12/20/11

CHRISTMAS: Official CADET BICYCLE SPEEDOMETER!


It's not too late to get your order in to Santa. I know you all want a Cadet bicycle speedometer. It's probably the most eye-popping mind-blowing item that could be under your tree!!!

Be maniacal about your obsession! Tell everyone over and over again until they start to sneer when you walk into a room. Drive them nuts! NUTS I TELL YOU! NUTS!!!

Put it next to dad's place at the dinner table. Remember, subtlety makes you weak. We don't want to appear weak around Christmas. You'll be the talk of your block as they cart you away!

Just imagine making your folks turn gray before their time!

And oh yeah, getting a bike under the tree is nice, but a speedometer is OUT OF THIS WORLD! And a magical tissue floating in front of your sister is just the best!


Click on image to see it larger.

SOURCE: February 1964 She's Josie.

Manufactured by the Stewart-Warner Corporation:
Stewart-Warner is a US manufacturer of vehicle instruments, a.k.a. gauges. The company was founded as Stewart & Clark Company in 1905 by John K. Stewart. Their speedometers were used in the Ford Model T. In 1912 John Stewart joined with Edgar Bassick to make vehicle instruments and horns. Bassick owned Alemite Co and Stewart had bought the Warner Instrument Company, thus the name was changed to Stewart-Warner Corporation. The company started in Chicago and built a manufacturing plant on Diversey Parkway. The building kept expanding and finally covered one-million square feet (93,000 m²) and six floors. They also made radios and refrigerators, and produced the ubiquitous "zerk" grease fitting, named after its inventor, associated with the company. In the last years of the company's Chicago factory, it owned a number of aging six-spindle Brown & Sharpe and New Britain screw machines.

They also made heat exchangers starting in the 1940s under the "South Wind Division", but since then it became independent of its parent. They still use the Stewart-Warner name, and the web site is hyphenated: http://www.stewart-warner.com/

In the 1980s the company was bought by BTR plc who in the early 1990s decided to relocate to Juarez, Mexico and Stewart-Warner was taken over by another management team. In early 1998 Stewart-Warner was bought by Datcon Instrument Company (later renamed to Maxima Technologies), but kept the Stewart-Warner brand. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)
Now that I've got the speedometer I want those tassle thingies that went on the handle bars. I want my Huffy decked out.

5 comments:

  1. And the little bell you ring with your thumb? How about one of them!

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  2. Oh yes! Must have the bell. Integral to the experience.

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  3. Anonymous12/21/2011

    I need a bulb horn. (Actually do have one.)
    But it IS the magic tissue that takes my breath away.

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  4. "And a magical tissue floating in front of your sister is just the best!"

    That is hilarious!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Felix0912/06/2012

    The two bicycles I had in my youth were both ordered from Montgomery Ward catalogs. And I so much wanted a speedometer but, alas, I never did get one. Though, for a while, I did have a headlight, a big basket and the long, handlebar tassels -- until I realized boys shouldn't have a basket nor the tassels. So they went, with no regrets. However, I did not want one of those bells. In my area those bells were then for the tricycles of the much younger set. Why I knew that but was too dense to know about the basket and tassels I don't know. :-0

    ReplyDelete