Fred C. Koch facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Fred C. Koch
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Fred Chase Koch
September 23, 1900 Quanah, Texas, U.S.
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| Died | November 17, 1967 (aged 67) Bear River near Ogden, Utah, U.S.
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| Education | Chemical Engineer |
| Alma mater | Rice University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1922) |
| Occupation | Chemical engineer, businessman |
| Known for | Founder of Koch Industries; Co-founder of John Birch Society |
| Children | Frederick R. Koch Charles G. Koch David H. Koch William I. Koch |
| Parent(s) | Harry Koch (father) |
Fred Chase Koch (/koʊk/ kohk; September 23, 1900 – November 17, 1967) was an American chemical engineer and businessman. He started an oil refinery company that later became Koch Industries. This company is now one of the largest privately owned businesses in the United States. His sons, Charles and David, later took over the company.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Fred C. Koch was born in Quanah, Texas. His mother was Mattie B. Mixson, and his father was Harry Koch, who came from the Netherlands. Harry Koch had worked as a printer before moving to the U.S. in 1888. He then bought a newspaper called the Tribune-Chief.
Fred went to Rice Institute in Houston from 1917 to 1919. He then studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1922, he earned a degree in chemical engineering.
Business Career and Innovations
Koch began his career at the Texas Company in Port Arthur, Texas. Later, he became a chief engineer at Medway Oil & Storage Company in England. In 1925, he joined a classmate, P.C. Keith, at Keith-Winkler Engineering in Wichita, Kansas. When Keith left, the company became Winkler-Koch Engineering Company.
In 1927, Koch created a new way to get gasoline from crude oil. This method, called thermal cracking, was more efficient. It helped smaller oil companies compete with the bigger ones. He developed this technology just five years after graduating from MIT.
Big oil companies quickly sued Koch, filing many lawsuits against him. He spent years fighting these legal battles. In the end, Koch won almost all of them. One case he lost was later overturned because the judge had been bribed.
In 1925, Koch partnered with Lewis Winkler. Winkler had developed a similar cracking machine. Because of this, another company, Universal Oil Products (now UOP LLC), sued Winkler-Koch in 1929 for using their patented ideas.
This long legal fight stopped Winkler-Koch from selling their technology in the U.S. for several years. Because of this, Koch looked for work outside the country. Between 1929 and 1932, Winkler-Koch built oil plants in the Soviet Union. They also trained engineers there to help Stalin's government set up fifteen modern oil refineries. However, Stalin later treated many of Koch's Soviet colleagues very badly. This experience deeply affected Koch, and he regretted working with them.
His company also built oil facilities in other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In 1934, Koch worked with William Rhodes Davis to build the Hamburg Oil Refinery in Germany. This was the third-largest oil refinery serving Germany at the time. Some people have criticized this, but Koch Industries said that many American companies were doing business in Germany back then. They also showed that Koch's company built 39 cracking units in various countries from 1928 to 1934.
After building his family's wealth, Koch started a new company in 1940. It was called Wood River Oil and Refining Company. This company later became Koch Industries. In 1946, the company bought the Rock Island refinery and oil collection system in Duncan, Oklahoma. In 1966, Fred Koch handed over the daily management of the company to his son, Charles Koch.
Family Life and Passing
In 1932, Fred Koch married Mary Clementine Robinson in Kansas City, Missouri. Mary's father was a well-known doctor who helped start the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Fred and Mary had four sons: Frederick (1933-2020), Charles (born 1935), and twins David (1940-2019) and William (born 1940).
Fred Koch had heart problems for a long time. His son David once shared how his father passed away. Fred was on a hunting trip in Utah. He was bird-shooting and not feeling well. A bird flew by, and he shot it. He turned to a helper and said, "Boy, that was a magnificent shot," and then he died.
Political Beliefs
In 1928, Fred Koch went to the Soviet Union to build oil refineries. But he came to strongly dislike communism, which is a system where the government controls everything. He also disliked Joseph Stalin's harsh government. Koch wrote a short book called "A Business Man Looks at Communism." In it, he shared his experiences in the Soviet Union. He warned Americans about the dangers of communism.
Koch wrote that the Soviet Union was "a land of hunger, misery, and terror." He believed that "socialism is the precursor to communism," meaning socialism could lead to communism. He felt that the Soviet threat needed to be stopped in America.
According to his son, Charles, many of the Soviet engineers Koch worked with were strong supporters of the Communist revolution. Fred Koch was very bothered that many of these people were later punished or killed by Stalin's government. His son David said that his father "was a very conservative Republican." He was also "not a fan of big government" and was worried about communism. David remembered his father often talking about how government policies were wrong. He grew up believing that big government was bad. He also thought that government control over people's lives and money was not good.
In 1958, Koch became a founding member of the John Birch Society. This was a group that believed in limited government and was against communism. Koch even held meetings for the John Birch Society in the basement of his family's home in Wichita, Kansas.
Also in 1958, Koch helped change the constitution of Kansas. This made Kansas a right-to-work state. This kind of law gives workers more freedom in deciding whether to join a union.
