History
The first survey of the Dead Sea in 1911, by the Russian Jewish engineer Moshe Novomeysky, led to the establishment of Palestine Potash Ltd. in 1930, later renamed the Dead Sea Works. In 1923, Pinhas Rutenberg was granted an exclusive concession for the production and distribution of electric power. He founded the Palestine Electric Company, later the Israel Electric Corporation. In 1937, there were 86 spinning and weaving factories in Israel, employing a workforce of 1,500. Capital and technical expertise were supplied by Jewish professionals from Europe. The Ata textile plant in Kiryat Ata, which went on to become an icon of the Israeli textile industry, was established in 1934. The industry underwent rapid development during World War II, when supplies from Europe were cut off while local manufacturers were commissioned for army needs. By 1943, the number of factories had grown to 250, with a workforce of 5,630, and output increased tenfold.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Israel
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)