History at its most basic level is the story of people whether following a single person from birth to death or following groups of people and nations as they move through time. But history is also the story of technology and economic activity, and the businesses associated with them. Like people businesses are born, but unlike people not all of them die. Some are able to evolve to survive even when survival means existing at a diminished state. And like all people some businesses just die.

Learning from history about which businesses survive, evolve or die is more than an academic question. It is a practical question for owners, investors and employees of businesses large or small. It is a question as simple as “Will I go broke?” or “Will I have a job next year?”

The cliché example of a dead business has been for some time the buggy whip. But buggy whips have survived in a greatly diminished state in the hands of a few craft people who make them for a specialized market of the horse hobbyists and the reenactors who drive buggies. A better example of a dead business is the home delivery of ice for iceboxes.  Home delivery of ice was once a thriving business all over the country in many towns. There was an infrastructure of ice houses, delivery wagons and the horses to pull them and thousands of employees. With home refrigerators the entire industry disappeared almost overnight, never to come back.

My new book, The Voyage of the F. H. Moore and Other 19th Century Whaling Accounts, explores through the words of those who lived it the story of one of America’s leading industries of the time. Whaling was needed for the whale oil that lighted homes and the whalebone that was used in many products. It was as normal as raising cattle or fishing in a pond. Today we rightly view whaling with horror, but the four whale men I depict have no misgivings about their business. It was just business. Neither could any of them foresee that their business and the entire culture of whaling was doomed, first by the development of kerosene lamps, and then by the invention of the electric light bulb. 

In the never before published account of the 1873-74 whaling voyage of the F.H. Moore the writer notes the presence of coal oil shimmering on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico without realizing he was seeing the beginning of the decline and death of whaling.

Are we any more insightful today? And can we learn from history?  The answer to both questions is probably no. It is hard to predict which businesses will die or which will survive. We are used to change but rarely think about the consequences of change. Remember the vacuum tube testing machines in drug stores and supermarkets? Remember TV repairmen? People invested their life and money in those industries only to see it disappear. People can make mistakes in the other direction, predicting the death of businesses that manage to adapt. Television was supposed by some to kill radio but it didn’t, nor did it kill movie theaters, although attendance declined.  Contrary to conventional wisdom vinyl records are making a comeback as are drive-in theaters. The Wright brothers changed the world in their bicycle shop, but there are more bicycles than ever.

There are still vast supplies of oil but it is finite and will disappear someday As battery technology improves and electric cars become more affordable  internal combustion engines will join buggies in the hobbyist world. Along with gasoline powered cars will go oil change shops, gas stations, emission testing centers, transmission repairmen and muffler stores.    Is society prepared to absorb this loss and help those most affected?   Three D printing is still in its infancy but it has the potential to completely revolutionize the manufacturing segment of the economy and make the job losses suffered in the lingering recession look like the good old days.

One thing about the future is reasonably certain. There will probably not be as much interest in the accounts of film projectionists, oil change workers or machinists of the 20th and early 21st century as there is about whale men of the 19th century. There may not be books like The Voyage of the F.H. Moore. But who knows? The brilliant film “2001 A Space Odessey” predicted a future that doesn’t exist, a trip to a space station in a Pan Am spacecraft, a company that no longer exists, and a telephone call via Ma Bell.