The American manufacturer Walter Percy Chrysler (1875-1940) was a self-trained engineer who formed one of the three major automobile companies in the United States.

The son of a Union Pacific Railroad engineer, Walter Chrysler was fascinated by machinery at an early age. He turned down a chance to go to college to become an apprentice in the Union Pacific shops at Ellis, Kans. Hard-working, intelligent, and determined to master every aspect of his craft, Chrysler then worked as a machinist in a series of railroad shops throughout the Midwest. Moving into positions of greater responsibility, he emerged in 1910 as superintendent of motive power for the Chicago Great Western Railroad. As an official in the mechanical branch of railroading, Chrysler knew he had little chance of moving into the top echelons of the corporate structure, and so in 1910 he took a position as works manager of the American Locomotive...