Career
Percy started at Bell & Howell in 1938 as an apprentice and sales trainee. In 1939 he worked at Crowell Collier. He went to work full-time for Bell & Howell in 1941, after college. Within a year he was appointed a director of the company. Percy served three years in the United States Navy during World War II and returned to the company in 1945.
After Joseph McNabb died in 1949, Percy was made the president of Bell & Howell. In 1949, the Jaycees named Percy one of the "Outstanding Young Men in America", along with Gerald R. Ford, Jr., of Michigan (future U.S. President) and John Ben Shepperd (future Texas Attorney General.)
During his leadership of Bell & Howell, Percy led the company through years of expansion, with a 32-fold increase in company sales, a 12-fold increase in employees, and taking the company public, with a listing for stock sales on the New York Stock Exchange. While continuing to make a variety of movie cameras for military, commercial and home use; and movie and sound projectors, in the late 1940s, the company branched into the production of microfilm. Later it entered the information services markets as well.
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