Corporations

TXT_KEY_CORPORATION_AUTOMOBILE_INDUSTRY_PEDIA

    While most food processing corporations are less than 150 years old, food processing is an ancient tradition. The miller was the original food processing entrepreneur, turning inedible wheat into versatile flour, all while pulling in a tidy profit. Understandably, many modern food processing companies rose from the milling industry, often picking up a few new subsidiaries along the way. Today's food processors deal in a diverse range of consumer products, lining the walls of the local supermarket with everything from mayonnaise to deodorant.

    The Computer Industry, or information technology (IT) industry, is the range of businesses involved in developing computer software, designing computer hardware and computer networking infrastructures, the manufacture of computer components and the provision of information technology (IT) services.

    The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products. It is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as including recreational, subsistence and commercial fishing, and the harvesting, processing, and marketing sectors. The commercial activity is aimed at the delivery of fish and other seafood products for human consumption or as input factors in other industrial processes. Directly or indirectly, the livelihood of over 500 million people in developing countries depends on fisheries and aquaculture.

    Humanity's fascination with shiny objects has persisted since time immemorial. Gold, silver and jewels have decorated the heads of monarchs and the interiors of palaces for millennia, but it was the nineteenth century that began the true blossoming of the trade in treasures. Gold rushes throughout the world - in the United States, Canada and Australia - not only created new fonts of wealth, but left a lasting impression on the shape of world population, relocating avaricious prospectors to some of the most remote places on earth.
    The gem trade, with diamonds as its crown, grew up around similar circumstances. Throngs of miners flocked to South Africa in the mid-nineteenth century with the discovery of the "Star of Africa," an enormous 83.5 carat diamond. As of the turn of the twentieth century, the age of the traveling prospector bowed before the growth of enormous precious metal and jewel firms. South Africa remains one of the most important sources for gold and diamonds in the world, as well as the birth place to some of the most influential corporations in the business.

    The Oil Industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing oil products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline (petrol). oil is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. The industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream and downstream. Midstream operations are usually included in the downstream category.
    Oil is vital to many industries, and is of importance to the maintenance of industrial civilization in its current configuration, and thus is a critical concern for many nations. Oil accounts for a large percentage of the world's energy consumption, ranging from a low of 32% for Europe and Asia, to a high of 53% for the Middle East.
    Other geographic regions' consumption patterns are as follows: South and Central America (44%), Africa (41%), and North America (40%). The world consumes 30 billion barrels (4.8 km³) of oil per year, with developed nations being the largest consumers. The United States consumed 25% of the oil produced in 2007. The production, distribution, refining, and retailing of oil taken as a whole represents the world's largest industry in terms of dollar value.
    Governments such as the United States government provide a heavy public subsidy to oil companies, with major tax breaks at virtually every stage of oil exploration and extraction, including the costs of oil field leases and drilling equipment.

    The Silk Road or Silk Routes refer to a network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa. The land routes were supplemented by sea routes which extended from the Red Sea to East Africa, India, China, and Southeast Asia. China traded silk, spices, teas, and porcelain; while India traded ivory, textiles, precious stones, and pepper; and the Roman Empire exported gold, silver, fine glassware, wine, carpets, and jewels.
    In recent years, both the maritime and overland Silk Routes are again being used, often closely following the ancient routes.
    Going back nearly 2000 years, during China's Eastern Han Dynasty, a sea route, although not part of the formal Silk Route, led from the mouth of the Red River near modern Hanoi, through the Malacca Straits to Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and India, and then on to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea kingdom of Axum and eventually to Roman ports. From ports on the Red Sea, goods, including silks, were transported overland to the Nile and then to Alexandria from where they were shipped to Rome, Constantinople and other Mediterranean ports.
    Another branch of these sea routes led down the East African coast, called "Azania " by the Greeks and Romans in the 1st century AD, as described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (and, very probably, Zesan in the 3rd century by the Chinese), at least as far as the port known to the Romans as "Rhapta," which was probably located in the delta of the Rufiji River in modern Tanzania.
    The Silk Road extends from Guangzhou, located in southern China, to present day Brunei, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Malacca, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Iran and Iraq. In Europe it extends from Israel, Lebanon (Collectively, the Levant), Egypt, and Italy (historically, Venice) in the Mediterranean Sea to other European ports or caravan routes such as the great Hanseatic League fairs via the Spanish road and other Alpine routes. This water route is called in some sources "the Indian Ocean Maritime System".

    For much of human history, victory has gone to those with access to the finest metals. From the Bronze Age onwards, metal tools, weapons and alloys have been an inherent part of the rise of civilization, spurring conquests and construction by the world's greatest empires. And while metal mining has had an impressive history, it was not until the nineteenth century that industrial mining truly began to take root.
    Two reasons explain this sudden intensification in mining operations. The first was the almost daily revolutions in the production of tools and consumer items, requiring a continual source of metal to produce them. The second was that the fuel that powered the Industrial Revolution was coal, nestled deep within the earth. In modern times, enormous excavators like the Bagger 288 have it possible to mine a pit three-hundred feet long and one-hundred feet deep in a day, a feat that, in the past, would have required the mobilization of nations.

    The Textile Industry or apparel industry is primarily concerned with the production of yarn, and cloth and the subsequent design or manufacture of clothing and their distribution. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry. The textile industry grew out of the industrial revolution in the 18th Century as mass production of yarn and cloth became a mainstream industry.
    In 1734 in Bury, Lancashire, John Kay invented the flying shuttle - one of the first of a series of inventions associated with the cotton industry. The flying shuttle increased the width of cotton cloth and speed of production of a single weaver at a loom. Resistance by workers to the perceived threat to jobs delayed the widespread introduction of this technology, even though the higher rate of production generated an increased demand for spun cotton.
    In 1761, the Duke of Bridgewater's canal connected Manchester to the coal fields of Worsley and in 1762, Matthew Boulton opened the Soho Foundry engineering works in Handsworth, Birmingham. His partnership with Scottish engineer James Watt resulted, in 1775, in the commercial production of the more efficient Watt steam engine which used a separate condensor.
    In 1764, James Hargreaves is credited as inventor of the spinning jenny which multiplied the spun thread production capacity of a single worker - initially eightfold and subsequently much further. Others credit the original invention to Thomas Highs. Industrial unrest and a failure to patent the invention until 1770 forced Hargreaves from Blackburn, but his lack of protection of the idea allowed the concept to be exploited by others. As a result, there were over 20,000 Spinning Jennies in use by the time of his death. Again in 1764, Thorp Mill, the first water-powered cotton mill in the world was constructed at Royton, Lancashire, England. It was used for carding cotton. With the spinning and weaving process now mechanized, cotton mills cropped up all over the North West of England.

    A trading company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonisation. Typically, these companies were formed from the sixteenth century onwards by groups of European investors to underwrite and profit from the exploration of Africa, India, the Caribbean and North America, usually under the patronage of one state, which issued the company's charter. Notable companies include British East India Company and Dutch Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie.