My friend Brian Wilson, future Cornell grad and now the owner of Nassau-Suffolk Dek Hockey on Long Island, was the perennial king.

FORBES: Strat-O-Matic Turns 50

Asia now accounts for the bulk of the sales of DEK, a firm that makes machines used to print circuit boards and the photovoltaic cells in solar panels.

ECONOMIST: Manufacturing and exports

Though it has offices abroad and a plant in China, all of DEK's engineering is carried out at its Weymouth headquarters, where a third of its 1, 000-strong global workforce are employed.

ECONOMIST: Manufacturing and exports