Inventors and Corporations in the Maturing Electrical Industry, 1890 – 1940
George H. Wise · 1992
Abstract It was the wedding of the year in Cleveland in 1929, but not for the usual reasons. On the full page in the Sunday supplement devoted to the marriage of Charles Young and Esther Christensen, the pictures of the fathers were bigger than those of the newlyweds. Charles’ father, Owen D. Young, was chairman of the board of General Electric, a renowned “industrial statesman” who had just led the U.S. delegation that had negotiated an apparently definitive settlement of the vexing World War Idebt issue. The feat would help make him Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” and a strong dark-horse candidate for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination (Case & Case, 1982). Esther’s father, Niels Anton Christensen, was a well-known inventor. He was on his way to becoming a great inventor, if you are willing to define that term as someone who twice in his life invents the world’s best way to do something important. Thirty years earlier he had invented the best way to stop streetcars. Three years after the wedding, the father of the bride would become the father of the O-ring.