The Hoover Do Over

The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border splitting Nevada and Arizona. From 1931 to 1936, over four million cubic yards of concrete and eighty-eight million pounds of plated steel were used. And with the removal of rock from the canyon walls, boring four diversion tunnels, and the sacrifice of more than 100 lives, the dam quickly became a symbol of the American "can-do" spirit. For millions of people in the 1930s, Hoover Dam, and on a lesser scale, the Empire State Building, came to symbolize what American workers could do even in the depths of the Great Depression. 

When President Herbert Hoover lost the White House in 1932 to President Roosevelt, his new Interior Secretary, Harold Ickes, snubbed the Hoover name from the day of the dam’s dedication. “This great engineering achievement should not carry the name of any living man but, on the contrary, should be baptized with a designation as bold and characteristic and imagination-stirring as the dam itself.” His political bias blotted out the fact that Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge already had dam sites attached to their names. 

As a former mining engineer, Hoover took an active part in settling the engineering problems and the location of the dam in Black Canyon. When he left office, construction finished more than a year ahead of schedule. The Hoover name was vindicated when House Resolution 140 was introduced and passed by the 80th Congress in 1947. President Harry S. Truman signed the resolution and restored the name Hoover Dam to the structure. To clarify, the names "Boulder Canyon Dam" and "Boulder Dam" were simply references to nearby Boulder City, Nevada, and not official. Almost a million people still come to visit the huge dam every year.

Note: The illustration above highlights the intake towers before Lake Mead was filled to its normal operating level.

RKO Blood on Fort Apache

The films below were released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1948, and they are two famous Western films with different premises. Though both deal with a clash of personalities, one is a traditional Western, while the other is a shadowy, moody, noir Western.

Fort Apache
Released March 27, 1948, Fort Apache is an American Western saga, the first of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy." It was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), all starring John Wayne. The film was one of the first to present an authentic and sympathetic view of Native Americans.

Wayne's substantial co-star is Henry Fonda, supported by a talented cast including Shirley Temple, Pedro Armendariz, and John Agar. Cinematography is by Archie Stout. Fonda plays an arrogant and abrasive Lieutenant Colonel in command of Fort Apache, much to Wayne's disappointment, who had expected to receive that commission.

Blood On The Moon
Released November 9, 1948, Blood on the Moon is considered one of the best noir Westerns, in contrast to the sunlit saga of Fort Apache. It is a moody, "psychological" film starring Robert Mitchum, a role that neither Wayne nor Fonda could pull off. There is little of the Western formula approach to this story. The supporting cast includes Robert Preston, Walter Brennan, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film is directed by another legend in cinema, Robert Wise. The outstanding cinematography is by Nicholas Musuraca. 

Of note is an extended fight between Mitchum and Preston without any stuntmen. Then again, it took three days to shoot. Wise wanted realism, where the winner is also badly beaten and exhausted, instead of a cliched brawl where the hero comes out clean and unscathed. Mitchum's acting was lauded at the time, whereas both Wayne and Fonda somewhat cancelled each other out of any accolades.

Note: From a budget of approximately $2.1 million, Fort Apache had a box office total of $3 million. Blood On The Moon made a decent profit out of a $1.5 million budget with a $2.4 million box office take.

The Chocolatier of 1900

The history of the chocolate bar, similar to what we know today, dates back to the 19th century. But solid chocolate was probably consumed in pre-Columbian America. In 1847, however, Joseph Fry created the first proper mass-produced chocolate bar by mixing cocoa powder, sugar, and cocoa to form a paste that could be pressed into a mold. This moved it from a beverage to a solid, edible treat.

In 1875, milk chocolate came onto the scene. It was developed by a Swiss confectioner, Daniel Peter, with the help of his neighbor, Henri Nestlé, who specialized in dehydrated milk products. This development significantly improved the taste and palatability of chocolate, leading to its widespread popularity.

1984 marked a significant milestone in the chocolate industry, thanks to Milton Hershey (in all his chocolatey goodness, above). The Hershey Company introduced its first candy bar in 1900, the Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar. This transformed chocolate from a luxury item into an affordable and "block by block" accessible treat.

Other notable early chocolate bars include the Lindt Chocolate Bar, 1879, and the Baby Ruth candy bar, developed by Otto Schnering in 1920, which became the most popular candy bar in America by 1925. The evolution of chocolate bars continued with the inclusion of various ingredients such as nuts, caramel, and nougat, leading to the creation of candy bars like the Goo Goo Cluster, invented in 1912.

Television Suits You

In the second half of the twentieth century, the Botany 500 name for the wardrobe ending credits of many television programs was as common as Gunsmoke. The brand's association with television personalities helped it become a household name. Throughout the 1970s, Botany 500 provided menswear for many game show hosts and countless television stars. That list can be found online. Botany 500 often paid for the clothes of television celebrities and did not always provide the clothes themselves. They were sometimes custom-made by other tailors.

Botany 500 was a brand name owned by the Botany 500 Group of New York. Beginning in 1889, their men's suits and sport coats were manufactured in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by H. Daroff and Sons, who were contracted with Botany Mills of Passaic, New Jersey, to produce products and later bought the firm outright. Given the exaggerated proportions of the 1949 illustrated man above, one could assume he was once the center of an NBA team. His forty-inch inseam would not be a challenge for Daroff.

Daroff and Sons and the Botany group went bankrupt in the summer of 1973. An attempt was made to turn the company over to another company, still operating profitably. Because of resistance by the company's employees, they backed out of the deal. By the winter of 1973, Cohen and Sons bought the Botany 500 name and assets for $4 million. They planned to keep the labels, marketing, sales, and distribution of Botany as a separate Botany 500 line produced in Philadelphia.
The Botany 500 name lives on as a licensed property of several foreign clothing manufacturers, ending the exclusivity of Botany 500's glory days. In 2021, the Botany 500 name resurfaced as a brand name sold by the mail-order company Haband. 

Columbus Sales In Indiana

For many consumers, before winter hits, Arvin heater-fan combos are a sought-after item on shelves. But few know that Arvin built so much more than heaters before becoming a major supplier to the automotive industry. Their incredible diversity produced the automatic coffee percolator, AM/FM portable radios, outdoor barbecue grills, room humidifiers, component stereo systems, catalytic converters, heat exchangers for fireplaces, and televisions, to name a few.

Bartholomew County, Indiana, native Q.G. Noblitt and his friend Frank Sparks co-founded the Indianapolis Air Pump Co. in 1919, which would become Arvin Industries in 1950. The company sold air pumps to repair flat tires. In 1927, the company changed its name to Noblitt-Sparks and would move its corporate headquarters to Columbus four years later. 1919 was also the same year that Clessie Cummins launched the Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, which would later play a significant role in Arvin's revival.

Arvin Industries assumed a global role, becoming a Fortune 500 company. It was named the "Hoosier Company of the Year" in 1978. However, Arvin’s ties to the community would start to unravel by 2000 when they merged with Troy, Michigan-based Meritor Automotive Inc., creating the eleventh largest supplier of automotive systems and parts in the world. But Arvin lost its focus within the merger. The company sold the former Arvin headquarters, the Q.G. Noblitt building, to Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. in 2006. In 2011, ArvinMeritor changed its name to simply Meritor Inc., eliminating the last remnant of the former Columbus-based automotive supplier. Cummins Inc. acquired Meritor Inc. in 2022, reviving Arvin Industries, which was once a household name in southern Indiana.

Note: Arvin Industries, Inc. began produced its own television sets. An example is the 1950 Arvin model 2216CCM TV with built-in phonograph player, above.

Dial Me Two Copies

American Photocopy Equipment Co. (APECO) has a diverse history spanning various industries. Apeco was incorporated in 1954 after acquiring the name and assets of a limited partnership that had existed since 1939. The company's sales grew quickly in 1952 after adapting the transfer-diffusion process of producing photocopies. Apeco introduced an improved model of its wet photocopying process in 1953, which was similar to the Polaroid Land Camera and became immediately successful. 

Apeco's glory days began to fade when Xerox Corporation revolutionized the photocopy industry with its dry-process, plain-paper 914 model in 1959. Eventually, everyone was making a "Xerox" and not an "Apeco" copy. Though Apeco introduced its own dry-process machine, it faced technical problems. Apeco was infamously known for its Dial-A-Copy and Dial-A-Matic models in the 1960s. It featured a small "telephone-style" rotary dial for selecting the number of copies. This feature provided frustration as some users found it unreliable with frequent malfunctions. Apeco filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1976, phasing out its photocopier production. The company emerged from bankruptcy four years later but liquidated its photocopy sales and distribution activities in 1983.

Too Busy Illustrators

Beginning in the 1970s, TV Guide heavily featured illustrated covers by various artists. Whereas the prior decade was mostly photography, the new decade was dominated by established illustrators meeting short deadlines. Two of the most frequently used were Bernie Fuchs and Richard Amsel. Each had a distinct style that was readily identifiable. Each used a minimalist approach, capturing the essence of the personality's face and character.

The top row features Fuchs, the bottom highlights Amsel from the mid-1970s.