In the spring of 1846, an ambitious young New Yorker names Edward P. Allis arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to begin a long and distinguished business career. By the 1880's, he had built the Edward P. Allis Company into a leading manufacturer of steam engines, sawmills, and milling machines, the forerunner of today's Allis-Chalmers Corporation.

This volume traces the development of Allis-Chalmers from the first products of the "Reliance Works" to the diversified international corporation of the 1970's. The personalities who led the business through industrial, economic, and political cycles -- Edward Allis, Edwin Reynolds, Otto Falk, David Scott, and others -- are included, as are the major technological advances and inventions which have kept the company in the forefront of world industrial development over the years.