More on wealth creation and innovation by whites

White entrepreneurs and millionaires

• Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) owned and controlled a rail network that stretched from New York City to Chicago by the time of his death
• Samuel Slater (1768-1835) was an English immigrant who developed and built water-powered spinning machines. He was a major innovator in the development of the American factory system
• Robert Fulton (1765-1815) was influential in the development of a steam-powered shipping industry
• Eli Whitney (1765-1825) invented the cotton gin, a machine that separated cotton seeds from cotton fibre, which revolutionised textile production. He also developed a precision process to make uniform parts that could be assembled interchangeably into finished guns
• Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809-1884) developed the grain reaper which increased agricultural productivity.

White inventors and innovators

• Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was an inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life not only in the United States but throughout the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb
• Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923) was an electrical engineer who fled from Germany to New York in 1889 and worked in an electrical equipment company. He soon founded his own laboratory, which in 1892 was acquired by the General Electric Company. In 1900 General Electric organized the first modern industrial research laboratory, and the following year it promoted Steinmetz to chief consulting engineer
• Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872) constructed a machine that transmitted electrical impulses through a wire that drove another device at the other end to inscribe a series of dots and dashes on a moving strip of paper. Morse devised a code of dots and dashes for the letters of the alphabet. Morse Code permitted messages to be sent almost instantaneously between two points
• Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) developed a system that converted sound waves to a varying current of electricity so messages could be sent by voice. The Bell Telephone Company (later renamed American Bell) was the first telephone system and was later developed into a telephone network by Theodore Newton Vail (1845-1920).

White wealth and power

• John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) established his own investment bank, J. P. Morgan & Co., in 1861 and financed the creation of General Electric and the United Steel Corporation, the largest industrial company in the world.
• Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) created an iron and steel company that was bought out by J. P. Morgan in 1901 for the then unheard-of price of $480 million. Morgan combined Carnegie’s company with his own to form the United States Steel Company.
• John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937) was an oil magnate who created the American petroleum industry. In 1870 he organized the Standard Oil Company and by the end of 1879 Standard Oil controlled 90% of America’s refining capacity.

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