Chilton Company

The company's origins go back to July 1896, and the first issue of Cycle Trade Journal, edited by James Artman who became the first president of the future Chilton Company. In 1899, the magazine changed its name to Cycle & Automobile Trade Journal. A 1900 magazine masthead listed Musselman & Buzby as the exclusive advertising representatives for Cycle & Automobile Trade Journal. In 1900, George Buzby, C. A. Musselman, and James Artman merged their companies to form the Trade Advertising & Publishing Co. The new company expanded into automotive catalogs, booklets, circulars, and posters.

The company selected the name Chilton from the Mayflower's passenger list. The earliest known use of the corporate name Chilton Company was in 1904. It appears on a corporate seal that reads "Chilton Company of Pennsylvania, incorporated March 31, 1904." In 1907, the three partners purchased a printing company that they renamed the Chilton Printing Company, only publicly adopting the name Chilton Company in 1910.

In March 1911, Chilton published the first issue of Commercial Car Journal. In February 1912, they renamed the original Cycle & Automobile Trade Journal to Automobile Trade Journal, and eventually merged it into Motor Age magazine.

In 1923, the partners sold Chilton to United Publishers Corp of New York for $1,635,000, and Artman and Buzby retired. In the same year, Chilton opened a new printing plant at 56th and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia. This location became the Chilton Company corporate headquarters in the late 1940s.

Shortly after the purchase, United Publishers merged their Class Journal subsidiary and Chilton into what became known as the Chilton Class Journal Co, with C. A. Musselman as its president. This merger brought several future flagship magazines (such as Iron Age, Motor Age, Dry Goods Economist, Jewelers Circular, Hardware Age, and Automotive Industries) into the Chilton stable of magazines.

In 1934, the company underwent a complete reorganization. J. Howard Pew provided an infusion of cash that saved the company from bankruptcy, in exchange for a majority of the stock. All subsidiaries merged into one company and incorporated in the state of Delaware as Chilton Company. While the cash infusion from J. Howard Pew saved the company, it became the single biggest inhibitor to its growth, as Pew did not permit Chilton to seek outside funding for acquisitions. As a result, Chilton Company's growth over the next thirty years lagged behind competitors like McGraw Hill and Penton.

George Buzby's son G. C. (Carroll) Buzby became president of Chilton in the early 1950s and remained the Chief Executive Officer until he retired in the late 1960s. George C. Buzby died of cancer in 1970. In 1972, Philadelphia native William A. Barbour was elected president of Chilton.

In 1979, the American Broadcasting Company purchased the Chilton Company and made it an operating unit of ABC Publishing. ABC already owned Farm Progress, owner of the collectibles publisher Wallace-Homestead. Wallace-Homestead later became a division of Chilton. In 1985, Capital Cities purchased ABC, and in 1996, the Walt Disney Company purchased Capital Cities/ABC. Over-extended financially by its acquisition of Capital Cities ABC, Disney had to sell assets to reduce its debt—and Chilton, despite its status and recognition as an excellent business-to-business magazine publisher, was not considered a core business. Disney therefore decided to split up and sell the Chilton Company profit centers to multiple buyers: