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PERFORMANCE
has built our business...®
1923
  
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| 1923 |
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July 2
HENKELS & McCOY IS FOUNDED
John B. (Jack) Henkels, Jr. after accepting John F. McCoy as a partner, is awarded his first contract from Counties Gas and Electric, Norristown, Pennsylvania, a local utility company. Henkels & McCoy is born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The new company has one truck, a handful of employees, and high hopes among its primary assets. Before long, the fledgling firm is trimming trees for Philadelphia Suburban Electric Company and Bell Telephone throughout the Philadelphia area. It operates out of the kitchen of Jack Henkels' home and prospers during the early years, engaged in tree trimming, landscaping and building athletic fields, private driveways and tennis courts. Over the course of the next three decades the company's headquarters will move several times to bigger and better facilities within Germantown. In 1966, the company moves to its present site in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.
Link to John B. Henkels, Jr.'s memoir: An American Adventure
Chapters 1 through 3
Files require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view. Click here for a free download!
Look for the book icon throughout the timeline.
Linked chapters will refer to specific decades, from the early 1920s to themid-1960s.
The above linked three chapters cover the period of Henkels & McCoy's birth and early growth in the 1920s. Other chapters deal with proceeding decades through 1966, the year the book was originally published. This special Internet edition also features archive photos from the period, organized by decade and accompanied by text and captions.
It is an era of Post War Plenty at home. The "War to End All Wars" ended five years earlier, in 1918. Also known as the Jazz Age, the "Roaring Twenties" are marked by unprecedented growth and sudden wealth as America becomes an industrial juggernaut with an economy the envy of the world. New industries and countless businesses are born to meet the ever-increasing needs of the booming society. Inventions are patented at a record pace and new construction changes the skylines of America's cities. The stock market's bullish run makes thousands of ordinary American investors richer. There seems to be no end to abundance and prosperity. |
An undesirable ingredient of the Roaring Twenties is crime. The 18th Amendment to the US Constitution (the Volstead Act), passed by Congress in 1919, prohibits the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the United States and its territories. Americans do not stop drinking, however, and demand for liquor is met through wide-scale smuggling and bootlegging. In addition, illegal "speakeasies," clubs and bars flourish. The Prohibition law will help fledgling gangs grow powerful as they form national -- and international -- crime syndicates.
Political unrest in central Europe is rampant as a defeated Germany looks for solutions to its internal problems and newly Communist Russia seeks to export its revolution to other countries. Meanwhile, Imperial Japan gazes at mainland Asia and plans to build an empire... |
Some citizens display
their feelings about
Prohibition on their
vehicles.
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January 1
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established.
January 1
Charles Goodin, US test pilot of the XS-1 is born. Also known as the Bell X-1, this rocket plane will be the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, and the first in a line of X- aircraft eventually leading to the Space Shuttle.
January 8
Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneer in the area of Artificial Intelligence, is born in Germany. In 1950, he works on analog computers and helps design and build a digital computer at Wayne University in Detroit, Michigan.
January 31
Norman Mailer, writer born.
February 14
Meetings at New York and Chicago of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) are linked by long distance lines connected to loudspeakers so that both meetings could follow the same program.
March 12
US Astronaut Walter "Wally" Schirra born. Schirra will be the only astronaut to fly in all three NASA programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo).
 April 18
Yankee Stadium, "the House That Ruth Built," is officially opened in a season home opener game against the Boston Red Sox. The Yanks defeat the Sox 4-1, with a three-run homer from George Herman Ruth, aka The Babe. Slated for closure in 2008, the new Yankee Stadium will be located very near to the original site in The Bronx.
May 3
Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready complete the first nonstop flight across the United States (27 hours): Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York to San Diego, California.
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July 2
Philip H. Rosenbach purchases a Gutenberg Bible in London, England at Sotheby's for $43,350 at auction.
July 4
Jack Dempsey retains heavyweight crown in 15-round decision over Tommy Gibbons in Shelby, Montana. Dempsey popularizes boxing as a sport and radio broadcasts of his matches along with broadcasts of baseball games, help create modern mass spectator sports.
August 2
President Warren G. Harding dies suddenly in San Francisco. Vice President Calvin Coolidge is sworn in.
November 8
Adolph Hitler is arrested after a failed coup attempt in Munich. Sentenced to prison, he spends his time writing Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a rambling screed of anti-Semitism, racial hatred and vitriol. This blueprint for Nazi expansionist designs will be published in 1925.
November 20
African-American inventor Garrett A. Morgan receives a US patent for his inexpensive manual traffic signal. He will later sell the rights to his invention to the General Electric Company for $40,000. Among Morgan's other inventions are the gas mask, first made in 1914 and known as the Morgan Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. |
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ALSO IN 1923:
Bessie Smith becomes first Negro singer to be recorded.
German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin becomes film's first canine star.
Canton (Ohio) Bulldogs win NFL championship, their second consecutive undefeated season (11-0-1). |
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