Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc (1902–1984) was an American businessman who built McDonald's into a nationwide and then worldwide restaurant franchise. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, he spent decades as a traveling salesman, first of paper cups and later of milkshake-mixing machines, showing the persistence that would define his career. His turning point came in 1954, at the age of fifty-two, when he visited a busy hamburger restaurant run by the brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California, and was impressed by its speed and efficiency. He became their franchising agent, opened his own first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955, and in 1961 bought the business from the brothers. He built the company on consistent standards of quality, service, cleanliness and value, and that same year founded Hamburger University to train restaurant managers. In 1974 he also purchased the San Diego Padres baseball team.
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Builders of Modern American Industry
Thomas Edison turned invention into an industry at his Menlo Park laboratory. Henry Ford, who once worked as an engineer for an Edison electric company and became Edison's lifelong friend, introduced the moving assembly line in 1913 to build the Model T. Milton Hershey made milk chocolate affordable and founded a school for orphaned children. Ray Kroc expanded McDonald's through franchising, and Howard Hughes set aviation records and built Hughes Aircraft.
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