David Rockefeller - history’s most connected man

Before LinkedIn, there was David Rockefeller - the grandson of America’s first billionaire and, by many accounts, the most connected man of the 20th century.

Calling him a “networker” doesn’t do him justice. Rockefeller didn’t just meet people - he mapped the world through them. Over a lifetime, he recorded the details of roughly 100,000 individuals he met across continents, storing each meeting on a white 3x5-inch index card.

The result was extraordinary: nearly 200,000 cards filed into a custom-built five-foot-high Rolodex, an electronic machine that sat in his Rockefeller Center office for half a century.

Harvard historian Nancy Koehn once said,

“In the annals of CEO history, the breadth and depth of this record stand out. This is a man with a large, long reach.”

That Rolodex wasn’t just a contact list — it was a living archive of global influence. Heads of state, popes, astronauts, CEOs, artists, royals. Rockefeller met them all and kept a note on every one. His files included names like Bill Gates, Queen Elizabeth II, Neil Armstrong, and John F. Kennedy (whom he first met as a young student in London, through JFK’s sister Kathleen - whom he briefly dated).

When Rockefeller looked someone up before a meeting, he would flipping through a history of personal encounters - handwritten reminders that helped him pick up every conversation as if it had never paused.

James Wolfensohn, former World Bank president, once said,

“Even if he hadn’t seen you for years, he could pick up as though you’d met last week. It was because of this extraordinary record system.”

And it wasn’t just for show. Rockefeller used this memory machine to power diplomacy. In the 1970s, he personally cultivated relationships with Anwar Sadat in Egypt, Leonid Brezhnev in the Soviet Union, and Zhou Enlai in China — paving the way for Chase Manhattan to become the first U.S. bank to operate in those countries.

Each connection was logged with care. One card for Henry Kissinger noted that he’d been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, with a reminder:

“He is not to be referenced as Sir Henry as he is an American” — the word “not” underlined for emphasis.

When Rockefeller turned 100, he gifted Kissinger a set of 35 Rolodex cards summarizing their decades of friendship. Kissinger laughed, realizing they had met hundreds of times since 1955.

“I was astonished we’d seen each other so much,” he said. “Having that record meant a lot to me.”

By the end of his life, Rockefeller had visited 103 countries, met more than 200 heads of state, and kept working several days a week well into his nineties. His Rolodex machine was eventually retired to storage - its cards now filling a wall of cabinets at the family estate in Pocantico Hills, New York.

His will stipulated that the files would remain private for a decade after his death. They’re more than just contact notes; they’re a social atlas of the modern era - one man’s analog network spanning the entire globe.

In an age before search bars, he had already built the ultimate human search engine - powered by memory, discipline, and genuine curiosity.

“The building blocks of history end up being constructed from material like the Rolodex cards,” Mr. Johnson said.