Harvey Samuel Firestone
Harvey Samuel Firestone (born December 20, 1868 in Columbiana (Ohio) , † February 7, 1938 in Miami Beach ) was an American entrepreneur, founder of the tire manufacturer Firestone Tire & Rubber Company .
He grew up on a farm in Ohio, his ancestors immigrated from Alsace in the 18th century and were originally called Feuerstein. Firestone attended high school in Columbiana and worked in a company in Columbus, Ohio , before setting up his own company, which from 1896 produced rubber tires for carriages (Consolidated Rubber Company). In 1900 he used the money from the sale of the old company in Akron, Ohio, to found the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (Akron was also the seat of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company , his arch rival). With the advent of the automobile, his company took off and was a pioneer in the mass production of tires. An advantage was his close friendship with Henry Ford , whose Ford works he supplied - the collaboration began in 1904.
He was considered a leading US industrialist with Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison, and the three met frequently and formed an exclusive Millionaires Club . The three took a vacation in the great outdoors with artist John Burroughs and botanist Luther Burbank .
From 1911 he was involved in car races ( Indianapolis 500 ), he supported the construction of highways (Route 66) and developed the first pneumatic tires for trucks and promoted the transport of goods with trucks ( Ship by Truck Campaign). In 1926 he acquired a 1 million acre rubber plantation in Liberia.
Firestone is in the Automotive Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame .
He had been married to Idabelle Smith since 1895 and had seven children.
A memorial in Akron, Ohio (Harvey Firestone Memorial) commemorates him and Princeton University's library (Firestone Library) is named after him. A park in Columbiana bears his name.
Fonts
- with Samuel Crowther: Men and Rubber: The Story of Business. Doubleday, Page & Co, Garden City, NY 1926.
Web links
- Find a grave
- Literature by and about Harvey Samuel Firestone in the WorldCat bibliographic database
- Newspaper article about Harvey Samuel Firestone in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Firestone, Harvey Samuel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 20, 1868 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Columbiana (Ohio) |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 7, 1938 |
| Place of death | Miami Beach |