Get out there and have some fun!
Friday, October 24, 2014
The Wreck of the Gunilda
William Lamont Harkness, a wealthy financier and partner in the oil business with the Rockefellers, was a yachting enthusiast who commissioned a steam yacht from builders in Leith, Scotland. The Gunilda was 195 feet long with a gross tonnage of 385. (His two other brothers also had huge yachts built in Scotland.) The yacht was steel, with a coal-burning steam plant.
In midsummer 1911, he, his family and guests set out for a trip around Lake Superior. Harkness decided that he would like to cruise around Nipigon Bay. The captain of the Gunilda recommended that he hire an experienced pilot who knew the waters, but Harkness over-ruled him, deciding that the $15 fee was too high. A little further on, another pilot offered his services for $25 and trainfare back to Jackson Bay, but again Harkness refused on the basis that the price was extortionate. While the Gunilda had charts of the water, they were American, and differed from the Canadian ones in some important respects. In particular, they did not show McGarvey Shoal, a granite peak that rises from a depth of 300 feet, and ends just four feet under the water. On August 29th, ignorant of this danger, and believing he had 300 feet under his keel, the captain ordered full speed ahead. The yacht hit the shoal with a tremendous shock, Passengers and crew were tossed around, and the yacht continued her course until a full 80 feet of her hull hung over the rock.
No one was seriously injured, and the passengers were disembarked. The insurers contracted with the Jim Whalen of the Canadian Towing and Wrecking Company of Port Arthur, which owned the James Whalen, the largest and most powerful tug on Lake Superior. Whalen was concerned that, unless two scows were brought and chained to each side of the yacht, the Gunilda might keel over once pulled free of the shoal. Harkness would have none of this, suspicious that this was yet another attempt to extort money from him. So, he overruled Whalen, and told him to just pull the yacht straight back off of the shoal. After various attempts, the Gunilda finally began to slip backwards, but one free immediately took on a heavy list to starboard. No one had thought to close her port holes or companionway doors, and so water flooded into her hull and began to pull her down. The tow lines were quickly severed with axes so that she wouldn't pull the tug down as well. In only a few minutes she was gone, vanished into 300 feet of water.
Images and information taken from Dwight Boyer, Strange Adventures of the Great Lakes (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1974).
Over the ensuing century, various proposals have been made to raise the yacht. The Gunilda has defied all efforts, and remains deep in the Bay, considered by Cousteau Society to be one of the best preserved wreck sites in the world.
The Art Gallery of Ontario has a builder's model of the Gunilda on display as part the the Thompson Collection of Ship Models.
You can see some fascinating underwater footage by going to youtube.
Vanished Tool Makers: Standard Guilford
A 3" C-clamp marked "Standard Guilford." I'll need to make a new swivel pad for it. (It's surprising the number of old clamps I find that are missing this pad. Without it, the screw damages part of what you're trying to hold.)
So, was this the Standard Company of Guilford, Connecticut or Guilford,Vermont, or the Standard Guilford Company of somewhere else? Who knows?
Thursday, October 23, 2014
CNR No. 6060
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| Great Canadian Railway Stories. Volume 1. June 1993. The Trent Port Historical Society. |
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Adolf Hungry Wolf; Canadian Railway Scenes No 1. Good Medicine Books 1983 |
This locomotive was built at Montreal Locomotive Works in October 1944 and was retired in 1959. It was initially on static display in Jasper but was restored to operating condition again by the railway in 1972. It was used for railfan trips in Ontario including this one photographed by Mister G near Perth Road Village in 1977. In 1980 it was presented to the Province of Alberta in 1980 and six years later made the trip to Expo 86 under its own power. In 1998 it moved to Stettler, Alberta where she remains today as the "Spirit of Alberta", hauling excursion trains every summer as Canada's largest operating steam locomotive. Visit her homepage at the Rocky Mountain Railway Society.
The Story of Frigidaire
An LP on display at a local appliance repair shop:
According to Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.'s autobiography, My Years with General Motors. (New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1965), in 1918 Mr. Durant, president of GM, bought the Guardian Frigerator Company of Detroit (maker of an "iceless frigerator") with his own money, transferring ownership to GM in 1919 where it was soon renamed the Frigidaire Corporation. The product had not sold well under its original ownership, and it continued to return a loss under GM's control. Frigidaire came close to being sold, except that GM had also acquired in 1919, the Dayton enterprises of Charles Kettering, including the Domestic Engineering Company (later to be renamed the Delco Light Company) and Dayton Metal Products. As a result, Frigidaire was moved to Dayton where the engineering and sales expertise of these two other firms could be applied. The move paid off big time. By 1925, Frigidaire sales accounted for over half the overall refrigerator market. It soon became too big to be operated within Delco Light, and was made a full division of GM in 1933. An important part of the company's success was the development of a new refrigerant. Existing ones were toxic and actually led to the death of some users. People took to putting the fridges on their back porch to reduce potential exposure. Kettering commissioned Thomas Midgley Jr. -- who was the genius behind tetraethyl lead in gasoline -- to find a better refrigerant. He came up with Freon. Of course, we now know how bad this was for the earth's ozone layer. As competition increased (Kelvinator had been around since 1914, but GE and Norge entered the field in 1927 and Westinghouse in 1930) Frigidaire followed their lead and introduced a variety of other kitchen and household appliances. As for the fridge, the initial ones offered only 5 cubic feet of space, whereas by the 1960's 10 to 19 cubic feet were most common, with a significant drop in price.
For the full story, see this link.
Frigidaire was sold to White Consolidated Industries (originally the White Sewing Machine Company) in 1979, which was in turn purchased by Swedish A.B. Electrolux, its current parent, in 1986.
As for the Jam Handy Organization that produced the record, it was founded by Olympic breast-stroke swimmer Henry Jamison "Jam" Handy. His commercial and audio-visual company produced the first animated version of the then-new Christmas story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and over 7000 training films for the armed forces during World War II. The Jam Handy Organization eventually became GM's choice for the production of its own training materials.
According to Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.'s autobiography, My Years with General Motors. (New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1965), in 1918 Mr. Durant, president of GM, bought the Guardian Frigerator Company of Detroit (maker of an "iceless frigerator") with his own money, transferring ownership to GM in 1919 where it was soon renamed the Frigidaire Corporation. The product had not sold well under its original ownership, and it continued to return a loss under GM's control. Frigidaire came close to being sold, except that GM had also acquired in 1919, the Dayton enterprises of Charles Kettering, including the Domestic Engineering Company (later to be renamed the Delco Light Company) and Dayton Metal Products. As a result, Frigidaire was moved to Dayton where the engineering and sales expertise of these two other firms could be applied. The move paid off big time. By 1925, Frigidaire sales accounted for over half the overall refrigerator market. It soon became too big to be operated within Delco Light, and was made a full division of GM in 1933. An important part of the company's success was the development of a new refrigerant. Existing ones were toxic and actually led to the death of some users. People took to putting the fridges on their back porch to reduce potential exposure. Kettering commissioned Thomas Midgley Jr. -- who was the genius behind tetraethyl lead in gasoline -- to find a better refrigerant. He came up with Freon. Of course, we now know how bad this was for the earth's ozone layer. As competition increased (Kelvinator had been around since 1914, but GE and Norge entered the field in 1927 and Westinghouse in 1930) Frigidaire followed their lead and introduced a variety of other kitchen and household appliances. As for the fridge, the initial ones offered only 5 cubic feet of space, whereas by the 1960's 10 to 19 cubic feet were most common, with a significant drop in price.
For the full story, see this link.
Frigidaire was sold to White Consolidated Industries (originally the White Sewing Machine Company) in 1979, which was in turn purchased by Swedish A.B. Electrolux, its current parent, in 1986.
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| 1929 |
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Cunard ship, Europa
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| Frank E. Dodman Ships of the Cunard Line; Adlard Coles Ltd.1955 |
Missed business opportunity; Autogyros for everyone!
These were the 1969 assets of the Air and Space Company, a corporation owned by about a hundred Umbaugh Aircraft dealers, who bought up the remains of the Umbaugh Aircraft company which had failed in 1962.
In an effort to put an autogyro into production, Raymond Umbaugh had contracted Fairchild in the late 50s to develop and manufacture what they called a "gyroplane" but that agreement fell flat, resulting in the collapse of Umbaugh's company. The assets shown were not sold and were put in storage till the 1980s when the company was reformed. That company, now named Heliplane Aircraft International apparently existed till about 2011... All in all, it seems to be a sorry tale.
Previous Auto Gyro posts...
http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.ca/2014/02/beagle-wallis-autogyro.html?q=autogyro
http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.ca/2014/08/autogyros-for-all.html?q=autogyros
http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-first-autogyro.html?q=autogyro
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