Alfred Krupp

Alfred Krupp was a German steel manufacturer, known as the Cannon King, who built his father's nearly defunct foundry into Europe's largest industrial enterprise. Inheriting the small workshop at age 14, he capitalized on the 1830s railway boom by supplying steel for rails and locomotive axles, and at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London he displayed the largest steel ingot cast up to that time, weighing 4,300 pounds, establishing his firm's reputation for large-scale steel production. He developed breech-loading steel cannons that proved superior to traditional bronze artillery, and after 1859 Prussia alone purchased 312 of his cannons, making Krupp the primary arms supplier to the Prussian military during the wars that unified Germany; the company also pioneered seamless rail wheels and built the world's largest private proving ground, at Meppen, to test its weapons. By his death the firm employed 75,000 workers and had manufactured more than 24,000 guns, and Krupp introduced unusually progressive worker welfare programs for the era, including company housing, insurance and educational facilities.