A Barber Pole At Home

In 1919 Indianapolis, MIT Professor Frank Shields set out to create a less irritating shave. The result was the invention of Barbasol, a shaving cream that was ready to apply, no working into a lather needed. It became a very popular shaving cream after its introduction. Barbasol was first manufactured under the Napco Corporation name, a company Frank Shields started before inventing Barbasol. After the shaving cream sales increased, they outgrew Napco, and The Barbasol Company was created in 1920.

Some provocative advertisements and noted celebrities endorsed Barbasol during the 1920s and 1930s. For the 1938 Indianapolis 500, Barbasol sponsored a car painted to look like a tube of shaving cream. It completed only 166 laps, but the Barbasol car finished tenth the following year. By the mid-1950s, design engineer Robert P. Kaplan of Rochester, NY, invented and patented the first aerosol shaving cream can, and the Barbasol Company changed the formula from a thick cream in a tube to a soft, fluffy foam. The longevity of the barberpole-designed aerosol cans continues to be an unmistakable icon for razor shaving.

Pfizer bought The Barbasol Company in 1962. They developed a wide variety of Barbasol products and options to complement the original formula. Interestingly, the original cream in the tube was still manufactured until 2019. The "Barbasol 1919" Classic Shaving Cream was for the brand's 100th anniversary. Barbasol has been owned by Perio, Inc. of Dublin, Ohio since 2001.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in a 1930 Barbasol advertisement.

Indianapolis Movers

Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Bekins Van Lines, Inc. is the oldest, currently operating, and the first to specialize in moving household goods in the United States and North America. Founded by brothers John Bekius and Martin (Bekius) Bekins in 1891, Bekins began operations in Sioux City, Iowa, with just three horse-drawn vans and twelve employees. In 1894, Martin Bekins brought the business to Los Angeles.  Bekins also offers special commodities and logistic services with the United States Military being one of their largest customers. In 2012, Wheaton Van Lines became the parent company of Bekins.

Mayflower was founded in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1927 by trucker Conrad M. Gentry, formerly of Red Ball Transit Company, and International Harvester truck salesman Don F. Kenworthy. Starting with only two trucks, the business topped $500,000 by 1932 despite the Great Depression. Mayflower became the first trucking company in the industry to receive operating rights in all forty-eight states in 1940. Mayflower emerged from a 1991 bankruptcy one year later. The Unigroup, an American moving company based in Fenton, Missouri, purchased Mayflower in 1995 and moved its headquarters to the St. Louis suburb.

Discover America on The Lincoln Highway

 

The Lincoln Highway is the first road for automobiles across the United States of America. Conceived in 1912 by the president of Prest-O-Lite Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway runs coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. Originally running through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California, in 1915 the "Colorado Loop" was removed, and in 1928 a realignment relocated the Lincoln Highway through the northern tip of West Virginia.

The first officially recorded length of the entire Lincoln Highway in 1913 was 3,389 miles. With realignments over the years, the Lincoln Highway was gradually replaced with numbered designations after the establishment of the U.S. Numbered Highway System in 1926. After the Interstate Highway System was formed in the mid-1950s, the former alignments of the Lincoln Highway were largely superseded by Interstate 80. Detailed state chapters can be found HERE.