Historian companies: Your Company’s History as a Leadership Tool

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

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• Summary
• What They Do
• Work Environment
• How to Become One
• Pay
• Job Outlook
• State & Area Data
• Similar Occupations
• More Info

Summary

Historians may engage with the public through educational programs and presentations.

What Historians Do

Historians research, analyze, interpret, and write about the past by studying historical documents and sources.

Work Environment

Historians must travel to carry out research. Most work full time.

How to Become a Historian

Historians typically need at least a master’s degree to enter the occupation. Those with a bachelor’s degree in history may qualify for some entry-level positions, but most will find jobs in different fields.

Pay

The median annual wage for historians was $63,940 in May 2021.

Job Outlook

Employment of historians is projected to grow 4 percent from 2021 to 2031, about as fast as the average for all occupations.

About 300 openings for historians are projected each year, on average, over the decade.

Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.

State & Area Data

Explore resources for employment and wages by state and area for historians.

Similar Occupations

Compare the job duties, education, job growth, and pay of historians with similar occupations.

More Information, Including Links to O*NET

Learn more about historians by visiting additional resources, including O*NET, a source on key characteristics of workers and occupations.

Historians often study and preserve archival materials.

Historians research, analyze, interpret, and write about the past by studying historical documents and sources.

Duties

Historians typically do the following:

• Gather historical data from various sources, including archives, books, and artifacts
• Analyze and interpret historical information to determine its authenticity and significance
• Trace historical developments in a particular field
• Engage with the public through educational programs and presentations
• Archive or preserve materials and artifacts in museums, visitor centers, and historic sites
• Provide advice or guidance on historical topics and preservation issues
• Write reports, articles, and books on findings and theories

Historians conduct research and analysis for governments, businesses, individuals, nonprofits, historical associations, and other organizations. They use a variety of sources in their work, including government and institutional records, newspapers, photographs, interviews, films, and unpublished manuscripts, such as personal diaries, letters, and other primary source documents. They also may process, catalog, and archive these documents and artifacts.

Many historians present and interpret history in order to inform or build upon public knowledge of past events. They often trace and build a historical profile of a particular person, area, idea, organization, or event. Once their research is complete, they present their findings through articles, books, reports, exhibits, websites, and educational programs.

In government, some historians conduct research to provide information on specific events or groups. Many write about the history of a particular government agency, activity, or program, such as a military operation or space missions. For example, they may research the people and events related to Operation Desert Storm.

In historical associations, historians may work with archivists, curators, and museum workers to preserve artifacts and explain the historical significance of a wide variety of subjects, such as historic buildings, religious groups, and battlegrounds. Workers with a background in history also may go into one of these occupations.

Many people with a degree in history also become high school teachers or postsecondary teachers.

Historians may spend much of their time researching and writing reports.

Historians held about 3,300 jobs in 2021. The largest employers of historians were as follows:

Historians work in museums, archives, historical societies, and research organizations. Some work as consultants for these organizations while being employed by consulting firms, and some work as independent consultants.

Work Schedules

Most historians work full time during regular business hours. Some work independently and are able to set their own schedules. Historians who work in museums or other institutions open to the public may work evenings or weekends. Some historians may travel to collect artifacts, conduct interviews, or visit an area to better understand its culture and environment.

Historians learn to use primary sources, such as letters and photographs, in their research.

Historians typically need at least a master’s degree to enter the occupation. Those with a bachelor’s degree in history may qualify for some entry-level positions, but most will find jobs in different fields.

Education

Historians typically need a master’s degree or Ph. D. to enter the occupation. Many historians have a master’s degree in history or public history. Others complete degrees in related fields, such as museum studies, historical preservation, or archival management.

In addition to coursework, most master’s programs in public history and similar fields require an internship as part of the curriculum.

Research positions in the federal government and positions in academia typically require a Ph.D. Students in history Ph.D. programs usually concentrate in a specific area of history. Possible specializations include a particular country or region, period, or field, such as social, political, or cultural history.

Candidates with a bachelor’s degree in history may qualify for entry-level positions at museums, historical associations, or other small organizations. However, most bachelor’s degree holders usually work outside of traditional historian jobs—for example, jobs in education, communications, law, business, publishing, or journalism.  

Other Experience

Many employers recommend that prospective historians complete an internship during their formal educational studies. Internships offer an opportunity for students to learn practical skills, such as handling and preserving artifacts and creating exhibits. They also give students an opportunity to apply their academic knowledge in a hands-on setting.

Important Qualities

Analytical skills. Historians must be able to examine various types of historical resources and draw clear and logical conclusions based on their findings.

Communication skills. Historians must communicate effectively when collecting information, collaborating with colleagues, and presenting their research to the public through written documents and presentations.

Foreign language skills. Historians may need to review primary source materials that are not in English. This makes knowledge of the other language useful during research.

Problem-solving skills. Historians try to answer questions about the past. They may investigate something unknown about a past idea, event, or person; decipher historical information; or identify how the past has affected the present.

Research skills. Historians must be able to examine and process information from a large number of historical resources, including documents, images, and material artifacts.

Historians

Median annual wages, May 2021

Social scientists and related workers

$80,890

Historians

$63,940

Total, all occupations

$45,760

 

The median annual wage for historians was $63,940 in May 2021.
The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $37,310, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $118,380.

In May 2021, the median annual wages for historians in the top industries in which they worked were as follows:

Most historians work full time during standard business hours. Some work independently and are able to set their own schedules. Historians who work in museums or other institutions open to the public may work evenings or weekends. Some historians may travel to collect artifacts, conduct interviews, or visit an area to better understand its culture and environment.

Historians

Percent change in employment, projected 2021-31

Social scientists and related workers

Total, all occupations

Historians

 

Employment of historians is projected to grow 4 percent from 2021 to 2031, about as fast as the average for all occupations.

About 300 openings for historians are projected each year, on average, over the decade.

Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.

Employment

Organizations that employ historians, such as historical societies and government agencies, often depend on donations or public funding. Thus, employment growth will depend largely on the amount of funding available.

Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)

The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program produces employment and wage estimates annually for over 800 occupations. These estimates are available for the nation as a whole, for individual states, and for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. The link(s) below go to OEWS data maps for employment and wages by state and area.

• Historians

Projections Central

Occupational employment projections are developed for all states by Labor Market Information (LMI) or individual state Employment Projections offices. All state projections data are available at www.projectionscentral.com. Information on this site allows projected employment growth for an occupation to be compared among states or to be compared within one state. In addition, states may produce projections for areas; there are links to each state’s websites where these data may be retrieved.

CareerOneStop

CareerOneStop includes hundreds of occupational profiles with data available by state and metro area. There are links in the left-hand side menu to compare occupational employment by state and occupational wages by local area or metro area. There is also a salary info tool to search for wages by zip code.

This table shows a list of occupations with job duties that are similar to those of historians.

For more information about historians, visit

American Association for State and Local History

American Historical Association

National Council on Public History

Organization of American Historians

O*NET

Historians

Suggested citation:

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Historians,

at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/historians.htm (visited December 24, 2022).

Last Modified Date:
Thursday, September 8, 2022

The Business of Applied History | Perspectives on History

When the coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020, some companies were well-equipped to make the necessary adaptations. They had contingency plans, emergency response teams, and a readiness to put resources where they needed to go. But as with any undertaking of such high stakes and such a vast scale, planners and executors needed as much information as they could get to make their efforts as effective as possible. Given the lack of present-day examples or templates through which to understand what was happening, any historical precedents that could help companies navigate the challenges of the pandemic were valuable beyond measure.  

As brand historians, Caroline Morris and Jack Fiorini help companies to understand their past and produce content to be shared with employees, stakeholders, and the public. Charles Forerunner/Unsplash

Enter us, the brand historians of Heritage Werks, a heritage agency firm for Dow 30 corporations and major sports franchises. We specialize in the business of applied history, and while the pandemic necessitated some rapid adjustments, we provided our clients essentially the same service we always do: interpreting their pasts to help them with the present and future. We marshaled history into service for the present emergency in a number of ways. In some cases, we could tell clients how they’d weathered pandemics in the past. Many of our clients are old enough that we were able to tell them how they handled the 1918 influenza epidemic; a few are old enough that we researched how they handled cholera outbreaks in the 19th century. For clients who hadn’t experienced those obvious precedents, we explored their histories dealing with other forms of large-scale disruption and humanitarian crisis, such as natural disasters or wars, to provide examples of adaptation and resilience that had clear applicability to their present circumstances.  

Many of our clients had a sudden need for content about anything other than the pandemic, as well. When sports seasons were abruptly canceled, teams scrambled for historical content to keep the attention of tens of thousands of fans who were just getting ready to watch a 162-game season and now needed alternative entertainment. We rushed to support alternatives to gameday programming that included (among other things) curated digital exhibits, trivia games, classic archival footage, virtual classes, and general support for any topic they cared to delve into now that they and their fans had some unexpected downtime for reflection on the history of the team or the sport. Historians are storytellers, after all, and the world had an insatiable demand for stories in 2020. 

Our paths to Heritage Werks wound through the academy. We both entered the history doctoral program at the College of William & Mary in 2003, worked with the same adviser (the wonderful Leisa Meyer), and graduated and hit the academic job market at roughly the same time. We both had vague but persistent visions of a life spent working in universities, pursuing knowledge and imparting it to eager students. Alas, though we both cobbled together part-time and one-year positions for several years, our stamina eventually ran out. Even the good jobs weren’t permanent and barely paid a livable wage, and the grind of continually finding and relocating for new fixed-term positions lost its glamour as we advanced deeper into our 30s. The lack of healthcare and other benefits particularly lost its glamour, as complications such as age and children came along. We wanted to spare our respective families the annual stresses of looming unemployment and relocation. And so, having lived in the world of academia for our entire adult lives, we came (at different times) to the same conclusion: if we wanted a living wage, benefits, and a measure of stability (both personal and professional), we had to leave. 

That was a daunting realization, but it would have been easier if we had known then what we know now: the rest of the world values what we do, and it is entirely possible to pursue history for a living without connection to an academic institution or nonprofit. The world has an unceasing desire for content, and historians really know how to deliver it. The communications platforms of the 21st century require a never-ending stream of videos, data, images, thoughts, quotations, anecdotes, and jokes. Major companies, brands, sports teams, and businesses have to supply that material to participate in the modern marketplace. The best ones do so strategically, using content to tell their stories in ways that are true and relevant. And who better to identify and tell a true story than a historian? 

We found the transformation from history professor to historical consultant to be surprisingly straightforward.

We both ultimately secured positions as brand historians at Heritage Werks, which specialized in providing such content. With the guidance of our supervisor, another former William & Mary history graduate student who had forged her career outside of higher education, we found the transformation from history professor to historical consultant to be a surprisingly straightforward affair. To be honest, some days it’s pretty similar to building a lecture, running a discussion, or even advising students.

We work in a department called Content and Communications, where most of our work is less dramatic, but no less interesting, than the special projects prompted by the coronavirus. These projects can cover any number of topics, from general to specific. We can research and write broad company histories designed as internal reference guides on the whole of the company’s history. Or perhaps a company wants to know about something narrower, like the origins of its slogan or the truth behind a popular bit of corporate lore about its founding. We can write focused research reports on those questions. We prepare briefs for CEOs to use in high-level discussions and produce e-learning experiences for new employee orientations. We build digital museums that any internet user can access and create social media content to drive public engagement. We give in-person and virtual presentations to help corporate teams brainstorm and make appearances in documentary videos. As varied as our work can be, however, most of it is basically a niche subset of public history. We conduct research using our clients’ private archives and publicly available sources, analyze those materials to create a useful, engaging, and accurate understanding of the past, and share our findings in a clear, accessible manner to an audience of nonhistorians—the same kind of work that historians do in classrooms, museums, and other spaces around the world.

There is one big difference from academia that we had to get used to. Rather than toiling individually and autonomously on research or teaching, our work nowadays is often heavily collaborative. Within the company, a team of archivists helps us find relevant materials, a team of research assistants helps us glean the useful information from those materials (many of our projects turn over too quickly for one person to do it all), a digitization team photographs or scans any archival materials the client might want a copy of, a platform team maintains the secure websites that hold those scans for us and our clients, and a client services team liaises with our clients about all of this. Writing documentary scripts or building websites or generating reports that would take years if undertaken by a solitary academic are produced in weeks or months in collaboration. 

In the private sector, a very specific audience has already found the scholar.

And then, of course, there are the clients themselves, who are really paying attention. Unlike those poor students taking required courses at 8:00 a.m., our clients have sought us out, engaged us for specific projects, and intend to translate our findings into thoughtful components of internally focused policies or public-facing projects. We need to make sure that our work meets their needs, and we have to be able to explain to them how it does so. In academic scholarship, solid work can travel a bit until it finds its audience in the right journal or publisher. In the private sector, a very specific audience has already found the scholar, and solid work that doesn’t satisfy that audience is not sufficient. The process requires much more communication and coordination than the largely solitary rhythms of academia, where one presents one’s findings only at precise and carefully designated times. 

While we never envisioned a life as anything but academic historians, the rewards of leaving that career track have been more than worth the sacrifices. We no longer have the stimulation of classroom engagement, but we get the satisfaction of applying our skills to create something of immediate service to another party, and with it a reassurance of the importance of history on a daily basis. We no longer have the joy of choosing our own subject matter, but we get unfettered access to exclusive archival materials scholars can usually only dream of, and we are able to cultivate expertise in many and disparate subjects. (Jack is now an expert in the history of high technology, the financial sector, life insurance, prepared food brands, and several live family entertainment brands. Caroline is an expert in the histories of sports teams that span 150 years and four professional sports leagues, as well as the fascinating history of middle-class men’s footwear and the role of candy in the Space Race. ) 

But perhaps the most important tradeoff is that, though we’ve lost the oft-cited “flexibility” of the academic lifestyle, we’ve achieved a healthier work-life balance than we ever managed in academia. In a position where clients are paying directly for our services, no task is considered “off the books” or unpaid, and our workload adapts to our schedule rather than vice versa. Our working hours are set to a very reasonable 40 hours a week, plus the very rare night or weekend. If a new project falls from the sky, the expectation is that we’ll shift one task to accommodate another—not that we’ll just somehow get it all done. That dynamic makes our work feel simultaneously more manageable and more valued. We now have the peace of mind that comes with knowing where our next paycheck is coming from, having steady access to affordable healthcare, and not needing to disturb our families with endless moves, even as we gain the satisfaction of having roles that make use of our skills and contribute to the public good.  

A career in brand history wasn’t the dream either of us took to grad school in 2003, but maybe it should have been.

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I’m lucky!

October 5, 2017 History

A Tallinn pharmacy, an Italian bank, a Swedish newspaper, a Japanese hotel and other record-breaking enterprises that have lived for centuries and have been continuously doing their business until today

Prepared by Mikhail Kazinik

The oldest hotel

Hayakawa (Japan), 705 year

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Japanese hot spring hotel (onsen). Engraving by Toyohara Chikanobu. 1890s The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

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General view of the Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan Hotel today © pop-picture.blogspot.com

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Private bath open-air hotel “Nishiyama onsen keiunkan” today © Keiunkan Inn

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One of the Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan hot spring baths today © pop-picture. blogspot.com

Until 2011, the world’s oldest hotel (and oldest company) in general) was considered a Japanese traditional ryokan hotel Ryokan is a type of inn, and later a hotel, which is distinguished by simple rooms with tatami mats instead of beds and the presence of a hot spring with a bath for guests. “Hoshi”. It was opened in the city of Komatsu in 717 and for 13 centuries offered visitors accommodation near the hot springs. The title of the oldest was given to him at 1994 by the Guinness Book of Records, after which “Hosey” even joined the so-called Enoch Club  The Enoch Club is an unofficial organization that arose in France in 1981 and received its name in honor of the Old Testament patriarch Enoch, who lived according to the Bible , 365 years., uniting companies whose age is more than 200 years. However, in 2011, the representatives of the Guinness Book of Records reconsidered their decision and gave the title of the oldest hotel to the Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan (Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan) ryokan in the village of Hayakawa in central Japan. The 53rd generation of the same family has owned this hotel since its founding in 705, and the hotel is still a classic ryokan offering traditional service and furnishings, as well as hot spring baths. nine0004

The oldest bank

Siena (Italy), 1477

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Finances of the municipality in peace and war. Painting by Benvenuto di Giovanni. 1468 Archivio di Stato di Siena, Museo delle tavolette di Biccherna / Wikimedia Commons

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The main entrance of Palazzo Salimbeni, where the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank is located. 2006 © Vyacheslav Argenberg / CC BY 2.0

Monte dei Paschi di Siena (Monte dei Paschi di Siena) was founded in 1477. This is almost 120 years earlier than its closest neighbor on the list of the oldest banks in the world, the German Berenberg. The bank was founded in the Republic of Siena, an Italian city-state that existed in the 12th-16th centuries and was considered one of the largest financial centers of the Italian lands. Banking there has developed rapidly since the 12th century, and the banking houses of the city operated throughout Western Europe, lending to the Vatican, the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and the royal court of France. The Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank was created already at the end of the Republic of Siena and at first functioned as monte di pieta – this is how a special “charitable” pawnshop was called in medieval Italy, where a person could take money, leaving as collateral property covering a third of the loan. In the event that the borrower did not repay the funds on time, only this part of his property was sold at the auction and no other measures were taken. For a long time, the church supported such monte di pieta: it did not approve of usury and encouraged financial assistance to the poor. However, by the 17th century, Monte dei Paschi di Siena turned into a full-fledged bank, after which it was reorganized many times. It now has branches in 20 Italian cities and, among other things, it is known for its extensive collection of Italian paintings, which has been collected throughout the history of the bank. nine0004

The oldest pharmacy

Tallinn (Estonia), ca. 1420

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Town Hall Pharmacy. Tallinn, 1966 © Roman Valdre / Kultuurimälestiste riiklik register

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Interior of the Town Hall Pharmacy. Tallinn, 2011 © Tom Wright / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Medicines at the Town Hall Pharmacy. Tallinn, 2013 Wikimedia Commons

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Town Hall Pharmacy. Tallinn, 2008 Wikimedia Commons

Town Hall Pharmacy (Est. Raeapteek) has been located on Tallinn Town Hall Square since at least 1422. Over the six centuries of its existence, it has changed dozens of owners, the most famous of which was a native of the Hungarian lands, Johann Burchart Belavari de Sekava. As a chemist and doctor, he moved to Tallinn in the 1580s, and in 1583 the city council appointed Burchart the chief apothecary of Tallinn, leasing the Town Hall Pharmacy to him. For more than a hundred years, his descendants rented a pharmacy from the city, and only in 1688 did Johann Burchart IV manage to buy it from the city. In the future, the enterprise was inherited until the middle of the 19th century, however, in 1890s, Johann Burchard X died without a male heir, and his sisters were forced to sell the business in 1911. After that, the pharmacy changed several owners, was owned by the state, and in 2003, after a long reconstruction, it reopened in its original location.

The oldest watchmakers

Geneva (Switzerland), 1466

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Halle watch factory. Switzerland. 1900s galletwatch.com

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La Chaux-de-Fonds watchmakers at work. Late 19th century Wikimedia Commons

Not much is known about Humbertus Gallet, considered the founder of Gallet & Co. In 1466, he received the right to live in Geneva, where he took up watchmaking, which he later passed on to his son. Several generations of the Galle family were engaged in the manufacture of watches, and in 1826 a direct descendant of Humbertus Galle, Julien Galle, officially registered the trademark and moved the company from Geneva to the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds, known today as a city-factory for the production of watches, where about a third of the working population is employed in the watch industry. Thanks to this circumstance, La Chaux-de-Fonds even ended up in Marx’s Capital, where he analyzed the division of labor in the city’s watch factories. Since the end of the 19th century, Gallet & Co. began to consider the United States as the main market for its products. The most famous model of the factory – Flying Officer Chronograph – was created in 1939, commissioned by Harry Truman (at that time Senator from Missouri) for combat pilots: one of its features was a rotating dial with city names, which allowed pilots to easily calculate the change of time zones. Truman himself, who became President of the United States in 1945, also wore this watch; they are now in his museum.

The oldest newspaper

Stockholm (Sweden), 1645

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Issue of the newspaper “Regular Post News”, No. 15, for 9April 1645 Flickr.com/ Elcromaticom/ CC BY 2.0

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Two issues of PoST- Och Inrikes Tidningar- 1835 and 2006 Centro de Documentaci

newspaper Ordinaria newspaper. Postal News”) was founded by order of the Swedish Queen Christina in 1645 – nine years after the creation of the Royal Post Office, which also exists to this day. At first, the newspaper was the main supplier of news in Sweden, and the collection of this news was largely entrusted to local postmasters, who were instructed to collect all the news that fell into their field of attention and pass it on to the editors. The distribution of the newspaper was carried out by all the same post offices: they were obliged to post fresh issues in public places. In 1821, the newspaper was merged with the Swedish Inrikes Tidningar (“Local news”), giving a new edition – Post- och Inrikes Tidningar (“Post and local news”). After that, the newspaper experienced two more important events: in 19In 1922, unable to withstand competition from commercial newspapers, it began to publish only state decrees and court decisions, and since 2007 it has been published only in electronic form.

The oldest shipbuilders

Heraklion (Greece), 1438

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Boat parking in Chioggia at the fish market. Venice, 1890s-1900s Library of Congress

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Building the Camuffo boat today bisiacivan.blogspot.com

Camuffo, the oldest operating shipbuilding company, was founded in 1438 on the island of Crete, which then belonged to the Republic of Venice. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the strengthening of the Ottoman Empire in the Aegean, the son of the founder transferred the production of ships to the Italian city of Chioggia near Venice. At that time, this city was the largest trading port in the Adriatic Sea, and Camuffo craftsmen provided themselves with orders for the construction of fishing boats, barges, pleasure, merchant and transport boats in the Venetian style for several hundred years. At the moment, the company, owned by the same family for 18 generations, produces only three models of motor yachts from 18 to 20 meters in length. Until now, many valuable types of wood are used in their manufacture, for which, in the second half of the 20th century, Camuffo received the nickname “Stradivarius on the Sea” from profile magazines, which it uses in its advertising materials. nine0004

Oldest carrier

Aberdeen (Scotland), 1498

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St Catherine’s Dock. Illustration by Gustave Doré for Douglas Jerrold’s London. 1872 The Victorian Web

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Machine The Shore Porters Society in the middle of the 20th century hiveminer.com

The Shore Porters Society of Aberdeen, Scotland was founded six years after the first voyage of Columbus to America – and since then has not changed its name. For a long time the company was a simple association of workers in Aberdeen Harbor, but by 1666 it had grown so much that two divisions were created: the department of transportation, which owned horses and wagons, and the department of property and warehousing. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Longshoremen’s Society belonged to the Aberdeen City Council, but then the company became a private partnership, after which its profile changed somewhat. Now, in addition to transportation across the UK, movers and home moving services, the company is also engaged in expert transportation of antiques and art objects. Its services are used by both private buyers and auction houses. nine0004

The oldest gunsmiths

Gardone (Italy), 1526

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Venetian arquebuser. Illustration from Cesare Vecellio’s book Ancient and Modern Costumes from Around the World. 16th century greatestbattles.iblogger.org

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Beretta gunsmiths. 1880s © Beretta

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At the Beretta gun factory. 1960s © Beretta

Beretta’s history dates back to 1526, when the gunsmith Bartolomeo Beretta from Gardone, Italy, received an order from Venice for 185 arquebus barrels, smoothbore matchlock guns. On this he earned 296 golden Venetian ducats, and the contract that sealed the deal is still kept in the company’s archive. Subsequently, in 1571, the gunsmiths again rendered a service to Venice by casting cannons for the Venetian fleet, which took part in the famous battle of Lepanto. The battle in the Ionian Sea between the Holy League The Holy League is a coalition of Catholic states, which was created in 1571 at the initiative of Pope Pius V to fight the Ottoman Empire and lasted until 1573. and the Ottoman Empire ended with a crushing defeat of the Turks, and the Venetians showed themselves heroically in it. In the next five centuries, the company, owned by members of the Beretta family, developed rapidly. Beretta’s current CEO, Hugo Gussalli Beretta, is a direct descendant of founder Bartolomeo Beretta, and one of his two sons is believed to take over the management of the company in the future. nine0004

The oldest publishing house

Cambridge (England), 1534

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The invention of printing. Engraving by Jan Collaert I. Late 16th century The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Cambridge University Press. 1900-1916 danielcaruanalupi2.blogspot.com

Cambridge University Press was founded by order of King Henry VIII in 1534, when the monarch granted the university a charter patent “to print all sorts of books”. However, the first printed books appeared half a century later – after the scientist Thomas Thomas became the printer of Cambridge. In May 1582, he received a position, and the first book – “Dialectic” by the French philosopher Pierre de la Rama – was published by him in 1585. At 159In the year 1, Thomas’s follower, John Legate, printed the Cambridge Bible, which began the centuries-old tradition of university publishing the Bible. Since then, Cambridge has published dozens and hundreds of books every year, including, for example, the works of John Milton and Isaac Newton, as well as scientific periodicals, monographs, reference books and textbooks of the English language, which are now distributed throughout the world. However, it was only in 1992 that the University of Cambridge opened its own store in the historic city center at 1 Trinity Street. It is known that various sellers have been selling books at this very place since 1581, which allows some researchers to consider this store the oldest bookstore in Great Britain . nine0004

The oldest manufacturer of musical instruments

Istanbul (Turkey), 1623

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Turkish musician with cymbals. Illustration from Filippo Bonanni’s book Gabinetto armonico. Rome, 1723 Düsseldorf: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

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Avedis Ziljian III in front of his percussion factory. First half of the 20th century jeffwallick.com

Zildjian is often referred to as one of the oldest companies in the United States, although it appeared in 1623 in Constantinople. It was founded by the Armenian Avedis, who lived in the Ottoman Empire, who was engaged in alchemy and, according to legend, was looking for a way to turn ordinary metals into gold. During one of the experiments, he discovered an alloy of copper, tin and silver, the sheets of which emitted a pure and beautiful sound. From this alloy, Avedis began to make musical cymbals and cymbals, which allegedly drew the attention of Sultan Osman II himself, who gave Avedis the surname Zildzhyan, formed from the root zil , meaning “cymbals”, and the affix dji with the meaning “one who does”, to which the Sultan added the suffix “yan” characteristic of Armenian surnames. Shortly after Avedis began making cymbals, Osman II was killed by rebellious Janissaries. After that, for more than two centuries, the descendants of Ziljyan made various percussion musical instruments, including combat cymbals, which were beaten to intimidate the enemy. Only in the 19th century did the company completely switch to musical cymbals, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the descendants of Avedis moved to the USA. Here on September 19On the 29th, the company was registered under its current name – Avedis Zildjian Company, or simply Zildjian. Since then, she has gained worldwide fame, and in the United States has become a prominent part of musical culture. During World War II, when copper was considered an important strategic resource and its purchase by companies was limited, the US government issued a special permit to Zildjian to purchase raw materials.

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