Alfred Krupp

Alfred Krupp (1812 to 1887) was a German steel manufacturer and inventor who built the Essen cast steel works into the largest arms supplier of his era, which earned him the nickname The Cannon King. He took over the small firm his father Friedrich Krupp had founded in 1811 when he was a boy of fourteen, after the elder Krupp died in 1826 leaving little more than the secret of making high quality cast steel. Alfred supplied cast steel rolls from 1830, introduced seamless railway tyres that became a main source of revenue, exhibited the largest steel ingot cast up to that time at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and pressed the case for breech-loading steel cannon, which Prussia began buying in 1859. At his death in 1887 he employed 75000 people, and the company he led is known today as ThyssenKrupp. He is also remembered for a paternalist model of company housing, sickness insurance and schools in Essen, which demanded strict loyalty from the workers in return.