History
The company was founded by Rufus L. Patterson, inventor of the first automated cigarette manufacturing machine. Originally incorporated in New Jersey but operating in Brooklyn, the company began by manufacturing cigarette, baking, and stitching machines. In 1943, Patterson's son, Morehead Patterson, took over AMF. After WWII ended, Patterson determined that the company had to 'grow or die'. Searching for new products, he encountered a prototype of an automatic bowling-pin setter. To get the cash to develop the invention, Patterson swapped AMF stock to acquire eight small companies with fast-selling products. After incorporating key features developed by Leslie L. LeVeque, the AMF Pinspotter, perfected and put on the market in 1951, helped to turn bowling into the most popular US participative, competitive sport.
Read more about this topic: American Machine And Foundry
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“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)