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Andrew Carnegie, by photographer Theodore C. Marceau, 1913.
Credit: Library of Congress
Carnegie began to build his fortune in the 1870s when he founded the Carnegie Steel Company, a step which cemented his name as one of the "Captains of Industry". By the 1890s, the company was the largest and most profitable industrial enterprise in the world, and in 1901 he sold it to J.P. Morgan and began to devote the rest of his life to philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, education, and scientific research.