From Bullets to Ice Cubes

The Norge Appliance Company manufactured window iceboxes and later moved to motorized refrigeration units. The Norge brand began making home appliances in the early 1940s. Norge appliances were considered solid and reliable, perhaps built like a tank, Norge's military involvement in producing bullets, gun turrets, and airplane parts during WW2 was just as impressive. The Norge refrigeration line has a complicated history of corporate buy-outs. The company was originally a division of BorgWarner, manufacturing refrigerators made by the Ranney Refrigeration Company. The Norge refrigerator line was eventually sold in 1970 to the Fedders Corporation and approximately four years later was acquired by Magic Chef, which in turn was absorbed by Maytag in 1986. Since 2005, the Whirlpool Corporation took over any Maytag brands. 

Broadcast Pioneers

Douglas Edwards (1917-1990) was an American radio and television newscaster and correspondent and is regarded as the first "anchorman" of a nationally televised, regularly scheduled newscast by an American network. His four-decade career was contracted to the CBS network.

Born in Oklahoma, he and his widowed mother moved to Alabama in 1932. There the teenage Edwards was paid $2.50 a week to be a "junior announcer", a disc jockey, and to fill any lapses during broadcasts by reading poetry and even singing (after a fashion) occasionally. After college, he remained intent on working in radio, and between 1935 and 1940, he found employment at a small station at WSB in Atlanta and at WXYZ in Detroit where he served as a newscaster and announcer. His big break was an offer from CBS Radio in 1942 to move to New York as an assistant announcer and understudy to journalist John Charles Daly.

In the fledgling days of television of 1947, Edwards was chosen by CBS to host the 1948 Democratic and Republican national conventions. Edwards presented news on CBS television every weeknight for fifteen years, from 1947 until 1962. Initially aired as a 15-minute program under the title CBS Television News, the broadcast evolved into the CBS Evening News and expanded to a 30-minute format in 1963 under Walter Cronkite, who succeeded Edwards as anchor of the newscast. Edwards retired from CBS in 1988.

Twentieth Century Talkers

Dick Cavett (1936-) is an American television personality who appeared regularly on nationally broadcast television in the United States for five decades, from the 1960s into the 2000s. Assisted by a resonant voice, Cavett earned a reputation as "the thinking man's talk show host," giving ample time for his guests to answer his questioning. A false perception is that he came off as too intellectual, rising above his guests, yet he was always in awe in the face of greatness. Still, he was famous for name-dropping and sometimes could make one feel inferior or not a member of the insider's club.  

The Nebraska-born Cavett is a legend as a *talk show host, interviewing famous celebrities in a relaxed ninety minutes. Questions most viewers would have liked to ask themselves given the chance. It was not frivolous chit-chat. Some interviews were quite prescient as a couple of rock stars died not long after the interviews. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin come to mind. Cavett rose to "unknown" fame in the 1960s writing jokes for The Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar. He had an intelligent stand-up routine starting in 1964, somewhat echoing the style of his good friend, Woody Allen. Intermittently since 1968, Cavett hosted his own talk show in various formats and on various television and radio networks. Cavett was known for remaining calm and his ability to mediate between contentious guests. He also found time to appear on various television comedies or specials through the 1970s and 1980s. He has been busy in the 2000s with various projects. Cavett has been nominated for at least ten Emmy Awards and has won three.

*More on Cavett's interviews here.

From Kankakee to Joliet

In 1938, Sherb Noble ran an ice cream store in Kankakee called Sherb’s. His supplier and friend, John McCullough, along with his son, Alex, came up with a softer ice cream and offered it to Noble. He tested the soft-serve as a 10-cent all-you-can-eat special. His entire stock, 1,600 servings, ran out in under two hours.

Two years later, Noble and the McCulloughs opened the original store in Joliet, Illinois (above). McCullough had referred to the cow as the queen of the dairy business, so Noble named his new store “Dairy Queen.” It was a huge success, and Noble saw the opportunity to open franchises. The location closed mid-century but the building is a city-designated landmark. There were 2,600 across the country by 1955. Today there are over 7,000 locations in more than 20 countries.

Man With A Niche

Peter Whitney (Peter King Engle 1916-1972) was an American actor in many Hollywood films in the 1940s and 1950s. His career started at the beginning of the Forties with a supporting role in Action in The North Atlantic, opposite Humphrey Bogart, and Destination Tokyo, starring Cary Grant, both films released in 1943. He kept busy throughout the Forties but the television medium beckoned. 

Whitney may be most visible on the small screen as the tall and increasingly heavier brute from more than twenty years of playing narrow-minded villains or slow-witted characters on countless television series. In general, if one could name a popular series during the Fifties and Sixties, Whitney was probably cast in them to one extent or the other. From his many westerns to crime dramas and comedies, he always made an impact on a wide variety of ethnic characters. His final role was for Rod Serling's Night Gallery in 1972. 

Inventing Self-Service Shopping

The Piggly Wiggly franchise was founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916 by Clarence Saunders. His store concept was the original self-service "super" market. Although the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (later simply A&P) preceded Piggly Wiggly by some 46 years, customers needing groceries at A&P would hand their shopping list over to a clerk who would fill the order from the shelves and hand shoppers a bag full of their items. Piggly Wiggly turned that routine on its head by establishing the model for the modern market. 

Customers entered the store through a turnstile, handed a shopping basket, and were left to wander the aisles to fill their carts with whatever products caught their eye. The employees wore uniforms and the store price-marked items from merchandise that was organized into departments. Instantly, packaging and brand recognition became important to companies and consumers alike. By 1930, markets across the country adopted Saunder's concept. In 1937, Piggly Wiggly's Oklahoma branch became the first company to provide shopping carts for customers. Certain franchises had a pig mascot that would attract attention by welcoming customers approaching the store. Piggly Wiggly was among the first to develop a loyalty card discount membership program similar to many other national merchants. 

Through a series of questionable stock transactions, Saunders lost control of the company in 1922. By 1928, the Kroger chain purchased a controlling interest in Piggly Wiggly Corporation, buying approximately 400 franchised Piggly Wiggly stores, mostly in the Midwest. Near this time, Safeway acquired most of the West Coast Piggly Wiggly stores. After additional buyouts and selloffs, those Piggly Wigglys were absorbed into the chain's operation. Today, the Piggly Wiggly headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire, operating over 500 stores in 18 states, mostly in smaller communities in the southeast. 

Note: Clarence Saunders was reluctant to explain the origin of the company's name, leaving it to consumers and the business world to conjure up their own legends. The original Memphis store is pictured above in 1916. 

Twentieth Century Talkers

Bud Collyer (Clayton Johnson Heermance Jr., 1908-1969) was an American radio actor and announcer who became one of the nation's first major television game show stars, known for his numerous bow-ties. 

By 1940, Collyer had become a familiar voice on all three major radio networks in starring or major supporting roles. He was the announcer for a number of radio soap operas, including The Guiding Light and The Goldbergs. But his most lasting radio starring role was for The Adventures of Superman on the Mutual Broadcasting System, a role he also performed in the subsequent Superman cartoons with his dashing pencil mustache. Collyer supplied the voices of both Superman and Clark Kent. Collyer conveyed the "costume switch" while speaking a phrase like, "This looks like a job for Superman!" His voice would drop to a lower register to become the superhero.

For television fans, though, he is best remembered as the first host of the game shows Beat the Clock (1950) and To Tell the Truth (1956). The former show pitted couples to beat the clock in a series of stunts, sometimes messy fun, in order to hopefully win cash or home appliances. More popular and longer-lasting was, To Tell The Truth, where a panel of four celebrities questioned three challengers all claiming to be the same person. 

A devoted man to God, Collyer contributed to various Christian works, including authoring at least one book and making a recording of the New Testament of the Good News Bible. He wrote two inspirational books, Thou Shalt Not Fear (1962) and With the Whole Heart (1966). He also recorded a number of Bible story record albums for children.

The Collyer family in 1953, above.

Quality First

Zenith introduced its first line of black-and-white television receivers in 1948. Two years later, Zenith came up with a remote control called the "Lazy Bones" which was connected with wires to the set. The next development was the "Flashmatic" in 1955, a wireless remote control that used a light beam to signal the TV (a photosensitive pickup device) to change stations. At the cost of $260, those who could afford it bought their latest remote control device in 1956 called "Space Command." It worked by sending an ultrasonic tone to the set, where it was picked up with a miniature microphone sensitive to only that tone. 

Zenith continued research and development on color television throughout the early 1950s, but the general manager, Eugene McDonald, was adamant about producing second-rate color televisions before the technology was proven, so Zenith continued improvements on its black-and-white televisions. He meant that. In 1927, Zenith adopted their famous slogan, "The quality goes in before the name goes on." In about a decade, the color television breakthrough came when Zenith introduced a ten-receiver line of color sets. Demand for these sets grew so quickly that it had to expand its facilities. 

Note: So many early Zenith ads featured a couple in formal wear preparing for an evening of supreme viewing around a 9" screen, as suggested by this 1951 illustration above. Like most electronic innovations, television was a big deal.

Welch Communion

Welch Foods Inc., commonly referred to as Welch's, is an American company headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts. The company was founded in Vineland, New Jersey, in 1869 by the British-American physician and dentist, Thomas Bramwell Welch (1825–1903) and his son Charles Welch. The method of pasteurizing grape juice to halt fermentation has been attributed to the aforementioned dentist. Welch was an adherent to the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion which strongly opposed "manufacturing, buying, selling, or using intoxicating liquors" and advocated the use of unfermented grape juice instead of wine for administering communion during church services. As the temperance movement grew, so did the popularity of grape juice in the early years of the Twentieth century. During World War I, the company supplied "grapelade", a type of grape jam, to the military and advertised aggressively.

Since 1956 Welch's has been owned by the National Grape Cooperative Association, a co-op of grape growers. In the 1960s, Welch's was a major sponsor of the ABC primetime animated comedy series The Flintstones and its characters were featured on jars of Welch's grape jelly which could be used as a drinking glass after the product had been fully used. 

Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda

Seven-Up (7up) was created by Charles Leiper Grigg, who was introduced to the carbonated beverage business early in his career. Grigg had invented two orange-flavored soft drinks, but it was literally crushed by the dominance of the king of all orange pop drinks, Orange Crush. Grigg shifted his focus to a lemon-lime formula. Originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", it was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Its name was later shortened to "7 Up Lithiated Lemon Soda" before being further shortened to just "7 Up" by 1936. Until the government ban in 1948, the original formula contained lithium citrate, which was used in various patent medicines at the time for improving moods. It had been used for many decades to treat manic depression, one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The drink was neither lost on the 1929 stock market crash nor the drummer above. 

The origin of the revised name is unclear. Lithium was one of the elements with an atomic number of 7, while others have suggested the name came from the use of 7-ounce bottles when most other soft drinks were bottled in 6-ounce bottles. Grigg never explained the name but did promote 7up as having effects on mood. Another problematic ingredient was Calcium Disodium EDTA which was removed in 2006. 

Note: Westinghouse took over 7up in 1969, then sold it to Philip Morris in 1978. The investment firm Hicks & Haas bought it in 1986 with 7up merging with Dr. Pepper in 1988. Now a combined company, it was bought by Cadbury Schweppes in 1995. A popular ad campaign in the 1970s labeled the drink the "Uncola."

Broadcast Pioneers

Paul Harvey (1918-2009) was an American radio broadcaster for ABC News Radio. His shorter morning news and comment was a preview of his fifteen-minute noon broadcast. Harvey's Saturday broadcasts were commentary only, capitalizing on a particular subject or society in general. For a time, a selection from the Saturday commentaries was also used on certain local television networks, often as a closing before the station's sign-off of the day. The five-minute televised segments had Harvey standing or seated in front of a studio set suggesting a den. By the mid-seventies, his famous, The Rest of the Story was launched as a separate program. Created and written by his son, Paul Harvey, Jr., it was the backstories of famous people but was written to keep one guessing until the segment's reveal at the end. "Now you know...the rest...of the story." 

Harvey was known for other catchphrases used during his programs. When breaking for a commercial, for instance, he would announce, "Page Two" and later "Page Three." The sponsor's products were seamlessly endorsed by Harvey, eventually irritating some critics and suggesting he was a carnival huckster. His news opening phrase was infinitely famous, "Hello Americans, this is Paul Harvey. Stand by for NEWS!" His closing was no less famous, "Paul Harvey (wait for it) good day." A regular catchphrase was "This day's news of most lasting significance may be this..." In a report about someone who had done something ridiculous or offensive, Harvey would say, "He would want us to mention his name," followed by silence, and then start the next item. The last item of a broadcast, often a funny story, would usually be preceded by "And now from the 'For-what-it's-worth' department...." Another phrase made famously was, "Self-government won't work without self-discipline." He also is credited with popularizing the terms Reaganomics and guesstimate.

Harvey was the last of the old-school radio broadcasters. He served an optimistic post-WW2 era and his "Walter Winchell" style was getting dated by the dawn of the twenty-first century. His "stand by for news!" was often late to the party thanks to the Internet. Having one person dominate a news program for fifteen minutes straight is a thing of the past, as well. Harvey's conservative comments about the ills of society, much of it still relevant today, would be hated by the trolls of social media. I suspect ABC News execs were somewhat relieved his contract was void upon the death of the old codger.

For nearly 60 years, Paul Harvey News and Comment is considered the most-listened-to radio broadcast. Coupled with Harvey's distinctive delivery, a daily mix of news, commentary, and human interest stories informed and entertained a worldwide radio audience. From 1951 to 2008, his programs reached as many as 24 million people per week. Paul Harvey's news was carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 American Forces Network stations, and in 300 newspapers. 

The Airline of Firsts

During this month in 1927, the United States Post Office requested bids on a contract to deliver mail from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba by mid-October. Pan American Airways, Incorporated was founded as a shell company by United States Army Air Corps officers Henry "Hap" Arnold, and Carl Spaatz. They drew up the prospectus for Pan American after they learned that German-owned Colombian air carrier SCADTA, hired a company in Delaware to obtain air mail contracts from the US government. A contract was awarded to a former World War I naval aviator, Juan Trippe, to fly mail between Key West to Havana. The airline’s first passenger service between these cities began the next year.

Pan American World Airways established seventeen firsts in airline travel, including the first transpacific flights (from San Francisco to Manila) in 1936, using the famous China Clipper; the first transatlantic flights from New York City to Lisbon in 1939, aboard the Yankee Clipper; the first round-the-world flights (New York to New York, eastbound) in 1947; the first transatlantic jet service in 1958 with the Boeing 707, and by 1970 the first airline to use the Boeing 747.

In the Jet Age, Pan American, now referred to simply as Pan Am, faced growing challenges as international travel grew and U.S. airlines deregulated in the late 1970s. It competed with airlines expanding into foreign markets from extensive domestic routes by acquiring National Airlines in 1980. It did little to invigorate the airline with Pan Am ending in bankruptcy by the end of 1991.

Read much more about Pan American at these sites: Pan Am or Simple Flying

Consolidated Enamel Papers

Consolidated Papers, Inc. was a paper manufacturer headquartered in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. It was incorporated as the Consolidated Water Power Company in 1894. By 1902 the company expanded its operations to include the manufacturing of paper, changing its name to Consolidated Water Power & Paper Company. Over the next decade, the company's expansions included the acquisition of Biron Division in 1911 and Interlake Division in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1916. The company constructed a hydroelectric plant and paper mill in order to manufacture tissue, waxing, and specialty papers. Coated printing papers, also called enamel papers, are specially finished, glazed papers used for such things as magazines, brochures, and corporate annual reports, as well as catalogs, newspaper inserts, and direct mailings. Beginning in 1938, Life magazine had their paper made only by Consolidated. Throughout the 1950s, Consolidated concentrated on the sale and production of its coated papers, launching a major national advertising program.

The above illustration dates from 1950.

Television Talkers

Edward Roscoe Murrow (1908-1965) was an American pioneer of radio and television as a broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He joined CBS as director of talks and education in 1935 and remained with the network his entire career. In 1937, Murrow hired journalist William L. Shirer and assigned him to a similar European post on the continent. This marked the beginning of the "Murrow Boys" team of war reporters. 

Murrow flew twenty-five Allied combat missions in Europe during the war providing additional reports from the planes as they droned on over Europe. Murrow's skill at improvising vivid descriptions of what was going on around or below him, derived in part from his college training in speech, aided the effectiveness of his radio broadcasts. In 1945, Murrow and Bill Shadel were the first reporters at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He met emaciated survivors and the "bodies stacked up like cordwood" in the crematorium. In his report three days later, Murrow (extract) said: I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words... If I've offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry.

Many boomers will recall Murrow's second weekly television show, a series of live interviews entitled Person to Person. From 1953 until 1959, Murrow talked amiably, casually, and with no agenda, with celebrities and movers and shakers in their homes from a comfortable chair in his New York studio (with several packs of cigarettes handy, no doubt). The live playback transmission was literally wall-size. A revival of the series in 2012's two-episode broadcast was not successful. Few found the twenty-first-century guests that interesting in a land dominated by social media. Another was proposed in 2022.

Note: the image above is an interview with Senator Kennedy and his wife, Jackie.

Deadly Avalanche

On this date in 1910, the deadliest avalanche in United States history swept away 96 lives on two Great Northern trains trapped by snow slides. The trains were brought through to Wellington, Washington just west of Stevens Pass then was eased onto a side track, normally used to allow trains to pass. The plan was to wait out the storm. It seemed like a safe place to park because there was never a slide there. A surviving train conductor sleeping in one of the mail train cars was thrown from the roof to the floor of the car several times as the train rolled down the slope before it disintegrated when the train slammed against a large tree. The body recovery effort took months. The dead were transported on toboggans down the west side of the Cascades to trains that carried them to Everett and Seattle.