Zippo

Improving on an earlier Australian cigarette lighter, George G Blaisdell created the style icon known as The Zippo. The Zippo Manufacturing Company was formed in 1932 and production began in 1933 in Bradford Pennsylvania, USA — and the design has remained unchanged ever since.

The Swiss Army Knife

Mr.Karl Elsener thought-up and designed a pocket multi-tool in the small village of Ibach, Switzerland. It was legally registered on 1897-06-12, and Mr.Elsener formed a manufacturing company — using his mother’s name (Victoria) and the French word for stainless steel (inoxydable) to get the company name: ‘Victorinox’, and used the Swiss Flag in a crest as the brand logo badge.

Bialetti

There are four crucial ingredients to this design story:

Coca-Cola

The ‘hobble skirt’ Coca-Cola Bottle is a brand icon of unrivalled status. Because it is known as the ‘hobble skirt’ bottle, many people assume it was designed after a form of female attire.

However in 1915, ‘The Root Glass Co’ were trying to design a new bottle for their client, Coca-Cola, and so their Mr.Clyde Edwards went to the Terre Haute City library in Indiana for research. Because the client was called “Coca-Cola” he made sketches of the kola nut and coca leaf, but he was ‘divinely’ inspired to include the cacao tree seed pod (chocolate) in his many sketches — and it was these that were worked up for the original Coca Cola bottle design that went into production the following year.

Screwed Up

I was looking at the Harbeth loudspeaker site when I was amused by their obvious annoyance with US Americans mixing up Phillips and Pozidrive screws and screwdrivers… they said:

The correct tools for the job
With the exception of a few legacy Harbeth’s which have used hex-head (Allen) screws, all our loudspeakers have been assembled with Pozidrive™ or Superscrews™. These are NOT ‘Phillips’ (or ‘Philips’) screws but a more sophisticated and expensive alternative. Few people seem to be aware of the difference, and in the USA it seems difficult to obtain the correct screwdriver despite the substantial advantages of the Pozidrive type.
Pozidrive screwdrivers have a far better grip on the screw head, allow far more force to be applied, allow a much better grip between the items especially in reverse mode and are much more resistant to ‘mashing’ of screw heads. If you ever need to remove a Harbeth screw please do NOT use the Phillips type screwdriver as this will destroy the screw heads. Please refer to the picture of Pozidrive v. Phillips here and be sure to use the correct one. The wires from the crossover push-fit onto the drive units so no soldering tools are needed.

OK, OK, I think we geddit! lol! Click the pic to enlarge!