Scottish-American Andrew Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century with the Carnegie Steel Company. Carnegie established public libraries throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking counties.
He funded approximately 3,000 libraries in 47 states in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and Fiji. He donated 50,000 British pounds to help establish the University of Birmingham in 1899.
British- and Irish-American Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company and was sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His development of the assembly line allowed many middle class Americans to afford and buy automobiles. Ford left most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation.
William “Bill” Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company. He co-founded Microsoft with colleague, Paul Allen. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. After studying the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Gates sold some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the William H. Gates Foundation.
In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is currently the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.
The American culture admires risk-takers. They are considered to be courageous, ingenious, hard-working, forward thinking. The American experience is one of trial and error. It begins with how parents raise their children to try things, to attempt more than before, to experiment. A mistake is only one when one doesn‘t learn from it. Trial and error is moving forward, is getting better at something. It is synonymous with learning by doing.
