Private Lugnutz
Well-known member
If the funny title hooked you, I'll cut right to the chase.
Smart Jewish mensch named Jindrich Waldes in Prague, Czechoslovakia, invents and patents a clever jeweled clasp for ladies dresses that his company makes and sells a bazillion of in factories in Prague, Dresden, Milan, and elsewhere, including Long Island in the Roaring 20's, branded with exotic names, such as Koh-I-Noor (after a famous diamond), which he TM'ed in 1902. If you really want to nerd out and discover your inner Alan Alda and your inner historian-fashionista, Waldes & Company published a really cool pamphlet in 1922, linked here, tracing the history of the dress clasp from animal bones to Cleopatra to his Koh-i-Noor.
In the 1930’s he is approached by a few industrialists who notice that the principles of the clasp also makes a very useful clip for other applications, such as the wrist pins in early pistons and brakes and many other mechanical components.
Yes, I'm talking about "snap rings" ("circlips" in the UK)!
In my tools research, I occasionally run into this "Progress is Fine, but…" blogspot and the owner does a very nice job of summarizing the Waldes history in an article linked here. If you want a really good short read with neat period images, I highly recommend it.
But if you’re in a hurry to get to the revenge part, here is a bio I found for Waldes in a book called the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.
That was published in 1943, two years after Waldes' death in 1941, just a few weeks after arriving in the US, via Cuba, after escaping the death camps.
He never got to see it, but the coolest part of the story for me comes next.
The US military (including the commission that established Army-Navy (“AN”) parts standards) standardized all their snap rings on the Waldes Koh-I-Noor type, and his company made a crapload of them during WWII. Pliers, too, of course, to open and close them. So many that after the war they changed their name tp Waldes Kohinoor.
They also made $7,544,000 worth of 20mm anti-aircraft projectiles, bombs, bomb tails, and bomb tail fuzes. That's a lot of fuzes, AA rounds, and bombs. From the grave, he literally had a hand in blasting the Nazis to hell.
Smart Jewish mensch named Jindrich Waldes in Prague, Czechoslovakia, invents and patents a clever jeweled clasp for ladies dresses that his company makes and sells a bazillion of in factories in Prague, Dresden, Milan, and elsewhere, including Long Island in the Roaring 20's, branded with exotic names, such as Koh-I-Noor (after a famous diamond), which he TM'ed in 1902. If you really want to nerd out and discover your inner Alan Alda and your inner historian-fashionista, Waldes & Company published a really cool pamphlet in 1922, linked here, tracing the history of the dress clasp from animal bones to Cleopatra to his Koh-i-Noor.
In the 1930’s he is approached by a few industrialists who notice that the principles of the clasp also makes a very useful clip for other applications, such as the wrist pins in early pistons and brakes and many other mechanical components.
Yes, I'm talking about "snap rings" ("circlips" in the UK)!
In my tools research, I occasionally run into this "Progress is Fine, but…" blogspot and the owner does a very nice job of summarizing the Waldes history in an article linked here. If you want a really good short read with neat period images, I highly recommend it.
But if you’re in a hurry to get to the revenge part, here is a bio I found for Waldes in a book called the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.
That was published in 1943, two years after Waldes' death in 1941, just a few weeks after arriving in the US, via Cuba, after escaping the death camps.
He never got to see it, but the coolest part of the story for me comes next.
The US military (including the commission that established Army-Navy (“AN”) parts standards) standardized all their snap rings on the Waldes Koh-I-Noor type, and his company made a crapload of them during WWII. Pliers, too, of course, to open and close them. So many that after the war they changed their name tp Waldes Kohinoor.
They also made $7,544,000 worth of 20mm anti-aircraft projectiles, bombs, bomb tails, and bomb tail fuzes. That's a lot of fuzes, AA rounds, and bombs. From the grave, he literally had a hand in blasting the Nazis to hell.
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