Fingers Facilitate Talking

The first classified telephone directory in 1878 consisted of a single piece of paper by the New Haven District Telephone Company in Connecticut. The fifty subscribers paid to have their names and addresses listed in the directory. The legend of how the pages became yellow five years later would seem to stem from a Cheyenne, Wyoming printer who ran out of white paper. Regardless, research indicated that black type on yellow paper was easier to read than black on white. A well-known fact to many subsequent graphic designers. It also served to separate the white residential listings from the yellow business listings. 

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company was founded in Chicago in 1864 by Richard Robert Donnelley. His son, Reuben H. Donnelley, founded the otherwise unrelated company formerly known as R. H. Donnelley. Reuben established the first official telephone directory in 1886, creating an entire industry that would become known as the Yellow Page Directory. Initially, they were the exclusive monopoly of R. H. Donnelley and the telephone companies. In 1917, the company was incorporated and moved to New York City though they kept their Chicago operations. When Reuben Donnelley died in 1929, the company continued to contract with the Bell System to publish telephone directories nationally. By 1961, R. H. Donnelley became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet.

Note: By the turn of the twentieth century, the telephone served as the only technology that could be used to contact anyone in the world in real time and only accessible through the Yellow Page directories. The newest phone books—delivered free—were an indispensable item for home and business owners. The dot com boom meant that the yellow page days were numbered. 2009 marked the death of the yellow page directories with the bankruptcy of R. H. Donnelley.

A thorough history of the Yellow Page directories can be found here.

Unique Across America

Cadillac was famous in the 1950s for its slogan, "Standard Of The World." Disregarding styling, overall quality, or the intended customer, the Nash Ambassador might have used a similar slogan based on their innovations that were "Unique Across America." Regarding the advertisement above, my research focuses on the Nash Ambassador after their complete restyle for 1952 in celebration of Nash's 50th anniversary. The design looked like nothing else on the road. Interpret that any way you like. 

The 1954 Ambassador was the first American automobile to have a front-end, fully integrated heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system. While other manufacturers in America at the time offered A/C on some models, their air conditioning units were driven by a large and heavy, trunk-mounted expander and heat exchanger that carried the air into the car via clear plastic tubes and out through ceiling-mounted vents. Nash's unit was inexpensive, compact, fit under the hood, and could either circulate fresh or recycled air. 

The aero-designed 1955 versions, above, now had the "Scenaramic" wrap-around windshields and an entirely new smooth front-end styling featuring a new oval grille that incorporated the headlights. The front fenders featured raised wheel arches contrary to what was a Nash trademark since 1949. For 1956 the Ambassador models featured a re-styled rear with larger round taillights sitting atop a large chrome "pedestal." The models were offered in a variety of two- and three-tone color schemes. The 1957 models were the first cars equipped with vertical "quad" headlights in the front fenders. Way before Pontiac started this trend some eight years later.

The Ambassador would be completely redesigned for 1958, with increasingly awkward and busy styling. The Nash marque would be dropped to become the Rambler Ambassador and by the fourth generation, would be known as AMC Ambassador. The Ambassador line from 1963 through the Sixties was one of the more attractive automobiles on the market from a design standpoint, though nothing groundbreaking when one considers the "Big Three" designs. The AMC Ambassador models would struggle on until 1974. Except for a few select models, it was the beginning of an ugly decade for all American automotive designers.

Shifting Priorities

An interesting illustration touting all the things where Goodyear rubber is used, captured during a shift change at a factory. From raincoats to traffic cones; work shoe soles to the rubber bumpers used at truck docks; rubberized railroad crossings, tires and many more items taken for granted. I find the fabricated sedan interesting in the artwork's center. Several automotive manufacturer's details are combined to create an automobile that never existed. Echoing the artist's creativity is the light green sedan to the right of center in the background. It appears to be a 1958 Mercury but with an unknown grille.

The Dynamic 59 Guggenheim

Tooling around in your brand new 1961 Oldsmobile may have offered a bit of uniqueness but it was pale in comparison to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The Upper East Side landmark on Fifth Avenue, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was initially controversial to some traditionalists for its unusual shape and display arrangement. Their lack of vision for the building has long since been forgotten. Not completely forgotten is the classic Oldsmobile. 

Mr. Guggenheim, a member of a wealthy mining family, began collecting works of the old masters in the 1890s. He met artist Hilla von Rebay, the museum's first director. In 1926, she introduced him to European avant-garde art. She envisioned a space that would facilitate a new way of seeing modern art. Fast forward to 1943, they wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design a structure to house and display the collections. Rebay thought the seventy-six-year-old Wright was dead, but Guggenheim's wife knew otherwise. It took Wright fifteen years, over 700 sketches, and six sets of working drawings to create and complete the museum, after a series of difficulties and delays during the 1940s and subsequent personality conflicts with its new museum director during the early fifties. Wright's design for the Guggenheim incorporated geometric motifs, such as squares, circles, rectangles, triangles and lozenges. The building was completed in 1959 with an added annex and renovation in the last thirty years. It was Wright's last major work. He died six months before its opening, at ninety-one.