Sep 19
His friends called him Tiny, because he wasn’t. Walter Heber Wheeler, Jr. was born in NYC. His parents divorced and his mother later married Walter H. Bowes, an English immigrant who had sailed with her ex-husband. Bowes owned a Stamford company that manufactured machines used by the postal service to print cancellation information on mail. When he foresaw the need for a machine that would print postage in place of stamps, he met with inventor Arthur Pitney, who was perfecting such a machine. They established Pitney Bowes in 1920 and, though they shared the US Postal franchise with others, they provided their service so efficiently that they dominated the market.