John Motley Morehead III
John Motley Morehead III. (born November 3, 1870 near Spray , North Carolina ; died January 7, 1965 ) was an American inventor and entrepreneur, founder of Union Carbide .
He was the son of railroad entrepreneur and industrialist James Turner Morehead (1840-1908) and grandson of North Carolina Governor John Motley Morehead . Morehead studied chemistry at the University of North Carolina (UNC) with Francis Preston Venable , graduating in 1891. He then worked for the Willson Aluminum Corporation, which Thomas Willson founded with his father, originally to produce aluminum using electrical energy from water mills the cotton mill in spray from Morehead's father. In doing so, Willson discovered a method to produce calcium carbide and thus acetylene at low cost. At first he worked for a New York bank and Westinghouse Electric because the potential of the invention was still low at the time . It was not until 1897 that he returned to his father's Electro-Gas Company (which also manufactured ferrochrome ), which in 1895 had taken over Willson's calcium carbide patents for the USA. In 1898 they were taken over by the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company in Chicago and the calcium carbide division was combined to form Union Carbide in 1898. In 1917 they merged with other manufacturers to form Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation (UCC).
Morehead married in 1915 and was a major in World War I. He was also mayor of the town of Rye, New York, and was ambassador to Sweden under President Hoover from 1930 to 1933. In 1926 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina and in 1931 he received the gold medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1945 he established a foundation that awards scholarships to college students in North Carolina. He also generously donated the UNC, where a building, an art gallery and the planetarium and observatory are named after him.
He was married twice (after the death of his first wife in 1945, he remarried in 1948). Both marriages were childless.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Morehead, John Motley III |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Morehead, John Motley |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 3, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Spray , North Carolina |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 7, 1965 |