Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (30 page)

LA PLUME DE MARCEL

Meanwhile, Marcel Bich, a French manufacturer of penholders and cases, watched with professional interest as the ballpoint industry took off and then crashed. He was impressed by the ballpoint pen’s innovative design, but appalled by the high cost and low quality. He realized that if he could come up with a dependable, reasonably priced pen, he could take over the market. So he licensed the Biro brothers’ patents, and began experimenting.

For two years, he bought every ballpoint pen on the market and systematically tested them, looking for their strengths and weaknesses. Then in 1949, Bich unveiled his triumph: an inexpensive ballpoint with a six-sided, clear plastic case. It wrote smoothly and didn’t leak or jam. They were a huge hit in Europe.

Looking ahead, he knew that his name would eventually be a problem in America. Rather than risk having his product referred to as a “Bitch Pen,” he simplified his name so it would be pronounced correctly no matter were it was sold—“Bic.”

CONQUERING AMERICA

In 1958, Bic set up shop in the U.S. As it turned out, it wasn’t his name that proved a problem—it was those shoddy pens people had bought a decade earlier. The American public had come to trust expensive pens, but refused to believe a 29¢ pen would really work.

So Bic launched an ad campaign to demonstrate that his pens would work the “first time, every time.” He flooded the airwaves with TV commercials—many live—showing that Bic pens still worked after “being shot from guns, drilled through wallboard, fire-blasted, and strapped to the feet of ice-skaters and flamenco dancers.” He also began selling them in grocery stores, and little shops near schools, where he knew students would see them.

The result: By 1967, Bic was selling 500 million pens—60% of the U.S. market. His competitors also began selling cheap, high-quality pens...and ballpoints were changed forever.

As
Time
magazine said in 1972: “Baron Bich has done for ballpoints what Henry Ford did for cars.”

Ronald B. Schwartz collected these gems in his book
, Men are Lunatics, Women are Nuts!

“There’s no such thing as a man...Just a little boy in a man’s body.”

—Elvis Presley

“If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

—Margaret Thatcher

“If you want to resist the feminist movement, the simple way to do it is to give them what they want and they’ll defeat themselves. Today, there are women who don’t know if they want to be a mother, have lunch, or be secretary of state.”

—Jack Nicholson

“A man’s home may seem to be a castle on the outside; inside, it’s often his nursery.”

—Clare Booth Luce

“I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

—Dorothy Parker

“As long as you know that most men are children, you know everything.”

—Coco Chanel

“The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they’re too old to do it.”

—Shirley MacLaine

“If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?”

—Linda Ellerbee

“Talking with a man is like trying to saddle a cow. You work like hell, but what’s the point.”

—Gladys Upham

“Men are gluttons for punishment. They fight over women for the chance to fight with them.”

—Vincent Price

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“Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.” —
Anonymous

Here’s the story of how New York became the skyscraper capital of the world. (Part II is on
page 138
.)

N
EW YORK’S FIRST SKYSCRAPER

In 1888, a young silk manufacturer named John Noble Stearns bought a skinny strip of land in lower Manhattan. He wanted to build something on it, but wasn’t sure what. He just knew he wanted to make a lot of money.

It happened that Stearns’ architect was familiar with the skeleton-construction method becoming popular in Chicago. He suggested constructing an 11-story building 159 feet long, 158 feet tall...but only 21-1/2 feet wide. Stearns liked the idea, and work on the Tower Building, New York’s first true skyscraper, began.

White Elephant

The Tower Building was so flat and thin that many people were afraid it would blow over in the first high wind. Stearns’ friends laughed at him when the building went up, and they refused to go inside when it was finished. Nobody wanted to be in it when it finally fell over.

But when several months passed and the Tower Building didn’t collapse, people began venturing in and climbing to the eleventh floor, one of the highest points in the entire city. New York’s love affair with tall buildings had begun.

UP, UP AND AWAY

The subsequent growth of the New York City skyline mirrored the improvements in elevator technology. From 1841 to 1894, the tallest building in the city was Trinity Church on lower Broadway, which had a steeple 284 feet high. For a few cents you could climb the rickety wooden staircase inside the steeple and take in the highest view the city had to offer.

But in the 1890s, after the Otis brothers had perfected the first
electric elevator, a burst of new construction completely transformed the business district of Manhattan. In 1894, the 17-story Manhattan Life Insurance Building became the first to top Trinity Church, making it the tallest building east of Chicago. It was quickly followed by scores of other skyscrapers, including the 21-story American Surety Building, the 23-story American Tract Society Building, and the 32-story Park Row Building—which, at 391 feet, finally beat out Chicago to make New York City the home of the tallest building on Earth.

THE SKYSCRAPER RACE

The Park Row Building was only the beginning. As George Douglas writes in
Skyscrapers: A Social History in America:

New York hadn’t seen anything yet. In the years between 1900 and the First World War...skyscrapers rose like tall grasses on the summer prairie....New York business leaders came to see in the skyscraper not only convenient and economical office space, but a possible means of corporate glory and aggrandizement. A great tower, obviously, could not only house management but glorify it.

The Singer Building

In the 1890s, the Singer Sewing Machine Company built a 10-story office building at Broadway and Liberty St. in Manhattan. They added to the building repeatedly over the years, and in 1906 announced the addition of a 612-foot-tall, 47-story tower that would be “higher than all existing skyscrapers by 200 to 300 feet.”

The building also boasted every state-of-the-art convenience the early 1900s had to offer: centralized steam heat complete with individual thermostats, a central vacuum cleaning system, hot and cold running water in every office, and 16 elevators—more than in any other building in the world.

The tower opened on May 1, 1908, and held the title of the world’s tallest building for a mere 18 months. Sixty years later this precious architectural gem set another record: it became the tallest building ever demolished, when it was razed to make way for the “banal and colorless” United States Steel Building.

The Metropolitan Life Building

Next on the list of “tallest buildings in the world” was the Metropolitan
Life Building, which in 1909, became the first office building to pass the 700-foot mark. It was 88 feet higher than the Singer Building.

The land and the building cost an astronomical $6 million, a shocking sum that was difficult for Metropolitan’s conservative shareholders to stomach. But the head of Metropolitan justified the expense by explaining that since the building was fully occupied, it cost almost nothing in the long run...and generated invaluable free advertising for the company.

Metropolitan capitalized on its headquarters in ways the Singer company never dreamed of: It made the massive lantern at the very top of the pointed roof into its corporate symbol, as well as the inspiration for the company’s slogan, “The light that never fails.” And on election night in 1908, it even used the beacon to beam the results of the presidential election out to the rest of the city.

The Metropolitan Building still stands, and is still the home office of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

JUST THE BEGINNING

Both the Singer Tower and the Metropolitan Life Tower were impressive sights to behold, but the first building to really capture the public’s imagination—and cement its love affair with the skyscraper—was the Woolworth Building, a magnificent 60-story edifice that to this day is considered one of the most beautiful skyscrapers ever built.

For that story, turn to
page 206
.

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RANDOM “THOUGHTS”

“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.”

—Former U. S. Vice-President Dan Quayle

“The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It’s only the people that make them unsafe.”—
Former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo

Here’s another installment of BRI’s Top Ten of the Year list.

1972

(1) The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face —
Roberta Flack

(2) Alone Again (Naturally) —
Gilbert O’Sullivan

(3) American Pie —
Don McLean

(4) I Gotcha —
Joe Tex

(5) Candy Man —
Sammy Davis, Jr.

(6) Without You —
Nilsson

(7) Lean On Me —
Bill Withers

(8) Brand New Key —
Melanie

(9) Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me —
Mac Davis

(10) Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast —
Wayne Newton

1973

(1) Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree —
Tony Orlando and Dawn

(2) Bad, Bad Leroy Brown —
Jim Croce

(3) Let’s Get It On —
Marvin Gaye

(4) Killing Me Softly With His Song —
Roberta Flack

(5) My Love —
Paul McCartney / Wings

(6) Why Me —
Kris Kristofferson

(7) Will It Go Round In Circles —
Billy Preston

(8) Crocodile Rock —
Elton John

(9) You’re So Vain —
Carly Simon

(10) Touch Me In The Morning —
Diana Ross

1974

(1) The Way We Were —
Barbra Steisand

(2) Seasons In The Sun —
Terry Jacks

(3) Come And Get Your Love —
Redbone

(4) Love’s Theme —
Love Unlimited Orchestra

(5) Dancing Machine —
Jackson Five

(6) The Loco-Motion —
Grand Funk Railroad

(7) The Streak—
Ray Stevens

(8) TSOP —
MFSB

(9) Bennie And The Jets —
Elton John

(10) One Hell Of A Woman —
Mac Davis

1975

(1) Love Will Keep Us Together —
The Captain & Tennille

(2) Rhinestone Cowboy —
Glen Campbell

(3) Philadelphia Freedom —
Elton John

(4) Shining Star —
Earth, Wind & Fire

(5) My Eyes Adored You —
Frankie Valli

(6) Before The Next Teardrop Falls —
Freddy Fender

(7) Fame —
David Bowie

(8) One Of These Nights —
Eagles

(9) Laughter In The Rain —
Neil Sedaka

(10) Thank God I’m A Country Boy —
John Denver

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