Dentyne By The Stick

AFFORDABLE ORAL 

HYGIENE WHEN 

ALL ELSE FAILS

In 1899, a New York City druggist, Franklin V. Canning, formulated a cinnamon-flavored chewing gum that he promoted as an aid to oral hygiene. "To prevent decay, To sweeten the breath, To keep teeth white," was his mantra. The tooth-whitening agent was way ahead of the times. Today it is an obsession. And more effective. The name was a combination of the words "dental" and "hygiene" (pronounced denteen). Dentyne walked a fine line regarding their health claims as the main ingredient was sugar, not the best additive for healthy teeth. The sugar was finally removed in 2006. In 1916 the brand was sold to the American Chicle Company. By the 1930s, Dentyne was produced by the Adams Gum Company. 

Most candy and gum products were originally crafted to be medicinal in nature. Dentyne is one of the first products to be sold in stick form, but the early gum product was more like small square blocks. It was about fifty years before these products would start to be marketed as enjoyable as much as being healthy. 

Radio Curmudgeons

Radio was initially broadcast over a giant wooden cabinet with an equally large round speaker. Smaller models were soon available but it was the transistor that made these "devices" truly mobile. Radio was where everyone got all the audible news of the world, along with their favorite dramas and comedy shows. The "offline" version was the newspaper. 

Every radio network had a vast number of announcers and correspondents. The ABC network is profiled in the above advertisement from 1950. You are likely dead if you tuned in to these newscasters as an adult. Today, perhaps only three stand out because of their more widespread notoriety, namely Drew Pearson, famous for his Washington D.C. "Merry-go-Round" political column, Louella Parsons with her pulse on Hollywood gossip, and Walter Winchell, famous as a narrator away from his news desk, most notably for the ABC police drama, The Untouchables, nine years later.

Putting A Price On Knowledge

The World Book Encyclopedia is an American encyclopedia. World Book, Inc. is based in Chicago, Illinois. The 2023 edition contains more than 14,000 pages with over 25,000 photographs within 22 volumes.

World Book was founded by publishers J. H. Hansen and John Bellow, who realized that existing encyclopedias were too technical for most readers. Michael O'Shea, professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, once  stated, "... encyclopedias are apt to be quite formal and technical. A faithful effort has been made in the World Book to avoid this common defect." The first edition of the World Book Encyclopedia was published in 1917, by the Hanson-Roach-Fowler Company.

Note: The encyclopedia was an expense many families could not afford. It was cheaper to go to the local library. A complete 19-volume set for the 1957 edition pictured was $170. Other binding styles were less, however. The current 22-volume 2024 edition is $1,200.

From Utah to Indiana

Utah Radio Products Company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Chicago, Illinois, is known for manufacturing of loudspeakers, transmitters and transformers from the early 1920s. In 1929 Caswell-Runyan merged with Utah Radio Products to build a radio reception combination. 1946 saw the merger with International Detrola Corporation. In the mid-fifties, Utah Radio Products moved to a new plant in Huntington, Indiana. The plant flourished in the 1960s and 1970s with one-piece console stereos that proved popular in the mass market. The highly respected Utah loudspeakers were produced until the 1980s when Utah folded, due in no small measure to the influx of Asian competitors.

Cementing A Vacation Plan

Lehigh Cement was founded in 1897 by six Pennsylvania businessmen who funded the construction of a cement plant in Ormrod, Pennsylvania. Then a second and third. Since the company’s cement was being shipped as far west as Kansas City, another plant was built in Mitchell, Indiana in 1902. By 1920 Lehigh Cement was the nation’s biggest cement company in terms of number of plants, with annual production of more than twelve million barrels of Portland cement. Lehigh’s profits reached a zenith after 1958, climbing to $75.8 million. Net income of $12.1 million on sales of $100.6 million in 1959 was far higher than Lehigh would again earn, at least as an independent company. About the time the illustration above was conceived.

Pictured is the one-year-only styling of a 1960 Ford Galaxie. The model introduced numerous styling trends that set the automotive industry on notice. Yet some Ford customers were not fans of the styling shock. It was devoid of recent Ford trends, most notably the round taillights and seemingly no hint of fins. Coupled with this was the fact the car was larger: it violated vehicle width regulations in many states. Garages got smaller. 

Speaking of fins, I find the 1960 model unique for its sleek "stealth" fins that begin up front as a vertically chromed arch defining the front fenders. The accent chrome magically transforms horizontally into flat fins, the "bottom" of which folds inward, stopping at the trunk lid. A beautiful execution that made the 1959-60 Chevrolets decidedly awkward. The 1960 Ford has since garnered many fins...er...fans in more modern times, especially the elegant Ford Galaxie Starliner. 

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. Other innovations can be found in the ad above.

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.