Progress is fine, but it's gone on for too long.

Friday, June 26, 2015

A Honda at Frobisher Bay

George S. Tomkins, Theo L. Hills & Thomas R. Weir. Canada: A Regional Geography. Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1970.

Sine 1987, Frobisher Bay is now called Iqaluit, Nunavut. Honda is still called Honda.

Although this device will handily shear light sheet metal, I don't know what its actual purpose is. The only reference I can find to Kirsch is the drapery hardware company. So, perhaps it has some function in that area? Given its construction, I don't think it could easily cut drapery rods.

Charles. W. Kirsch founded the Kirsch Company in Sturgis, Michigan in 1907 to produce his telescoping curtain rod, the first of its kind. By 1923, the company was making over 20,000 curtain rods per day. The company's products were featured in the 1939 Hollywood blockbuster, Gone With The Wind. At some point in time, Kirsch had a Canadian presence out of Woodstock, Ontario.

Canadian Homes, June 1961

In 1953, the Kirsch Kustomatic appeared, providing a mechanically efficient method to attach drapery and curtain hooks. While attaching 500 hooks by hand took 28-30 hours at a cost of about $30, the same task on the Kustomatic took less than 1.5 hours. It was billed as "The greatest workroom advancement since the sewing machine." Probably not. In 1997, Kirsch became part of the gigantic Newell Rubbermaid empire.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Decoy Mosquitos

Bill Mitchell and his shortened Toronado

Bill Mitchell took over as chief of design for General Motors from Harley Earl in 1959 and was responsible for look of GM cars through the sixties and seventies, including the Toronado, a car that knocked we preteen males for a loop when it was introduced in 1966. This shortened version is even better to my eye.

One of my vices is vises: parallel jaw vise nomenclature

From Hubbard Cobb (Editor). The Complete Home Handyman's Guide. New York: William H. Wise & Co., 1949.

We used to make things in this country. #201: Lang Brothers Specialty Company, Toronto, Ontario

Above, a lovely old floor lamp I picked up in Oshawa a few months ago.

Lang Brothers Specialty Company Ltd. was founded in 1925 to make lamps and small electrical appliances that were in increasing demand after the end of World War I as electrification spread across the country. Eventually, two sons of the founders joined the firm and two new divisions were created: Samson- Dominion Limited (a subsidiary of the Minneapolis-based Dominion Electrical Manufacturing Company, named for the Dominion of Canada) manufacturing electrical appliances and Connecticut Chemical Limited, a custom filler of a wide range of consumer products. The parent Dominion company was sold to Scovill Manufacturing in 1969, becoming part of the Hamilton-Beach Division. Samson-Dominion continued as one of their manufacturers into the 1970's.)

Connecticut Chemical was more successful. A large new plant was built in East York and the business grew to many times its original size, eventually going public in the early 1970s. In 1951, it became CCL Industries, a specialty packaging company that now has over 10,000 employees worldwide.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Found in a Buffalo parking lot...

This cast aluminum tool seemed interesting when it was picked up in a parking lot, but a quick Google search revealed its purpose, a lowly drum wrench -a tool for opening plastic barrels...

HMCS Grilse

AJ A Foster, Heart of Oak, Methuen 1985

Formerly the American private steam yacht Winchester, the Grilse was bought south of the border and converted to a torpedo boat for Canadian naval service in WW1. Armament consisted of two 12 pounder guns and a torpedo. Although she saw much patrol work, she never saw action.

Berlin wood shop, 1897

Alfred Kelly. The German Worker. Working-Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization. University of California Press, 1987.

Kedman Quick-Wedge screwdriver

I picked this up at a ReStore a while ago. At first, I thought that the blade had somehow split in two, so I had a closer look. I realized that there was a sliding tube that left the blades spread apart when it was closest to the hand, but that forced them into a wedge shape when moved toward the tip. Brilliant design! I think even better than the Upson Brothers Hold-E-Zee.

The idea behind the screwdriver appears to go back to 1863, when J.A. Ayres of Hartford, Connecticut was awarded a U.S. patent (39,206) for such a design. Over the ensuing century, various other inventors came up with modifications and improvements. In particular, F. W. White of New York City received U.S. patent 1,275,810 in August 1918. The patent that really changed things (2.445,383) was issued in 1948 to George Walker Barlow of Salt Lake City, Utah.

From what little I've been able to uncover, it seems that he brought his invention to G. Zahnor Edwards who was running a small company in the same city. Edwards bought the patent and, for reasons I can't determine, changed the name of his company to Kedman. Edwards went on to become an inventor in his own right, and served on the board of directors of the Kedman Company until his death in 1990. The screwdriver design continues to be made by the Quick Wedge Safety Tools company of Woods Cross, Utah, apparently the successor the Kedman firm.