The way we can make traffic disappear.
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Tag: Cars
The Goldberg Brothers – The Inventors of the Automobile Air Conditioner
Here’s a little fact for automotive buffs, or just to dazzle your friends.
The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Maxwell, invented and developed the first automobile air-conditioner. On July 17, 1946 , the temperature in Detroit was 97 F degrees. The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford’s office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto industry since the electric starter. Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he come out to the parking lot to their car. They persuaded him to get into the car, which was about 130 F degrees inside, turned on the air conditioner, and cooled the car off almost immediately. The old man got very excited and invited them back to the office, where he offered them $3 million for the patent. The brothers refused, saying they would settle for $2 million, but they wanted the recognition by having a label, ‘The Goldberg Air-Conditioner,’ on the dashboard of each car in which it was installed. There was no way that Old man Ford was going to put the Goldberg’s name on two million Fords. They haggled back and forth for about two hours and finally agreed on $4 million and that just their first names would be shown. And so to this day, all Ford air conditioners show — Lo, Norm, Hi, and Max — on the controls. Control yourself ! Just forward it on!! |
The Reason Why Road Signs Are Designed In Different Shapes
Hint: It has to do with potential danger ahead of you!
Yield signs kind of look like “Y’s,” if you’re really looking to make some connection there. And railroad signs are circular because trains have circular wheels, right? And roundabout signs are shaped like diamonds because… actually none of this rationale makes sense.
As it turns out, there is a specific and pragmatic reason behind the shape of each common road sign, but the shapes didn’t always carry significance. This all changed in 1923 when a part of Mississippi’s highway divisions decided to create a formalized system for the posts and sheet metal of the U.S. transit infrastructure.
The number of sides indicates the level of potential danger up ahead; the fewest number of sides being three (i.e.: a Yield sign), with the unlimited number of sides on a circle representing the maximum amount of perilous potentiality (i.e.: a Railroad sign). The exception to the more-sides-equals-more-danger-maxim is the rectangular sign, which is used strictly for informational purposes.
Although the DMV website does not mention the corner/danger correlation, the history still has some pretty interesting significance.
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