Nonetheless, the info that the Fortune employees was compiling was primarily for inner use. It wasn’t till 1955, when then-assistant managing editor of the journal, Edgar P. Smith, argued that readers would have an interest within the info, and he turned out to have made the right wager.
“In its entirety, the 500 has been a wide window on the U.S. economy and a reference point for all. It has been cited by Presidents and Congressmen, dissected by economists, and viewed by business leaders,” former Fortune editor-at-large Carol Loomis wrote for the fortieth anniversary of the listing.
In 1955, Fortune journal revealed the primary listing of the five hundred largest firms within the U.S. by income, albeit with the much less catchy title of “Annual Directory of the 500 Largest Corporations.”
On the prime of the listing, with $9.8 billion in income, was Normal Motors, adopted by Normal Oil of New Jersey, which was later renamed as Exxon. Rounding up the highest 5 had been U.S. Metal, Normal Electrical, and the meat packing firm Swift, which finally merged with JBS USA.
These first prime 50 firms, which had a mixed income of $69.4 billion, had been within the manufacturing, protection, power, and different comparable sectors, as a result of the unique Fortune 500 was not a whole snapshot of the most important gamers of the U.S. financial system. As a substitute, the unique listing centered on these extra tangible industries, and it wasn’t till 1994 that the methodology opened to incorporate all firms that file their monetary info with a authorities company.
That doesn’t imply the journal didn’t take a look at the opposite sectors within the financial system. For instance, the banks had their very own Fortune 50 listing.
Out of the primary batch of prime 50 Fortune firms, 14 are nonetheless on the listing, together with GM, Goodyear, Lockheed Martin— then Lockheed Plane— and Boeing, which has just lately been stricken by quality-control controversies. The businesses that had been on the prime of the listing in 1955 and have proven their endurance symbolize 28.5% of the overall of 49 firms which have appeared within the listing for all its 70 publications. Whereas this quantity has held regular since 2022, there have been 60 firms in 2016 that had managed to safe a spot on the listing throughout all of the years in publication.
Right here’s the listing of unique Prime 50 firms from 1955:
https://app.datawrapper.de/archive/recently-edited?search=1955#/xvovo
