"Frigidaire" as a common noun

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General Motors introduced air conditioning with their 1953 models. Initially the system included the underhood compressor and a trunk-mounted evaporator and fan. Consequently, the system was only available in closed sedans and coupes (no wagons or convertibles). The earliest set of controls that I've personally seen were in a 1956 Buick, which by then had all of the equipment installed under the hood with the air distribution in the instrument panel. However, at no place on the instrument panel did the words "air conditioning" appear. There were levers and switches for "heat" and "defrost" and.........you guessed it.......... "Frigidaire".
Lawrence
 
GM A/C . . .

This reminds me of a funny story an acquaintance told me back in the '70s. He had been a teenager in the mid '50s, back when new car introductions each fall were a Big Deal. It's easy to forget now, but in the '50s each year brought lots of advancements in both engineering and conveniences, in addition to new styling. My friend grew up in an upscale neighborhood and his parents always drove Cadillacs, which of course had trunk-mounted a/c with the clear plastic ducts to carry cold air into the roof where it was distributed from small registers above the windows.

One September a neighbor bought a new and fully loaded Olds 98, and so the first weekend my friend's family hurried over to check it out. One of the new features was a/c that was ducted through the dash and not the headliner. As they walked back across the street after having checked out the Olds, my friend's father remarked "That Olds is a nice car, but those vents in the dash will never fly . . . who'd want all that cold air blowing in their face?"
 
My Italian grandparents and their children all referred to the refrigerator as a Frigidaire. They did evolve from victrola to record player, but mostly referred to everything else by its brand name.
 
FYI : Frigidaire is the French pronunciation of refrigerator

according to my high schoool French teacher who was born and raised in France that is....PAT COFFEY
 
LordKenmore, didn't a mimeographed test "smell"

Mimeographs don't actually have the 'smell' that you are referring to alr2903....

....Ditto's do.

Mimeographs use ink for printing from the master whereas Ditto's use alcohol which is where the smell comes from - a combination of the transfer of master and alcohol combination.

I vividly remember Mrs Wood, the first aid and copy person, running off copies with her plastic half-sleeves and apron protecting her clothes when I was 7 or 8 year old (1976-77) and the smell from the copy room was incredible. I'm surprised she wasn't high all the time.
 
Mimeograph or Spirit Duplicator

I remember in High School Office class, we had to learn how to use both. The mimeograph had the stencil that was wrapped around an ink laden drum and produced copies in the color of the ink in the drum (But could be changed with a revolutionary thing called a color pad). The stencil was usually a waxy green in color and when one typed and/or wrote, the wax was pushed away and there were holes left in the stencil.

The Spirit Duplicator was the one that was most commonly done in the wonderful purple print and smelled of alcohol when fresh off the duplicator.

OMG, I'm Old!

duetboy
aka Jeff
 
Appliguy

Thank you for your post! I was 99% sure that the generic French word for refrigerator was "frigidaire", but it's been 40+ years since high school French!

Hey, maybe I'm not so old after all!
 
Here in the UK .....

The most common example of this, in most areas of the country is that a vacuum cleaner, no matter what its make is a Hoover. Indeed it has also become a verb, as in "I must do the Hoovering today"

Anther example, in my family at least, is that washing up liquid is always "Fairy Liquid" - for those not in the know its a P&G main brand dishwashing liquid.

Al
 
By the way Eddie

The term "Out of Doors" was quite common in the UK meaning of course Go Outside or simply Outside. Its converse "Indoors" still has common useage in London, although usually not necessarily in the most complimentary sense, as "'Im Indoors" or "'Er Indoors". In each case the ' signifies the letter H, but I have spelt it as (commonly) pronounced. The expression gained wider useage as a result of a long running TV comedy/drama "Minder" where one of the lead charactors would always refer to his wife as 'Er Indoors - the implication being that she was something of a dragon.

The expression "I was working indoors at the weekend" carries the clear meaning, in London at least, that one was doing some jobs around the house

Al
 
Got me going now ....

I am an accountant. When I started work in the late 1970s, and the use of computers was not nearly as common as now, "accounting machines" would often be used. Although there were several brands around they were almost always called NCR machines. They were noisy and the really old models had large carriages (not unlike a typewriter but twice as wide) which moved backwards and forwards. The office I first worked in used Burroughs machines, like the one pictured below, which used a "golfball" typing mechanism.

I snapped the pic in the small computer museum at Bletchley Park - someone happened to say within my earshot "I wonder how that worked", I dont think they expected the fullsome answer they got LOLOLOLOL

vacbear58++2-23-2010-17-41-52.jpg
 
And more ....

The green device on the left hand side of the Burroughs is an old type of adding machine called a Comptometer, again a brand name which gained generic status, although again there were many brands notably Sumlock in the UK - my first office had a Burroughs, although in the four years I was there I never actually saw anyone use it, and it was a wierd hybrid combining the technique of entry with electronics - usually comptometers were mechanical. In the days before widespread computerisation it was quite usual to have a room full of women operating these machines (they were usually specially trained) to carry out large volumes of calculations - not unlike a typing pool. I was privaledged to know one such woman in my next job (their use had been phased out in the mid-70s, but she still kept hers on a special trolley by her desk and used it from time to time) who showed me how it worked. Basically, the hands were placed across the first 10 columns of keys (units, tens, hundreds, thousands etc) so that the operator could enter 10 charactors in a number simultaneously - it was amazing to watch. They could also do subtraction & division but I never actually got a chance to find out how. Another skill lost in the mists of time - many "comp" operators moved to be key punch operators as computers became more widespread
Al
 
Mimeograph or Spirit Duplicator

Still in the office, what others here know as a mimeograph, was always referred to as a Gestetner - again after a brand name. When I was at school, before photocopying was the norm, "handouts" would be prepared on such a machine and a friend who was a teacher was still using them at the end of the 1980s. He always reckoned that their use was something akin to sniffing glue, the fumes were so strong.
Al
 
He always reckoned that their use was something akin to snif

I can agree with that....the fumes they gave off were pretty strong....

...but then so were 'Texta' permenant markers....but who thought to sniff them?
 
The Gestetners were still in use at my school in the late 90's, they were only economical and worth the hassle if you were doing upwards of 500 copies. When I first started school they were extremely fast compared to the Photocopiers of the time. By 2000 the old ones werent much faster than a good Digital copier.

I'm impressed that they still exist. The model I've linked does 130 A3 spot colour ppm.

http://www.gestetner.com/products/006_CopyPrinters/cp6334.xhtml
 
Speaking of pain killers...

...Panadol is another brand name that has come into generic usage in this country...

...it is now used to describe any paracetemol only analgesic probably similar to Tylenol would be in the US...
 
In Memphis we refered to liquid chlorine bleach as Clorox and in Jackson TN they refered to it as Purex.Cleanser was refered to as Comet.
 
My grandparents used to call bleach "Purex", a camera was called a "Kodak". Made sense to him because he owned a Kodak still camera and movie camera/projector.

The same goes for calling instant photographs "Polaroids"
 
PineSol

We had a housekeeper who insisted my mother buy PineSol and ONLY PineSol. Mom knew when to follow orders, and this was one of those times. She began referring to any brand of floor cleaner as "Spic And Span"
 

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