Walter Kidde was born in Hoboken

Hoboken, New Jersey

Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...

, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

. He graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology is a technological university located on a campus in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA – founded in 1870 with an 1868 bequest from Edwin A. Stevens. It is known for its engineering, science, and technological management curricula.The institute has produced leading...

 in 1897. He was the owner of the Kidde

Kidde

Kidde, a brand and division of United Technologies Corporation, is a business, or group of businesses, that manufactures and distributes fire detection and extinguishing equipment.-History:The company was founded by Walter Kidde in 1917 in the United States...

 company which manufactured fire extinguishers.
His parents immigrated to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 from Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

, and he is unrelated to the Danish Kidde family, to which the author Harald Kidde

Harald Kidde

Harald Henrik Sager Kidde was a Danish writer and brother to the politician Aage Kidde. He is best known for the novel Helten , which is one of the key novels in Danish literaturev . Kidde died of Spanish Flu in 1918...

 and the cartoonist and author Rune T. Kidde

Rune T. Kidde

Rune Torstein Kidde is a Danish writer, storyteller, musician and artist. He is son of illustrator and painter Thormod Kidde and ceramist Ragnhild Kidde . He graduated from Vestfyns Gymnasium in 1976 and has studied theology for short while. Rune T...

 belongs.

Even though he had no railroad experience, Walter Kidde was the court appointed trustee of the bankrupt New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway

New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway

The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway , also known as the Susie-Q, or simply the Susquehanna, is a Class II American freight railway operating over 500 miles of track in the northeastern states of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was formed in 1881 from the merger of several...

from July 24, 1937 until his death in 1943.