precipitated, and heated to produce soda ash. Solvay set up his first commercial plant at Cuillet near Charleroi in 1863, the same year in which he founded Solvay et Cie

Gösta Serlachius was one of the leading Finnish entrepreneurs of the first half of the 20th century, an important figure in politics and military affairs, and a connoisseur of the arts whose collections [...] a leading role in the establishment of national organisations representing the interests of the industry. He was active in the White Army during the Finnish Civil War of 1918, and was sent to Britain in

which became the dominant method for reproducing images in the printing industry from the early nineteenth century. It was the first radical development in printing since the invention of moveable type.

factory built in 1907 that processed the by-products of the company’s coking plant for the chemical industry. Despite his father’s protests, he encourages the technical development of a smelting furnace for [...] 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 scrapped industrial plants in the occupied parts [...] sführer" (heads of war economy) and becomes part of the top-level management of the German arms industry by his appointment as chairman of the Reich Iron Association (RVE). For the production of gun barrels

with the young inventor James Watt and helped him to build his first operational steam engine. Roebuck owned a two-thirds share of Watt’s first patent, dated 1769. This might have made him extremely wealthy [...] confidently applied new methods on a large scale. It was fuelled by coal when almost all of the iron industry still relied on charcoal and it was unique in being built with multiple blast furnaces from the

printing books several pages at a time. Soon after the first Fourdrinier machine was installed in France in 1811, Nicholas-Louis Robert left the paper industry. He instead established a small elementary school [...] The French inventor Nicholas-Louis Robert created the first continuous paper machine to begin the industrialisation of paper manufacturing. He received little credit for his ideas and the machine was developed [...] lly as the ‘Fourdrinier’. It was used widely, bringing about the industrialisation of the paper industry. Productivity increased dramatically and paper could be made to almost any practical size, including

studying minerals. He drew the first geological map of Bohemia. By 1824 he began consulting for governments and entrepreneurs. He was influential in the revival of the iron industry at Erzberg, west of Graz [...] Rudolph Ironworks at Ostrava, financed by Archbishop Rudolf of Olomouc, with the first coke-fired blast furnaces and first puddling furnaces in the Habsburg monarchy. This later became the Vitkovice steelworks [...] steelworks. Riepl showed exceptional insight into the potential for railways. In 1829 he proposed the first modern railway of the Habsburg monarchy in the visionary form of a complete network of 2,200 km from

Quijano was one of the pioneers of the steel industry in the Cantabria region of the north of Spain in the late-nineteenth century. He was the founder of the nail and wire making business Forjas de Buelna [...] steelworks. José María Quijano Fernández-Hontoria was a lawyer by training and practiced law for the first part of his career. He was born at Corrales de Buelna. His father was a lawyer at Torrelavega but [...] He also began a career in politics when he was elected as a provincial deputy. His interest in industry began at the age of 30 when he went to the Universal Exhibition in Paris with his uncle, the mining