Charles Cassius Gates Jr. (May 27, 1921 – August 28, 2005) was a businessman and philanthropist. His father, Charles Gates Sr., bought Colorado Tire & Leather for $3,500 in 1911. The company was renamed The

Gates Rubber Company Gates is the plural of gate, a point of entry to a space which is enclosed by walls. It may also refer to: People * Gates (surname), various people with the last name * Gates Brown (1939-2013), American Major League Baseball player * Gates McFa ...

in 1919. It became world's largest non-tire

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Types of polyisoprene ...

manufacturer. Charles Gates Jr. took over in 1961, upon the death of his father. The

Gates Corporation Gates Industrial Corporation plc, based in Denver, Colorado, is a manufacturer of power transmission belts and fluid power products, which are used in diverse industrial and automotive applications. The company employs over 15,000 and has sales ...

continued to grow, diversify, and acquire other companies, including

Learjet Learjet was a manufacturer of business jets for civilian and military use based in Wichita, Kansas, United States. Founded in the late 1950s by William Powell Lear as Swiss American Aviation Corporation, it became a subsidiary of Canadian Bomba ...

. By 1996, the privately held Gates Corporation employed over 14,000 people. It was sold to London-based

Tomkins plc Tomkins plc was a multinational engineering company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. In July 2010 Tomkins was acquired by a Canadian consortium of private equity firm Onex Corporation and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In Ju ...

that year for

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

1.1

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: * 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of ...

. Charles C. Gates Jr. was trustee emeritus of the Gates Family Foundation, a large,

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

-based

charitable organization A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, Religion, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definitio ...

that has distributed over $147 million in grants over its 60-year history. He also sat on the boards of many other organizations, including the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, home to Gates Planetarium. He attended Graland Country Day School, class of 1934, and endowed the school to create an invention competition called th
Gates Invention and Innovation Competition
His namesake event has been held annually since 2000. Charles' uncle

John Gates John "Johnny" Gates, born Solomon Regenstreif (28 September 1913 – 23 May 1992) was an American communist businessman, best remembered as one of the individuals spearheading a failed attempt at liberalization of the Communist Party USA in 19 ...

invented the

V-belt A belt is a loop of flexible material used to link two or more rotating shafts mechanically, most often parallel. Belts may be used as a source of motion, to transmit power efficiently or to track relative movement. Belts are looped over pulle ...

in 1917, a staple component in all modern automotive and industrial applications.

External links

Gates Corporation
home page
Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People

Gates Family Foundation
1921 births 2005 deaths {{Tomkins plc 20th-century American businesspeople