Alfred Escher was a Swiss politician and railroad entrepreneur. Member of the Swiss National Council from 1848 to his death 1882, he presided the council three times (1849/50, 1856/57 and 1862/63). Escher was endorsing an idea of building and running the railway lines in Switzerland based on private companies. Later (since 1853), through his position of the president of railway companies, he became a railway magnate. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Alfred Escher. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Escher
