Automotive Inventions

Humor sent to me courtesy of Kon Berkovich:

You may not be aware that it was the three Goldberg brothers, Norman, Hyman, and Max that invented and developed the first automobile air-conditioner.

On July 17th, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97.  The Goldberg brothers walked into old man Henry Ford’s office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that three 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 degrees — turned on the air-conditioner and cooled the car off immediately.

Old man Ford 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 where it was installed.

Now old man Ford was more than just a little bit Anti-Semitic, and there was no way he was going to put the Goldberg’s name on 2 million Ford cars.  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 so, even today, all Ford air-conditioners show on the controls, the names: “Norm, Hi, & Max”.

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