Bartolomé de Medina
Spain
Date of Birth: 1497 — 1585
Bartolome de Medina was a successful Spanish merchant who became fascinated with the problem of decreasing silver yields from ores mined in Spanish America. By the mid-sixteenth century, it was well known in Spain that American silver production was in decline due to the depletion of high-grade...
John (Jan) II Dobry, John the Good - Duke of Opole
Poland
Date of Birth: 1460 — 1532
In 1526 Tarnowskie Góry in Silesia (southern Poland) was awarded the status of a free mining town, and in 1528, John II the Good, Duke of Opole, issued an ordinance known as the Ordunek Górny, granting the town a series of mining privileges. At the same time a mining authority was also...
Charles Dow
United States
Date of Birth: 1851 — 1902
The Dow of Dow-Jones is Charles Henry Dow, born Nov. 5, 1851, in Connecticut. He went into journalism, working for New England newspapers. His work impressed Charles Danielson, editor of the Providence (R.I.) Journal, and so in 1879 he assigned Dow to join a group of bankers and reporters who...
George Eastman
United States
Date of Birth: 1854 — 1932
George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company. His invention of the Kodak camera, a name he coined, was a major reason for making photography accessible to the public.
In 1878, when he was 24, he bought a photographic outfit with all the paraphernalia of the...
Thomas Edison
United States
Date of Birth: 1847 — 1937
"I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion ." --Thomas A. Edison, 1888
Edison, an incredible creator, patented 1,093 inventions. These included the phonograph, the kinetograph...
George Richards Elkington
Elkington & Co.
United Kingdom
Date of Birth: 1801 — 1865
George Richards Elkington was the son of a Birmingham spectacle manufacturer who apprenticed to his uncle’s silver plating business in 1815. Upon his uncle’s death, he took his cousin, Henry Elkington, into partnership.
Throughout its history, Elkington & Co. achieved remarkable success, and...
Charles Englehard, Jr.
United States
Date of Birth: 1917 — 1971
Charles W. Engelhard Jr. (February 15, 1917 – March 2, 1971 was an American businessman who controlled an international mining and metals conglomerate, as well as a major owner in Thoroughbred horse racing.
Engelhard made his fortune in the precious metals industry, where he operated a...
William Bell Frue
United States
Date of Birth: 1830 — 1881
William Bell Frue, emigrated, at a young age, from Ireland to the United States. His mining career began in 1853 when he worked for the Pewabic copper mine in Michigan. With the discovery of the rich silver deposit on Silver Islet in the Canadian waters of Lake Superior, he was hired by the...
Juan Godoy
Chile
Date of Birth: 1800 — 1842
Juan Godoy (1801-1842) was a Chilean prospector who made significant contributions to Chile's mining industry. He was born in the small town of Copiapó and grew up in a family of miners. Juan Godoy inherited his father's passion for mining and began working in the industry at a young...
Jabez Gorham
Gorham Manufacturing Company
United States
Date of Birth: 1792 — 1869
Established in 1831 in Rhode Island, as a coin-silver flatware and jewelery manufacturer, Gorham eventually became one of the largest silversmiths in the world. By the late 1860s, they grossed $1 million in sales per year. Gorham was tremendously successful with flatware patterns like Chantilly,...
Diego Gualpa
Peru
Date of Birth: 16th C
The Spanish conquest of South America led to the discovery of Peruvian mountains rich in gold and silver. In April, 1545, high up in the Andes, an Indian named Diego Gualapa climbed a distinctively shaped conical peak in search of a rumoured Indian shrine. Such shrines frequently contained some...
George Guess, aka Sequoyah
United States
Date of Birth: 1775 — 1843
Sequoyah was the creator of the Cherokee writing system. Believed to be the son of a Virginia fur trader named Nathaniel, he was raised by his Cherokee mother, Wuh-teh of the Paint clan, in the Tennessee country. He never learned to speak, read, or write English. He was an accomplished...
Daniel Guggenheim
United States
Date of Birth: 1856 — 1930
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Daniel Guggenheim was sent to Switzerland as a young man to study the Swiss lace and embroidery business, and to serve as a buyer for his father's import firm. The discovery of high-grade silver-lead ore in the Guggenheim mines in Leadville, Colorado in 1881...
Meyer Guggenheim
United States
Date of Birth: 1828 — 1905
Meyer Guggenheim was born in Lengnau, Aargau, Switzerland on February 1, 1828. He was of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry and emigrated to the United States in 1847. He started out in the importing business, but made his and his family's fortune (which was one of the largest fortunes of the 19th...
Alvinza Hayward
United States
Date of Birth: 1822 — 1904
Born in Vermont, Hayward moved to Canton, New York early in his life. He studied law in New York, but also pursued lumber and lead mining interests. His experience in Michigan vein mining proved invaluable after his move to California in the Gold Rush of 1850. After buying an interest in the...
George Hearst
United States
Date of Birth: 1820 — 1891
George Hearst, of Scots-Irish origin, was born near present-day Sullivan, Missouri, to William G. Hearst and Elizabeth Collins. Hearst was raised in a log cabin on his family's farm in rural Franklin County. His father operated three small farms, all of which were mortgaged, with slave labor....
Robert Hennel
Hennel & Sons
United Kingdom
Date of Birth: 1741 — 1811
Hennell of Bond Street is one of London's oldest silversmiths and jewellers. It was founded by David Hennell and originally made fashionable silverware for the nobility and landed gentry. David's son, Robert I, is known for his fine neoclassical silver, often with bright-cut engraving. His son,...
David Hennell
Mappin & Webb
United Kingdom
Date of Birth: 1712 — 1785
The Hennell family silver company is a testament to the enduring appeal of fine craftsmanship and the importance of family traditions in maintaining and elevating an art form. From their humble beginnings in the 18th century to their status as one of the most respected names in silversmithing,...
Tom Herbert
Canada
Tom Herbert was a French-Canadian working on the railroad being pushed through northern Ontario in the early 1900s. He discovered a vein in the face of a cliff and prevailed on the geologist William Miller to examine it. Miller, Ontario's first government geologist, was in the area looking into...
Sir John Frederick William Herschel
United Kingdom
Date of Birth: 1792 — 1871
Sir John Herschel was a scientist and astronomer, like his father, Sir William Herschel, who discovered Uranus. He floundered in his early schooling before focusing on math and at the youthful age of 21 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London. He worked on a variety of projects...