(*somehow pronounced ‘coke’*)
‘american chemical engineer’
.
(1900 – 1967)
.
*founder of oil refinery firm “koch industries”*
(the 2nd-largest privately-held company in the ‘united states’)
.
*EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION*
*BUSINESS CAREER*
*POLITICAL VIEWS*
*FAMILY LIFE*
*REFERENCES*
*EXTERNAL LINKS*
.
early life and education:
Fred C. Koch was born in Quanah, Texas, the son of a Dutch immigrant, Harry Koch.
Harry began working as a printer’s apprentice in Workum germany.
He worked over a year at printers shops in The Hague and in Germany before coming to the U.S. in 1888, and owned the Tribune-Chief newspaper.
(‘fred’ attended Rice Institute in Houston from 1917 to 1919, and graduated from the “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” (MIT) in 1922, where he obtained a degree in “Chemical Engineering Practice”)
business career:
Koch started his career with the Texas Company in Port Arthur, Texas, 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.
Koch and its customers were sued for patent infringement.
This 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.
In the early 1930s, Winkler-Koch hosted Soviet technicians for training.
Koch joined new partners in 1940 to create the Wood River Oil and Refining Company, which is today known as Koch Industries.
In 1946 the firm acquired the Rock Island refinery and crude oil gathering system near Duncan, Oklahoma.
Wood River was later renamed the Rock Island Oil and Refining Company.
(in 1966 he turned over day-to-day management of the company to his son, ‘Charles Koch’)
Political views
(during his time in the Soviet Union, Koch came to despise communism and Josef Stalin‘s regime, 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”)
(‘Fred Koch’ was an original member of the ‘John Birch Society’, noting in his book Virtually every engineer he worked with [in the Soviet Union] was purged)
(according to Jane Mayer‘s article in The New Yorker, Koch “wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini‘s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement”)
Family life
Fred C. Koch married Mary Robinson in Kansas City, Missouri in 1932.
(they had four sons, Frederick (b. 1933), Charles (b. 1935), David (b. 1940) and William (b. 1940))
(for the ore/oil tanker named after Fred’s wife, see “Mary R. Koch”)
(“Koch Industries, Inc.” /ˈkoʊk/) is an American private energy conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas, with subsidiaries involved in manufacturing, trading, and ‘investments’)
(‘Koch’ also owns Invista, Georgia-Pacific, Flint Hills Resources, Koch Pipeline, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Minerals, and ‘Matador Cattle Company’)
(‘Koch’ companies are involved in ‘core industries’ such as the ‘manufacturing’, ‘refining’, and ‘distribution’ of ‘petroleum’, ‘chemicals’, ‘energy’, ‘fiber’, ‘intermediates’, and ‘polymers’, ‘minerals’, ‘fertilizers’, ‘pulp and paper’, ‘chemical technology equipment’, ‘ranching’, ‘finance’, ‘commodities trading’, as well as other ‘ventures’ and ‘investments’)
(in 2008, ‘forbes’ called it the second largest privately held company in the ‘United States’ (after ‘cargill’) with an annual revenue of about $98 billion, down from the largest in 2006)
(if ‘Koch Industries’ were a ‘public company’ in 2007, it would rank about 16 in the ‘Fortune 500’)
(‘Fred C. Koch’, for whom ‘Koch Industries, Inc.’ is named, co-founded the company in 1940 and developed an innovative ‘crude oil refining process’)
(his sons, ‘charles g. koch’, chairman of the board and chief executive officer, and ‘David H. Koch’, executive vice president, are principal owners of the company after they bought out their brothers, ‘Frederick’ and ‘William’, for $1.1 billion in 1983)
.
(‘the koch brothers’ (‘charles’ + ‘david h’) each own 42% of ‘koch industries’, and ‘charles’ has stated that the company will publicly offer shares “literally over my dead body”)
.
.
.
.
👈👈👈☜*“DEAD ENTREPRENEURS”* ☞ 👉👉👉
.
.
💕💝💖💓🖤💙🖤💙🖤💙🖤❤️💚💛🧡❣️💞💔💘❣️🧡💛💚❤️🖤💜🖤💙🖤💙🖤💗💖💝💘
.
.
*🌈✨ *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ✨🌷*
.
.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥*we won the war* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥