James Henry Rand Jr. (November 18, 1886 – June 3, 1968)[1][2] was an American industrialist who revolutionized the business record industry.

[1][2] James H. Rand Jr. graduated from high school and received a bachelor's degree in 1908 from Harvard University.

However, James Rand Jr. soon clashed with his father over his proposal to undertake a million dollar advertising campaign to boost company sales.

He borrowed $10,000 from his uncle (a bank trustee) and formed his own filing and index supply company, American Kardex, later that year.

[1][2][3] Within five years, American Kardex grew to be one of the leading office supply companies in the United States.

It was roughly equal in revenues to Rand Ledger, and the two companies easily dominated the American office supply market.

The company's products were widely used in the health care field ("filling a Kardex" became common nomenclature for entering data into a patient's medical record), and demand in Europe was so strong that Rand soon built a factory in Germany.

In 1921, James Rand Jr. founded the Kardex Institute to collect and disseminate information on good business record-keeping and filing practices.

The company became the largest supplier of office furniture in the world through its 1926 acquisition of Globe Wernicke Co., but was forced to divest itself of the business later that year after an antitrust action.

[8] Between 1927 and 1929, the company merged with or bought out a number of companies, including Index Visible, Inc. (which had been founded by Yale University economist Irving Fisher), Safe-Cabinet Co. (which had invented the fire-proof safe), Library Bureau, Inc. (which had invented the filing cabinet), Dalton Adding Machine and Baker-Vawter Ledger.

It succeeded in persuading President Franklin D. Roosevelt to demonetize the dollar and abandon the gold standard in 1933.

Rand ordered company managers to harass the union in an attempt to drive it from the plants.

"[17] As the strike wound down, Rand and his hired strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff were both indicted by a federal grand jury for violating the Byrnes Act.

Both men were acquitted seven months later, but the United States Attorney in the case claimed Rand won acquittal only after suppressing evidence which would have led to his conviction.

In July 1939, he along with the top executives of three other typewriter manufacturing companies were personally sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for antitrust violations.

The company manufactured parts and weapons for the U.S. military, including bomb fuses, the Norden bombsight and the M1911 pistol.

[22] The post-war years led to continued rapid company expansion under James Rand, Jr.'s leadership.

Founders J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly had conceived and designed the world's first purely electronic, Turing-complete, digital computer in 1946.

He donated significant sums of money to Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau, and to the Harvard School of Public Health.

In 1927, Rand won the "Duke of York Cup," a prestigious powerboat racing trophy.

While Rand was powerboating in Long Island Sound in 1939, he encountered a small boat which had capsized.