1933 - Everyday Life

Everyday Life

The first All-American Soap Box Derby is organized at Dayton, Ohio, by local newspaper photographer Myron E. Scott, 26, whose editor has told him to get pictures of children at play. Scott finds two boys coasting down Big Hill Road on wooden platforms which they have mounted on baby carriage wheels. He asks them to gather some of their friends who have made similar contraptions for a race, sees one rig that reminds him of a soap box, and comes up with the name. He persuades the paper to sponsor a series of local races during the summer, and next year the event will attract 40,000 spectators to watch more than 300 contenders—all boys—race down Burkart Hill. The Chevrolet division of General Motors will agree to sponsor the event, and it will be moved in 1935 to Akron, partly because that city's four big tire manufacturers want it and partly because the people of Dayton have found it disrupting (see 1972).

Helen Jacobs is the first woman to wear shorts in U.S. tournament play (see Alvarez, 1931). Others still wear skirts knee-length or longer.

The mesh polo shirt invented by French tennis star René Lacoste is made of a piqué mesh cotton fabric and will become a classic (see Izod, 1951).

YKK slide fasteners begin to compete with Talon fasteners (see Sundback, Talon, 1913; "zipper," 1926). Finding himself out of a job because his employer has gone out of business after being charged with tax evasion, Japanese entrepreneur Tado Yoshida, 26, invests the equivalent of $170 to start a new company under the name Yoshida Kabushiki Kaisha, employs two former associates, and within a few months has hired 10 girls to run his machines, imitating U.S.-made zippers for the growing Japanese clothing industry. YKK will grow to become the world's largest producer of zippers.

The Dy-Dee Doll that sucks water from a bottle and wets its diaper is introduced by New York's Effanbee Doll Co., which has acquired patent rights from the doll's Brooklyn inventor Marie Wittman. More than 25,000 are sold in its first year and production will continue through the 1950s.

Vaseline inventor Robert A. Chesebrough dies at Spring Lake, N.J., September 8 at age 96 (he retired in 1909, dove from the springboard of the Beach Club pool 2 years ago, and ascribed his longevity to the fact that he ingested some of his product each day).

Dreft goes on sale October 10; introduced by Procter & Gamble for dishwashing in hard-water areas west of the Appalachians, the first hymolal-salt detergent is costlier than soap but will prove a popular addition to Ivory soap, Oxydol, Camay, and Crisco (see Persil, 1907; Tide, 1946).

Windex for cleaning windows is introduced by Cincinnati-based Drackett Co. of 1921 Drano fame.

Roto-Rooter Services Co. has its beginnings in the world's first electric drain-cleaning machine, invented by Des Moines plumber-engineer Samuel O. Blanc, 50, who 6 years ago helped his son clear a clogged drain at the young man's apartment. Determined to find a better and faster way, he has used a one-sixth horsepower washing machine motor, roller-skate wheels, and a length of 3/8-inch wire to create a device whose blades cut tree roots out of sewer lines without digging up the ground. Blanc sells his machine for $250 each to people who take them to their home towns and go into business.