Founded in Palo Alto, California in 1909 by Cyril Frank Elwell, it would eventually merge in August 1927 with the Mackay Companies.
Clarence Mackay (1874–1938) was the son of Comstock Lode magnate John William Mackay, and inherited much of an estimated $500 million fortune upon his father's death in 1902 (approximately $13 billion in 2012 dollars).
A statue of John Mackay by Gutzon Borglum stands in front of the Delmare Library on the university campus in Reno, Nevada.
He practiced law for many years in Manhattan, primarily for the Mackay telegraph and cable companies, and amassed a substantial fortune.
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In 1871, John William Mackay, James Graham Fair, James Clair Flood and William S. O'Brien, organized the Consolidated Virginia Silver Mine near Virginia City, Nevada, from a number of smaller claims on the Comstock Lode and later added the near-by California mine.
The Commercial Cable Company was founded in the United States in 1884 by John William Mackay and James Gordon Bennett, Jr. Their motivation was to break the then virtual monopoly of Jay Gould on transatlantic telegraphy and bring down prices (particularly for Bennett's newspaper empire).
William S. O'Brien (1825 – May 2, 1878) was an American businessman who formed a business partnership with fellow Irishmen James Graham Fair, James C. Flood, and John William Mackay, the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company.