Nonetheless, information that Artwork Fortune workers compiled primarily for inner use. It wasn’t till 1955 that the journal’s then-assistant editor-in-chief, Edgar P. Smith, stated readers would have an interest within the data, and it seems he made the correct wager.
“Total, the five hundred was a broad window into the U.S. economic system and a benchmark for everybody. It was quoted by presidents and congressmen, analyzed by economists and reviewed by enterprise leaders, Fortune editor-in-chief Carol Loomis wrote the fortieth anniversary listing.
In 1955 Fortune The journal revealed the primary listing of the five hundred largest US firms by income, albeit with the much less catchy title “The Annual Information to the five hundred Largest Firms.”
Basic Motors topped the listing with $9.8 billion in income, adopted by Normal Oil of New Jersey, later renamed Exxon. Rounding out the highest 5 are US Metal, Basic Electrical and meat processing firm Swift, which finally merged with JBS USA.
These high 50 firms, with mixed income of $69.4 billion, had been in manufacturing, protection, vitality and different related sectors as a result of the unique Fortune 500 listing was not an entire image of the most important gamers within the US economic system. As a substitute, the preliminary listing targeted on these extra delicate areas, and it wasn’t till 1994 that the methodology opened as much as embody all firms that submit their monetary data to a authorities company.
This doesn’t imply that the journal didn’t think about different sectors of the economic system. For instance, banks had their very own Fortune 50 listing.
Of the primary batch of Fortune 50 firms, 14 are nonetheless on the listing, together with GM, Goodyear, Lockheed Martin — then Lockheed Plane — and Boeing, which has just lately been affected by quality-control controversies. The businesses that had been on the high of the listing in 1955 and have proven their power characterize 28.5% of the entire of 49 firms which have appeared on the listing in all its 70 publications. Whereas this quantity stays unchanged from 2022, in 2016 there have been 60 firms that managed to make the listing for all years of publication.
Right here is the listing of the unique high 50 firms of 1955:
https://app.datawrapper.de/archive/recently-edited?search=1955#/xvovo