Commerce made simple

Wilbur Cherrier Whitehead (1866-1931) was an American auction bridge and contract bridge player and writer. Whitehead was president of the Simplex Automobile Company but retired in 1910 to devote himself to bridge. He invented several conventions of bidding and play and was instrumental in standardizing procedures in auction bridge and later in contract bridge. Whitehead was one of the members of the Bridge Headquarters, a group of experts who developed a bidding system named the Official System. Sidney Lenz (another Bridge Headquarters member) deployed this system against Ely Culbertson in the so-called "Bridge Battle of the Century" of 1931.