Early Life
Kaiser was born on May 9, 1882 in Sprout Brook, New York.
He worked as an apprentice photographer early in life, and was running the studio by the age of twenty. He used his savings to move to Washington state, where he started a construction company that fulfilled government contracts.
Kaiser moved to the West Coast in 1906. In 1914 he founded a paving company, one of the first to use heavy construction machinery. His firm expanded significantly in 1927 when it received a $20-million contract to build roads in Cuba. In 1931 his firm was one of the prime contractors in building the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, and the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams on the Columbia River.
He had never built a ship before, but he set up shipyards in Seattle and Tacoma, where he began using mass-production techniques, such as using welding instead of rivets.
Read more about this topic: Henry J. Kaiser
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