Ezra Cornell is remembered in business for decisions whose consequences outlived the decade that made them.
The record lists Ezra Cornell as American businessman (1807-1874).
Ezra Cornell was born at The Bronx in 1807. His recorded nationality is United States.
Industrialisation changed the scale of everything: factories, railways, joint-stock capital and the first modern corporations.
He worked as politician, inventor and entrepreneur.
What a company leaves behind is usually infrastructure, habit and employment rather than a name.
That the business was built from United States shaped it: capital, regulation and market size differ by country, and they decide what is even attemptable.
Ezra Cornell died in 1874, aged 67. What remains is the enterprise and its consequences, which is the only durable measure of a commercial life.
