Big deal.
As explained where I found the photo, Timken Bearings had that locomotive built by ALCO as a demonstrator of the benefits of using tapered roller bearings instead of babbitted journal bearings.
This wasn't the photo I was looking for, as I had remembered a Timken ad from the late `40s.
But I did find this one:
I'm almost surprised that Carnival hasn't tried to build one....
That brings back something that always puzzled me. That 50's ad campaign by Timken included TV commercials, with a guy in a suit demonstrating why tapered roller bearings are better. Did they expect Mrs. Suburbia to ask Mr. Suburbia to bring home a dozen bearings, and be sure to get the good tapered kind? Or fishing for odd-lot stock buyers, maybe?
ReplyDeleteMore about creating consumer demand for products with the bearings, or a willingness to pay a little extra for them.
ReplyDelete"Ask your mechanic if Timken bearings are right for you."
The monster flying boat....like the wings on Pegasus (they'd have to be *MUCH* bigger and the physiology of this chimera would look a lot different), one wonders at the ICE engine that would have been necessary to get this into the air. Maybe something like the container and super-tanker engines....
ReplyDeleteNote to Deadstick:
ReplyDeleteI suspect that Timken's industrial ads ran in trade publications, and – only possibly – in publications that although "general interest" were read heavily by business executives and CEOs, such as U.S. News and World Report and maybe even Time. ("Mabel,call Frumpley down in the Purchasing Department and see what brand of bearings he's buying.")
Why "in home" media as well as "out of home" media? For the same reason as Amazon is asking people to e-mail the CEO of Hachette and side with Amazon in the Great War Of Publishing Whatever:
It gets their attention.
Yours crankily,
The New YOrk Crank