Fred C. Koch
Fred C. Koch was an industrialist who founded the firm that would later become Koch Industries.[1]
Business career
Koch started his career with Texaco and later became chief engineer with the Medway Oil & Storage Company on the Isle of Grain in Kent, England. In 1925 he joined a fellow MIT classmate, P.C. Keith, at Keith-Winkler Engineering in Wichita, Kansas. Following the departure of Keith in 1925 the firm became Winkler-Koch Engineering Company.
In 1927, Koch developed a more efficient thermal cracking process for turning crude oil into gasoline. This process led to bigger yields and helped smaller, independent oil companies compete. The larger oil companies instantly sued and filed 44 different lawsuits against Koch. Koch won all but one of the lawsuits. (The verdict was later overturned when it was revealed that the judge had been bribed.)[2]
The litigation effectively put Winkler-Koch out of business in the U.S. for several years. Koch turned his focus to foreign markets, including the Soviet Union, where Winkler-Koch built 15 cracking units between 1929 and 1932. The company also built installations in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.[3]
In 1966 he turned over day-to-day management of Koch Industriesto his son, Charles Koch.[4]
Political views
During his time in the Soviet Union, Koch came to despise communism and Josef Stalin's regime,[5][6] writing in his 1960 book, A Business Man Looks at Communism, that he found the Soviet Union to be "a land of hunger, misery, and terror."[7].
During his time in the Soviet Union, he toured the countryside with his handler Jerome Livshitz. Livshitz gave Fred Koch what he would call a 'liberal education in Communist techniques and methods' and Koch grew persuaded that the Soviet threat needed to be countered in America.[8]
According to his son, Charles Koch, 'Many of the Soviet engineers he worked with were longtime Bolsheviks who had helped bring on the revolution.' It deeply bothered Fred Koch that so many of those so committed to the Stalinist cause were later purged.[9]
Koch was a member of the John Birch Society which was a conspiratorial group that believed a Communist infiltration was occurring in American government.[10]
Affiliations
Koch Industries | John Birch Society
Notes
- ↑ Leslie Wayne, [Pulling the Wraps Off Koch Industries http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/20/business/pulling-the-wraps-off-koch-industries.html], New York Times, 20-November-1994, Accessed 12-May-2011
- ↑ Matthew Continetti, The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics, Weekly Standard, 4-April-2011, Accessed 12-May-2011
- ↑ Alexander Igolkin, LEARNING FROM AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, Oil of Russia, Volume 1, 2006, Accessed 12-May-2011
- ↑ U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SUMMARY OF KOCH INDUSTRIES HISTORY, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Accessed 12-May-2011
- ↑ The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. . ISBN 978-0-470-13988-2.
- ↑ Daniel Fisher (13 March 2006) Mr. Big.
- ↑ A Business Man Looks at Communism. self published
- ↑ Matthew Continetti, The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics, Weekly Standard, 4-April-2011, Accessed 12-May-2011
- ↑ Matthew Continetti, The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics, Weekly Standard, 4-April-2011, Accessed 12-May-2011
- ↑ Matthew Continetti, The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics, Weekly Standard, 4-April-2011, Accessed 12-May-2011
