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. 

A High Altitude of Himself

 

On this day in 1926 at McCook Field, near Dayton, Ohio, First Lieutenant John Arthur Macready, Air Service, United States Army, took off in an experimental airplane, the Engineering Division XCO-5. He was attempting to exceed the existing Fédération Aéronautique Internationale world altitude record of 39,587', but he did establish a new United States national altitude record of 38,704'. Macready reported, “My watch stopped at 30,000' and I believe it was frozen, because just before landing it started again.” He observed a temperature of -79.6 ° at 34,600'.

The official observers of the National Aeronautic Association were Orville Wright (co-inventor with his brother Wilbur, of the airplane); George Smith of Dayton; and Levitt Custer (inventor of the stratoscope, the original barometric altimeter). Macready is pictured above with his wife.