Lasting Impressions
Harvard's largest single bequest before 1950 was made by the shoe machinery inventer-entrepreneur Gordon-McKay. Even today, many of Harvard's computer science chairs bear his name. Yet he was only one of many prominent Bostonians who made their city the world capital of shoe manufacture a hundred years ago. The trust he helped organize, United Shoe Machinery (USM), was as admired and as controversial then as Microsoft is today.