Monday, May 11, 2009

Too good not to post.

Goldberg Air-Conditioner
I swiped this from my friend's blog Merle
I have the story about the Goldberg Air-Conditioner.

The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram and Max, invented the first automobile airconditioner. On July 17th, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97 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 exiting 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 degrees, turned on the air-conditioner, and cooled the car off 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 Airconditioner," on the dashboard of each car in which it was installed.

Now the old man Ford was more than just a little anti-Semitic, and there was no way he was going to use the Goldbergs name on two million Fords.

They haggled back and forth for about 2 hours and finally agreed on $4 million and that just their first names would be shown.

And to this day, all Ford air conditioners show == Lo, Norm, Hi and Max on the controls.

7 comments:

Marian Dean said...

I too read it before, but it is still so funny I can laugh again at it.

Hope the visit has been good.

Love Granny

Reader Wil said...

Well, the Goldberg brothers are very inventive! Intelligent men! Nice post Patty!

nanny said...

I have never read that one,,,,love it!

Renie Burghardt said...

Ha, I had not read this before so you had me fooled until the end!

Hope you had a great visit and your Mom is doing well.

Have a good night.

Renie

Femin Susan said...

Chuckles!

I was at my uncle's for a few days.
Cheers!

DeniseinVA said...

Hi Patty, great post. Thanks for the laugh. I hadn't heard it before.

Twisted Fencepost said...

Good one, Patty!
You had me going there for awhile.