Ford’s V-8 Wowed Consumers 84 Years Ago

In a free enterprise system, businesses respond to meet the demands of the buying public. One good example of this is what happened this week in 1932: Henry Ford introduced the flathead V-8 engine in a car that was priced for the average consumer.

The perennial favorite that had made Ford a household name was the 4-cylinder Model A, and he seemed content to continue producing that as long as people would buy it. But other carmakers had begun to outsell Ford. William Durant of Chevrolet had introduced a V-6 engine that produced 20 more horsepower than Ford’s engines, and by 1931 consumers were buying more Chevys than Fords.

Ford had to do something to regain the market. His engineers suggested their own V-6, but Ford had tried that before and didn’t liked it. Besides, introducing a V-6 then would make Ford look like a mere imitator; he wanted to be the industry leader.

Ford decided that he would do the unexpected, what some people said was impossible. He would build an 8-cylinder engine, he would make it of one piece, and he would make it affordable for the average consumer. V-8 engines were not new; Frenchman Léon Levavasseur had built one in 1902. But the only V-8s were in luxury cars. The average consumer could only dream of owning one of the V-8s, V-12s, or even V-16s then on the market. But Ford would take a calculated risk—at the height of the Great Depression, no less—and mass produce a car with such an engine so that everyone could afford it.

Even as early as 1929, Ford had foreseen the problem and had tasked a team of Ford engineers and designers to build his one-piece flathead V-8. Their early versions had problems, including overheating and vast consumption of oil, but they persevered, resolved those problems, and produced a product that was introduced to the public on March 31, 1932. In addition to the larger (65 hp) engine, the new model included other innovations: rubber engine mounts to reduce vibration; a stouter frame; a gas tank in the rear, rather than the front, of the car; larger brakes; and synchronized second and third gears to reduce grinding.

The 1932 Ford V-8 immediately captured the imagination of the buying public—and the market. It catapulted Ford back to the top in car sales. The V-8 engine remained the Ford mainstay until 1953.

Although Ford was a risk-taker, as all entrepreneurs are, he hedged his bets by continuing to build cars with 4-cylinder engines even as he sought to improve them with the V-8. In the same year that he introduced the V-8, he also introduced the Model B. The following year, he introduced the Model C. Both of those cars were equipped with improved 4-cylinder engines. But neither car sold well. Why would someone buy a 4-cylinder, even if it was new, when a new V-8 was available?

This is how the free enterprise system works. The public demand drives the actions of the entrepreneurs. If they want to succeed and sell their products, they respond to market demands, giving the consumers what they want at a price they are willing to pay for it. And they do it without Big Government telling them how.

Be Prepared!

Every late winter and into spring, we hear TV news stories telling us how to be prepared for powerful thunderstorms, tornadoes, or hurricanes whenever they might hit. They tell us how to go to the lowest point or interior part of our homes, away from doors and windows; to have a supply of batteries, water, first-aid supplies, etc. Or, if we’re caught outside, to hunker down in a ditch. Schools and even some businesses hold drills to prepare others in case a disaster happens.

Most of us actually already know all those things and that we should be prepared, but how many of us really are? Even those who seem prepared are stunned when such storms strike. The size, strength, and sheer magnitude of natural disasters amaze us and leave us speechless and searching for ways to express the awe and horror they produce in us.

Eighty-four years ago, on March 21, 1932, a massive storm system produced at least thirty-six tornadoes in eight states, ripping through Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. It killed more than 330 people and injured more than 2,100 others. Hardest hit was Alabama. Eight of the ten F4 tornadoes spawned by the system hit that state, killing 270 people.

Such tragedies are stark reminders of a truth that we are too apt to forget: No man knows his time, so everyone should be ready to enter eternity at any moment. Like the instructions to be prepared with our water, batteries, and first-aid supplies, we know what we should do, but too often people are not prepared–for either the temporal or the eternal. Somehow, we think that such things happen only to other people, not to us–until it hits us, and then it’s often too late.

Sixteenth-century English poet and cleric John Donne once ruminated about this very topic. He mused about hearing a bell tolling the death knell for someone in his village, and he found himself wondering for whom the bell tolled. It was always for someone else. But the more deeply he thought about it, the more he realized that the death bell tolls for every man at some point; therefore, we should be preparing for that day when the bell tolls for us. We know not when that day will be, but it will be one day. In his poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Donne wrote,

No man is an island, / Entire of itself. / Each is a piece of the continent, / A part of the main. / If a clod be washed away by the sea, / Europe is the less. / As well as if a promontory were. / As well as if a manor of thine own / Or of thine friend’s were. / Each man’s death diminishes me, / For I am involved in mankind. / Therefore, send not to know / For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.

Be prepared!

The Good Editor, a Rare Breed

Reading about editors the other day reminded me of two things: my own experiences as an editor and the editors with whom I’ve been privileged to work in my writing career.

Every writer, no matter how good, needs a good editor. Even editors who write need good editors. I’ve been on both sides of the fence, and I know the value of a good editor. Editors abound; good editors are rare.

For seven years, I was an editor with Lockheed Martin Energy Systems. (Before the merger, it was Martin Marietta Energy Systems.) I came in as a lowly Technical Publications Analyst I (the title makes the position sound more impressive than it really was) and was assigned a mentor, Mary Guy. Mary was a short, frail, chain-smoking, elderly woman who had begun editing at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant shortly after the Manhattan Project became public knowledge. She knew the Chicago Manual of Style like the back of her hand. She also knew the government bureaucracy of contract work and how to work it to her and other editors’ advantage. She was patient and taught me a lot, even sharing her work with me when things got slow after the Cold War ended and contract work dried up. Thanks to her, I quickly learned the ropes and advanced to TPA II and eventually Senior Editor.

When the layoffs came, shutting down the entire Publications Division, I ventured into independent editing for seven years. The Lockheed Martin years might be symbolic of the biblical seven years of plenty and the next seven (or maybe the first two or three) years the time of famine, but things got progressively better. I went from taking on any and all jobs that came along (eating when I had clients and dieting when I didn’t) to being more selective and even turning down jobs. All the while, I was writing my own stuff, dreaming of the day when I could write full time–for myself, not for a corporate boss.

When my last two daughters entered college, I got an opportunity to write (albeit for that corporate boss) history curricula. That’s when I was privileged to work with two great editors, Manda Kalagayan and Grace Zockel Geide.

Manda was a joy to work with because she was trained as a historian and knew and loved not only the subject matter but also editing. She was especially good at pointing out inconsistencies and redundancies in my work and was never afraid to challenge me.

Grace, although not educated in the historical content, was a stickler for the details of grammar and composition. She was also computer savvy and attuned to ways to fact check little details, especially the wording and punctuation of obscure quotations.

The examples of these three editors demonstrate to me the value of good editors. Each editor is–by his or her personality and bent–adept at a particular specialty, be it grammar, punctuation, capitalization, documentation, number usage, or any of the other myriad things editors must keep track of. An author is too focused on his or her content and often too close to the writing to recognize or identify such problems. That’s why a good editor is so valuable.

So thank you (posthumously), Mary Guy, for mentoring me. And thank you, Manda and Grace, for your patient hard work. All of you deserve more credit than you’ve received.

And if you who have read this are aspiring to write, be sure to find yourself a good editor. Find your own Mary, or Manda, or Grace to make your writing shine.

Thoughts Sparked by a Kodak Argus Projector

Looking through a nostalgia magazine the other day, I came across a half-page “1956 Advertising Flashback.”  It was an ad for a Kodak Argus slide projector with a two-tone-green carrying case and rectangular aluminum slide magazines. The ad grabbed my attention because my parents bought one of those sometime between 1956, when it came out, and 1959, when our family and another family took a trip “out West” together. For many years afterward, we kids enjoyed viewing for hours the slides taken during that trip.

Interestingly, the ad announced that the slide projector, carrying case, and aluminum slide magazines sold for only $66.50. No doubt, that was a lot of money back then, but today it seems like a steal. My parents must have been “in high cotton” about that time because I also remember that they not only bought that slide projector and took the Western vacation but also built our house and bought a brand new 1957 Chevrolet (“Coral, not pink!” Dad used to remind us).

But that ad also set me to thinking about the entrepreneur who made at least some of those memories possible–George Eastman, the inventor of both roll film and the box camera that allowed anyone to become a photographer, and at a reasonable price.

Eastman was born July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York. He died eighty-four years ago today, on March 14, 1932. Starting out as a simple, primarily self-educated farm boy, he grew into one of the most successful entrepreneurs of his day, having a net worth of approximately $94 million by the end of his life. And he amassed that fortune not on the backs of the people but by putting into the common man’s hands, financially within his grasp, the ability to make and record personal and family memories for generations to come.

In 1884, Eastman patented the process for making the first roll of transparent film. He then invented the camera that was made specifically to use roll film. He advertised his new camera with the slogan “You press the button; we do the rest.” The camera came to the purchaser preloaded with enough film for a hundred individual exposures. When the photographer had exposed the entire roll, he sent the whole camera to Kodak in Rochester, where they developed the film, made prints of the photos, inserted new film into the camera, and returned all of that to the customer.

By 1892, Eastman had founded Eastman Kodak Company and was mass producing not only roll film but also cameras and other photographic equipment. Because of his roll film, his company was more a business partner than a competitor for all of the other camera companies in the nation. After all, they used his film. His roll film made possible Thomas Edison’s 1891 motion picture camera and the whole movie industry. In recognition, Eastman has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But Eastman didn’t just make money; he gave a lot of it away, too. His donations made possible the founding of the Eastman School of Music and the schools of dentistry and medicine at Rochester University. He also gave large amounts to the Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes, black colleges in the South. Within his own company, he discouraged unionization by providing a paternal atmosphere in which he took care of his employees, including making them part owners of the company through a dividend program, thereby giving them a personal stake in the company’s success. He never sought recognition for his generosity.

Sadly, without God as his Savior and suffering a painful back problem late in life, Eastman saw no use in continuing to live, so he committed suicide in 1932. He left a note reading, “To my friends: My work is done. Why wait? GE.”

No man, however, can know when his life’s work is done. Only God knows that. As long as one has life–and that whether easy or hard–one must assume that God has something for him to do.

Every time you look at a photograph, you should thank God that George Eastman used his God-given talents to develop the technology that makes it possible for you to preserve and enjoy years later the memories that it captured. And then go out and record your own memories by living your God-given life to help others and glorify Him.

Honoring America’s March King, John Philip Sousa

Yesterday, March 6, marked the anniversary of the death of composer John Philip Sousa. He was known as the “March King” because he composed and directed so many military marches, including such favorites as “Stars and Stripes Forever”; “The Washington Post”; and “Semper Fidelis,” the Marine Corps’ official march.

Sousa was born November 6, 1854, and early showed an aptitude for music. He began studying music—voice, baritone, cornet, flute, piano, trombone, and violin—when he was only six years old. When he was twelve, the circus came to town (Washington, D.C., where Sousa’s family lived at the time), and Sousa, like other kids, was enthralled. On the day the circus left town, an official of the circus was passing Sousa’s home and heard him practicing the violin inside. Knocking at the door, he commented on the high quality of Sousa’s playing and asked if he would like to play with the circus band. Sousa agreed and was ready to pack his bags, but he made the mistake of telling a friend his plans. His friend told his mother, and the friend’s mother told Sousa’s parents. That was the end of that!

But Sousa’s father decided to put his son on a path that would give him a “proper” outlet for his talents and desires. He took him tot he Marine recruiting office and got him enlisted as an apprentice to the Marine Band. (Although the minimum age for such apprentices was fourteen and Sousa was only twelve, his father apparently either lied about his son’s age or had connections enabling him to get into the program.) Sousa remained in the Marines until 1875.

Upon his discharge from the Marines, Sousa began touring the country as a violinist. When he was only twenty-one years old, Sousa conducted the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore on Broadway. In 1880, he became the leader of the Marine Corps Band.

Sousa died at the age of seventy-seven. Appropriately, the last piece he conducted was “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Why not honor this great American this week by listening to some of his patriotic and entertaining music?

Life’s Uncertainties

Once again, I have been reminded of the uncertainties and the unknowns of life. Since returning to Michigan last Sunday night, we’ve had snow, sunshine, frigid temperatures, and melt-off by day.  T…

Source: Life’s Uncertainties

How We Got Our National Anthem

The VFW calendar on our refrigerator reminds me that today marks the anniversary of our national anthem, which was officially labeled such on March 3, 1931. Among my many thoughts about our anthem when I saw that event on the calendar was the nagging question of what our anthem was before March 3, 1931. Did we even have one?

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” as we know it today, was originally only a poem–no music–having been written on September 13, 1814, by 35-year-old Francis Scott Key while he was in Baltimore Harbor during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry. Later, it was set to the music of a popular British song of the day written by John Stafford Smith.

Although the song was recognized for use by the U.S. Navy in 1889, it was not yet the national anthem. In 1929, Robert Ripley published in his daily cartoon “Believe It or Not” the fact that the United States had no national anthem, and that started a nation-wide debate about how to correct that terrible oversight. During the debate, famed composer and band director John Philip Sousa weighed in on the question, favoring “The Star-Spangled Banner” as his preference.

Sousa’s nudge started a national movement that culminated on March 3, 1931, when Congress passed a resolution making Key’s song the official national anthem. President Herbert Hoover signed the resolution into law shortly thereafter.

Before 1931, other songs were popularly used as patriotic hymns, including “Hail, Columbia” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” But we had no official national anthem until “The Star-Spangled Banner” won that honor.

Typically, we sing only the first verse of the anthem. (And many people, notoriously many celebrities, singing the anthem before sporting events, manage to mangle even that one stanza.) If we happen to be in a venue where the audience is asked to sing more than that first verse, most of us just lip synch it or sing “watermelon, watermelon” to give the impression that we know more than we really do. If you have never read the other verses, take time to do so today as a way of honoring what that anthem stands for. It will give you a greater appreciation for what this great country once was and could still be today by God’s grace.

(Watch for my upcoming book Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries, to be published by McFarland Publishing in Spring 2016. Check it out at http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-1-4766-6521-4.)