Richard McDonald, who with his brother Maurice revolutionized the way that billions of people around the world eat in fast-food restaurants, died on Tuesday at a nursing home in Manchester, N.H. He was 89 and lived in nearby Bedford, N.H.

From a single hamburger stand in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1948, the systematized approach the McDonald brothers developed to offer customers reasonably priced food at a rapid pace formed the cornerstone of the fast-food business.

Today, the business they created, built, and sold in 1961, the McDonald's Corporation, has more than 23,000 outlets in 111 countries and sales in excess of $33 billion.

While they worked very much in tandem, Richard McDonald, who was known as Dick, is credited with two talismans of the McDonald's empire: the Golden Arches and the sign that proclaims how many hamburgers the chain has sold -- a figure now high in the billions.