Here are two old entries that were brought to my attention by the conversation I had with a couple of old friends. Enjoy.
10/21/2018
CINCINNATI
Fifteen year-old John Moses Brunswick was a Swiss Jewish immigrant to the United States in 1834. After apprenticing at various trades in the Eastern U.S., he married and settled in Cincinnati. After living here for two years working on a steamship, on September 14, 1845, he opened a carriage-making business that he called the J. M. Brunswick Manufacturing Company. Not long in business, he lost interest in the low margins carriages were bringing and took on making billiard tables. (All good billiard tables were imported at that time.) He was a huge success.
He expanded his business quickly opening other plants and offices around the country. Brunswick's scope expanded to include a wide variety of products. Here are a few, some have come and gone: bowling balls, bowling pins, pinsetters, ornate wooden bars, toilet seats, phonograph players and records, refrigerators, bicycles, yachts, boats, machine guns, assault rifles, camouflage nets, . . . do you get the picture. Oh, those boats include the name plates, Bayliner, Boston Whaler, and Sea Ray and recently, engines and motors to power them. Enough!
The Brunswick Corporation is headquartered now in northern Illinois. In 2016, the company had an operating income of $409 million on sales of $4.489 billion.
Pool tables!
"A pool table, do you hear me? Friends either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are unaware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community." The Music Man!
🎱
He expanded his business quickly opening other plants and offices around the country. Brunswick's scope expanded to include a wide variety of products. Here are a few, some have come and gone: bowling balls, bowling pins, pinsetters, ornate wooden bars, toilet seats, phonograph players and records, refrigerators, bicycles, yachts, boats, machine guns, assault rifles, camouflage nets, . . . do you get the picture. Oh, those boats include the name plates, Bayliner, Boston Whaler, and Sea Ray and recently, engines and motors to power them. Enough!
The Brunswick Corporation is headquartered now in northern Illinois. In 2016, the company had an operating income of $409 million on sales of $4.489 billion.
Pool tables!
"A pool table, do you hear me? Friends either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are unaware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community." The Music Man!
🎱
9/01/2019
CINCINNATI
Here's the story from one end to the other. A man named John Brunswick built billiard tables in Cincinnati in the 1840s. By 1860, Brunswick dominated the billiard table industry in the U.S. Brunswick bought out another Cincinnati based pool table manufacturer in 1873 and then, in 1884, consumed a New York manufacturer. They moved into the bowling alley business and related hardwood table games.
Albert Carter grew up in Cincinnati the son of a clairvoyant. His mom used a "spirit writing" device to dazzle her customers. In the 1940s, Al took his mom's idea and turned it into a toy he called a magic ball and hoped to sell. He filed for a patent in 1946, with partners Abe Bookman and Store owner Max Levinson. Albert died 1948.
The magic ball didn't sell too well but it caught the eye of a Brunswick executive in 1950. Brunswick commissioned the Cincinnati boys to redesign the ball to look like a billiard 8-ball. The rest is history. They still sell them.
ps: the solid piece floating in alcohol inside the ball is an icosahedron; that, my friends, is a twenty-sided die. Each side contains a different answer that might show up through the magic lens. MAGIC!
Albert Carter grew up in Cincinnati the son of a clairvoyant. His mom used a "spirit writing" device to dazzle her customers. In the 1940s, Al took his mom's idea and turned it into a toy he called a magic ball and hoped to sell. He filed for a patent in 1946, with partners Abe Bookman and Store owner Max Levinson. Albert died 1948.
The magic ball didn't sell too well but it caught the eye of a Brunswick executive in 1950. Brunswick commissioned the Cincinnati boys to redesign the ball to look like a billiard 8-ball. The rest is history. They still sell them.
ps: the solid piece floating in alcohol inside the ball is an icosahedron; that, my friends, is a twenty-sided die. Each side contains a different answer that might show up through the magic lens. MAGIC!
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