Daytona 500
The Daytona 500 is a 500-mile-long Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series motor race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is the first of two Cup races held every year at Daytona, the second being the Coke Zero 400, one of three held in Florida, with the annual championship showdown Ford EcoBoost 400 being held at Homestead south of Miami, it is one of the four restrictor plate races on the Cup schedule. The inaugural Daytona 500 was held in 1959 coinciding with the opening of the speedway and since 1982, it has been the season-opening race of the Cup series; the Daytona 500 is regarded as the most important and prestigious race on the NASCAR calendar, carrying by far the largest purse. Championship points awarded, it is the series' first race of the year. Since 1995, U. S. television ratings for the Daytona 500 have been the highest for any auto race of the year, surpassing the traditional leader, the Indianapolis 500 which in turn surpasses the Daytona 500 in in-track attendance and international viewing.
The 2006 Daytona 500 attracted the sixth largest average live global TV audience of any sporting event that year with 20 million viewers. The race serves as the final event of Speedweeks and is sometimes known as "The Great American Race" or the "Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing". Since its inception, the race has been held in mid-to-late February. From 1971 to 2011, again since 2018, the event has been as associated with Presidents Day weekend, taking place on the Sunday before the third Monday in February; the winner of the Daytona 500 is presented with the Harley J. Earl Trophy in Victory Lane, the winning car is displayed in race-winning condition for one year at Daytona 500 Experience, a museum and gallery adjacent to Daytona International Speedway. Denny Hamlin is the defending winner of the Daytona 500, having won it in 2019; the race is the direct successor of shorter races held on the Daytona Beach Road Course. This long square was on the sand and on the highway near the beach. Earlier events featured 200-mile races with stock cars.
A 500-mile stock car race was held at Daytona International Speedway in 1959. It was the second 500-mile NASCAR race, following the annual Southern 500, has been held every year since. By 1961, it began to be referred to as the Daytona 500, by which it is still known. Daytona International Speedway is 2.5 miles long and a 500-mile race requires 200 laps to complete. However, the race is considered official; the race has been shortened four times due to rain and once in response to the energy crisis of 1974. Since the adaptation of the green–white–checker finish rule in 2004, the race has gone past 500 miles on eight occasions. 1959: Lee Petty, patriarch of the racing family, won the inaugural Daytona 500 on February 22, 1959, defeating Johnny Beauchamp. 1960: Junior Johnson made use of the draft a little-understood phenomenon, to win while running a slower, year-old car in a field of 68 cars, most in Daytona 500 history through the present day. 1965: The first rain-shortened Daytona 500 was the 1965 event.
Fred Lorenzen was in the lead when the race was called on lap 133 of 200. 1966: Richard Petty becomes the first two-time winner, having won the 1964 race. Through 2015, only 11 drivers have won 2 or more Daytona 500s. 1967: Mario Andretti led 112 of the 200 laps including the last 33 to capture his first and only win in the Cup Series. 1968: For much of this race, both Cale Yarborough and LeeRoy Yarbrough traded the lead. With 5 laps to go, Cale made a successful slingshot pass on the third turn to take the lead from LeeRoy and never looked back as he won his first Daytona 500 by 1.3 seconds. 1969: Having learned from his unrelated surname-mate the previous year, LeeRoy Yarbrough would use the same sling-shot treatment out of turn 3 on Charlie Glotzbach, to score the victory on the final lap. 1971: Richard Petty becomes the first three-time winner, including the 1964 and 1966 races. Through 2015, only 5 drivers have won 3 or more Daytona 500s. 1972: A. J. Foyt cruised into the lead on lap 80 and stayed there through the 200 lap race, lapping the entire field.
Foyt beat second place Charlie Glotzbach by nearly two laps, with Jim Vandiver finishing 6 laps down in third. 1973: Richard Petty becomes the first four-time winner, including the 1964, 1966 and 1971 races. Through 2015, only Petty and Cale Yarborough have won 4 Daytona 500s. 1974: During the start of the 1974 NASCAR season, many races had their distance cut ten percent in response to the 1973 oil crisis. As a result, the 1974 Daytona 500 was shortened to 180 laps, as symbolically, the race "started" on lap 21. Richard Petty became the first of only 3 drivers to win consecutive Daytona 500s, while setting a mark of 5 total wins. 1976: In the 1976 race, Richard Petty was leading on the last lap when he was passed on the backstretch by David Pearson. Petty didn't clear Pearson; the contact caused the drivers to spin into the grass in the infield just short of the finish line. Petty's car didn't start, but Pearson was able to keep his car running and limp over the finish line for the win. Many fans consider this finish to be the greatest in the history of NASCAR.
1979: The 1979 race was the first Daytona 500 to be broadcast live on national television, airing on CBS, whose audience was
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies between 1909 and 1935. Mix appeared in 291 films, he was Hollywood's first Western star and helped define the genre as it emerged in the early days of the cinema. Thomas Hezikiah Mix was born January 6, 1880 in Mix Run, about 40 miles north of State College, Pennsylvania, to Edwin Elias Mix and Elizabeth Heistand, he grew up in nearby DuBois, where his father, a stable master for a wealthy lumber merchant, taught him to ride and love horses. He spent time working on a local farm owned by a lumber businessman, he had dreams of being in the circus and was rumored to have been caught by his parents practicing knife-throwing tricks against a wall, using his sister as an assistant. In April 1898, during the Spanish–American War, he enlisted in the Army under the name Thomas E. Mix, his unit never went overseas, Mix failed to return for duty after an extended furlough when he married Grace I. Allin on July 18, 1902.
Mix was listed as AWOL on November 4, 1902, but was never court-martialed nor even discharged. His marriage to Allin was annulled after one year. In 1905, Mix married Kitty Jewel Perinne, but this marriage ended within a year, he next married Olive Stokes on January 10, 1909, in North Dakota. On July 13, 1912, Olive gave birth to their daughter Ruth. In 1905, Mix rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade with a group of 50 horsemen led by Seth Bullock, which included several former Rough Riders. Years Hollywood publicists muddled this event to imply that Mix had been a Rough Rider himself. Mix lived in Guthrie, working as a bartender and other odd jobs, he was sheriff of Dewey, Oklahoma in 1911. He found employment at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch, one of the largest ranching businesses in the United States, covering 101,000 acres, hence its name; the ranch had its own touring Wild West show. He stood out as a skilled horseman and expert shot, winning national riding and roping contests at Prescott, Arizona, in 1909, Canon City, Colorado, in 1910.
Mix began his film career as a supporting cast member with the Selig Polyscope Company. His first appearance was in a short film, The Cowboy Millionaire, released on October 21, 1909. In 1910, he appeared as himself in a short documentary film, Ranch Life in the Great Southwest, in which he displayed his skills as a cattle wrangler. Shot at the Selig studio in the Edendale district of Los Angeles, the film was a success, Mix became an early motion picture star. Mix performed in more than 100 films for Selig, many of which were filmed in New Mexico. While with Selig he co-starred in several films with Victoria Forde, they fell in love, he divorced Olive Stokes in 1917. By Selig Polyscope had encountered severe financial difficulties, Mix and Forde both subsequently signed with Fox Film Corporation, which had leased the Edendale studio, they married in 1918 and had a daughter, Thomasina Mix, in 1922. Mix made more than 160 cowboy films throughout the 1920s; these featured action-oriented scripts contrasted with the documentary style of his work with Selig.
Heroes and villains were defined and a clean-cut cowboy always saved the day. Millions of American children grew up watching his films on Saturday afternoons, his intelligent and handsome horse Tony became a celebrity. Mix did his own stunts and was injured. In 1913 Mix moved his family to a ranch he purchased in Prescott called Bar Circle A Ranch, he spent a lot of time at the ranch. A number of the movies were filmed in the Prescott home. During this time, Mix had success in the local Prescott Frontier Days rodeo, which lays claim to being the "world's oldest rodeo." In 1920, he took first prize in a bull-riding contest. Today, his Bar Circle A Ranch developed into a planned community called Yavapai Hills where there’s still a street named Bar Circle Ranch Road. Mix's salary at Fox reached $7,500 a week, his performances were noted for their realism and for screen-friendly action stunts and horseback riding, attention-grabbing cowboy costumes, showmanship. At the Edendale lot, Mix built. Loaded with western props and furnishings, it has been described as a "complete frontier town, with a dusty street, hitching rails, a saloon, bank, doctor's office, surveyor's office, the simple frame houses typical of the early Western era."
Near the back of the lot an Indian village of lodges was ringed by miniature plaster mountains which were said to be, on screen, "ferociously convincing". The set included a simulated desert, a large corral, a ranch house with no roof. Mix played hard-to-get, threatening to move to Argentina to make films or to join the circus, but he signed with FBO, although he left the studio for Universal after salary disputes with FBO studio head Joseph P. Kennedy, he said of Kennedy that he was a "tight-assed, money-crazed son-of-a-bitch". In 1929, Mix was a pallbearer at the funeral of Wyatt Earp. Mix appeared with the Sells-Floto Circus in 1929, 1930 and 1931 at a reported weekly salary of $20,000, he and Forde divorced in 1931. Meanwhile, the Great Depression had wiped out most of his savings. In 1932, he married Mabel Hubbell Ward. Universal Pictures approached him that year with an offer to perform
Phaeton body
A phaeton is a style of open automobile without any fixed weather protection, popular from the 1900s until the 1930s. It is an automotive equivalent of the horse-drawn lightweight phaeton carriage. A popular style in the US from the mid–1920s and continuing into the first half of the 1930s was the dual cowl phaeton, with a cowl separating the rear passengers from the driver and front passenger. Phaetons fell from favour when closed cars and convertible body styles became available during the 1930s; the term "phaeton" became so and loosely applied that any vehicle with two axles and a row or rows of seats across the body could be called a phaeton. Convertibles and pillarless hardtops were marketed as "phaetons" after actual phaetons were phased out; the term phaeton had described a light, open four-wheeled carriage. When automobiles arrived it was applied to a light two-seater with minimal coachwork; the term was interchangeable with spyder, derived from a light form of phaeton carriage known as a spider.
Meant to denote a faster and lighter vehicle than a touring car, the two terms became interchangeable. A detachable folding or rigid roof could be added before a drive in preparation for inclement weather, side curtains or screens could be installed once the roof was in place; this was temporary and partial relief rather than the more permanent, watertight protection offered by a convertible. As a result, a phaeton was weather-ready convertible. Since the body was open, it was easy to add or remove an extra row of seating where space had been left in the original construction. A phaeton differs from a convertible in having no winding or sliding windows in the doors or the body, no permanent roof, whether rigid or folding. There were double phaetons, with two rows of seats, triple phaetons, or closed phaetons. After 1912, American use of the term began to be most associated with the "triple phaeton" body configurations that had room for three rows of seats, whether all three were installed or not.
This led to the term "phaeton" becoming similar to, interchangeable with, the term "touring car". A specific use of the term "phaeton" is with the dual cowl phaeton, a body style in which the rear passengers were separated from the driver and the front passengers by a cowl or bulkhead with its own folding windshield; the phaeton and the touring car were popular up to the 1930s, after which they were replaced by the convertible, which had a retractable roof, but included side windows so that the car could be enclosed. The Willys-Overland Jeepster was the last true phaeton produced by a major US automaker, was introduced ten years after the previous phaeton to be offered by an American manufacturer. In 1952, a year after Willys last offered the Jeepster, Chrysler built three Imperial Parade Phaetons for ceremonial use, one by New York City, one by Los Angeles, one intended for the White House but used for events throughout the United States; these were dual-cowl phaetons custom-built on Chrysler Corporation's stretched Imperial Crown Limousine chassis.
In the late 1930s, Buick included a "convertible phaeton" body style, a four-door convertible, as the doors had windows in them and the car could be closed. During the 1956 model year, Mercury marketed the four-door hardtop versions of its Montclair and Monterey models as "phaetons."In 2004, Volkswagen introduced a vehicle with the name Phaeton, which has a typical four-door sedan body style
Americans
Americans are nationals and citizens of the United States of America. Although nationals and citizens make up the majority of Americans, some dual citizens and permanent residents may claim American nationality; the United States is home to people of many different ethnic origins. As a result, American culture and law does not equate nationality with race or ethnicity, but with citizenship and permanent allegiance. English-speakers, speakers of many other languages use the term "American" to mean people of the United States; the word "American" can refer to people from the Americas in general. The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated to America or are descended from people who were brought as slaves within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands, who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, additionally America expanded into American Samoa, the U. S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists and immigrants. It includes influences of African-American culture. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia and Latin America has had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics. In addition to the United States and people of American descent can be found internationally; as many as seven million Americans are estimated to be living abroad, make up the American diaspora.
The United States of America is a diverse country and ethnically. Six races are recognized by the U. S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes: White, American Indian and Alaska Native, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, people of two or more races. "Some other race" is an option in the census and other surveys. The United States Census Bureau classifies Americans as "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino", which identifies Hispanic and Latino Americans as a racially diverse ethnicity that comprises the largest minority group in the nation. People of European descent, or White Americans, constitute the majority of the 308 million people living in the United States, with 72.4% of the population in the 2010 United States Census. They are considered people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa. Of those reporting to be White American, 7,487,133 reported to be Multiracial. Additionally, there are Latinos.
Non-Hispanic Whites are the majority in 46 states. There are four minority-majority states: California, New Mexico, Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia has a non-white majority; the state with the highest percentage of non-Hispanic White Americans is Maine. The largest continental ancestral group of Americans are that of Europeans who have origins in any of the original peoples of Europe; this includes people via African, North American, Central American or South American and Oceanian nations that have a large European descended population. The Spanish were some of the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States in 1565. Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida a part of New Spain, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the United States. Twenty-one years Virginia Dare born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the original Thirteen Colonies to English parents. In the 2017 American Community Survey, German Americans, Irish Americans, English Americans and Italian Americans were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States forming 35.1% of the total population.
However, the English Americans and British Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as they tend to self-report and identify as "Americans" due to the length of time they have inhabited America. This is over-represented in the Upland South, a region, settled by the British. Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income, median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation. According to the American Jewish Archives and the Arab American National Museum, some of the first Middle Easterners and North Africans arrived in the Americas between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries. Many were fleeing ethnic or ethnoreligious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition, a few were taken to the Americas as slaves. In 2014, The United States Census Bureau began finalizing the ethnic classification of MENA populations. According to the Arab American Institute, Arab
Coachbuilder
A coachbuilder or body-maker manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles. Coachwork is the body of an automobile, horse-drawn carriage, or railroad passenger car; the word "coach" was derived from the Hungarian town of Kocs. Custom or bespoke coachbuilt bodies were made and fitted to another manufacturer's rolling chassis by the craftsmen who had built bodies for horse-drawn carriages and coaches. Separate coachbuilt bodies became obsolete when vehicle manufacturers found they could no longer meet their customers' demands by relying on a simple separate chassis mounted on leaf springs on beam axles. Unibody or monocoque combined chassis and body structures became standardised during the middle years of the 20th century to provide the rigidity required by improved suspension systems without incurring the heavy weight, consequent fuel, penalty of a rigid separate chassis; the improved more supple suspension systems gave vehicles better roadholding and much improved the ride experienced by passengers.
As well as true bespoke bodies the same coachbuilders made short runs of more-or-less identical bodies to the order of dealers or the manufacturer of a chassis. The same body design might be adjusted to suit different brands of chassis. Examples include Salmons & Sons' Tickford bodies with a patent device to raise or lower a convertible's roof, first used on their 19th century carriages, or Wingham convertible bodies by Martin Walter. Coachbuilt body is the British English name for the coachbuilder's product. Custom body is the standard term in North American English. Coachbuilders are: carrossiers in French, carrozzeria in Italian, Karosseriebauer in German and carroceros in Spanish. Coachbuilt body is the British English name for mass produced vehicles built on assembly lines using the same but simplified techniques until more durable all-steel bodies replaced them in the early 1950s. Unless they were for mass produced vehicles justifying the cost of tooling up dies and presses coachbuilt bodies were made of hand-shaped sheet metal alluminium alloy.
Pressed or hand-shaped the metal panels were fastened to a wooden frame of light but strong timber. Many of the more important structural features of the bespoke or custom body such as A, B and C pillars were cast alloy components; some bodies such as those alloy bodies fitted to many Pierce-Arrow cars contained little or no timber though they were mounted on a conventional steel chassis. The coachbuilder craftsmen who might once have built bespoke or custom bodies continue to build bodies for short runs of specialised commercial vehicles such as luxury motor coaches or recreational vehicles or motorhome bodied upon a rolling chassis provided by an independent manufacturer. A conversion is built inside an existing vehicle body. A British trade association the Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers, was incorporated in 1630; some British coachmaking firms operating in the 20th century were established earlier. Rippon was active in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, Barker founded in 1710 by an officer in Queen Anne's Guards.
Brewster, the oldest in the U. S. was formed in 1810. The maker would provide the coachworks with a chassis frame, brakes, steering system, lighting system, spare wheel and rear mudguards and bumpers and dashboard; the easily damaged honeycomb radiator enclosed and protected by a shell became the main visual element identifying the chassis' brand. To maintain some level of control over the final product, chassis manufacturers' warranties would be voided by mating them with unapproved bodies; when popular automobile manufacturers brought body building in-house, larger dealers or distributors of ultra-luxury cars would pre-order stock chassis and the bodies they thought most to sell, inventory them in suitable quantities for sale off their showroom floor. In time, the practice of commissioning bespoke coachwork dwindled to a prerogative of wealth. All ultra-luxury vehicles of automobiling's Golden Era before World War II sold as chassis only. For instance, when Duesenberg introduced their Model J, it was offered as chassis only, for $8,500.
Other examples include the Bugatti Type 57, Cadillac V-16, Ferrari 250, Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8, all Rolls-Royces produced before World War II. Delahaye had no in-house coachworks, so all its chassis were bodied by independents, who created some of their most attractive designs on the Type 135. Most of the Delahayes were bodied by Chapron, Franay, Figoni et Falaschi and many more carrossiers; the practice remained in limited force after World War II, with both luxury chassis and high-performance sports cars and gran turismos, waning by the late 1960s. Rolls-Royce acquiesced, debuting its first unibody model, the Silver Shadow, in 1965, before taking all R-R and Bentley bodying in-house. Independent coachbuilders survived for a time after the mid-20th century, making bodies for the chassis produced by low-production companies such as Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Producing body dies is expensive, only considered practical when large numbers are involved—though, the path taken by Rolls-Royce and Bentley after 1945 for their own in-house production.
Because dies for pressing metal panels are so costly, from the mid 20th century, many vehicles, most notably the Chevrolet Corvette, were clothed with large panels of fiberglass reinforced resin, which only require inexpensive molds. Glass has since been re
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University is a private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is known for its academic strength, proximity to Silicon Valley, ranking as one of the world's top universities; the university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr. who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U. S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon; the school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would be known as Silicon Valley; the university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.
The university is organized around three traditional schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate and graduate level and four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in Law, Medicine and Business. Stanford's undergraduate program is the most selective in the United States by acceptance rate. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference, it has gained the most for a university. Stanford athletes have won 512 individual championships, Stanford has won the NACDA Directors' Cup for 24 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, Stanford students and alumni have won 270 Olympic medals including 139 gold medals; as of October 2018, 83 Nobel laureates, 27 Turing Award laureates, 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, faculty or staff. In addition, Stanford University is noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups.
Stanford alumni have founded a large number of companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011 equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world. Stanford is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires and 17 astronauts, is one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child; the institution opened in 1891 on Stanford's previous Palo Alto farm. Despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I; the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, established in 1962, performs research in particle physics. Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most Cornell University and Harvard University.
Stanford opened being called the "Cornell of the West" in 1891 due to faculty being former Cornell affiliates including its first president, David Starr Jordan. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to have higher education be accessible and open to women as well as to men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt this radical departure from traditional education, Stanford became an early adopter as well. Most of Stanford University is on one of the largest in the United States, it is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley 37 miles southeast of San Francisco and 20 miles northwest of San Jose. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land is within the city limits of Palo Alto; the campus includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park and Portola Valley.
The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, Sand Hill Road. The United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP Codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail. It lies within area code 650. Stanford operates or intends to operate in various locations outside of its central campus. On the founding grant: Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a 1,200-acre natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy, it contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, 2 miles on 426 acres of land. Golf course and a seasonal lake: The university has its own golf course and a seasonal lake, both home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander; as of 2012 Lake Laguni
Fisher Body
Fisher Body was an automobile coachbuilder founded by the Fisher brothers in 1908 in Detroit, Michigan. Fisher & Company continues to use the name; the name and its iconic "Body by Fisher" logo were well known to the public, as General Motors vehicles displayed a "Body by Fisher" emblem on their door sill plates until the mid-1990s. Fisher Body's beginnings trace back to a horse-drawn carriage shop in Norwalk, Ohio, in the late 1800s. Lawrence P. Fisher and his wife Margaret Theisen had a large family of eleven children. Lawrence and Margaret were married in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1876. Margaret Theisen Fisher lived in Detroit; the Fisher brothers were: Frederick John Charles Thomas William Andrew Lawrence P. Fisher Edward F. Fisher Alfred J. Fisher Howard A. Fisher In 1904 and 1905, the two eldest brothers and Charles, came to Detroit where their uncle Albert Fisher had established Standard Wagon Works during the latter part of the 1880s; the brothers found work at the C. R. Wilson Company, a manufacturer of horse-drawn carriage bodies, beginning to make bodies for the automobile manufacturers.
With financing from their uncle, on July 22, 1908 Fred and Charles Fisher established the Fisher Body Company. Their uncle soon wanted out and the brothers obtained the needed funds from Detroit businessman Louis Mendelssohn who became a shareholder and director. Within a short period of time and Fred Fisher brought their five younger brothers into the business. Prior to forming the company, Fred Fisher had built the body of the Cadillac Osceola at the C. R. Wilson Company. Starting in 1910, Fisher became the supplier of all closed bodies for Cadillac, built for Buick. In the early years of the company, the Fisher Brothers had to develop new body designs because the "horseless carriage" bodies did not have the strength to withstand the vibration of the new motorcars. By 1913, the Fisher Body Company had the capacity to produce 100,000 cars per year and customers included: Ford, Chalmers and Studebaker. Successful, they expanded into Canada, setting up a plant in Walkerville, by 1914 their operations had grown to become the world's largest manufacturer of auto bodies.
One reason for their success was the development of interchangeable wooden body parts that did not require hand-fitting, as was the case in the construction of carriages. This required the design of new precision woodworking tools; the Fisher Body and Buick Chassis were built in Saint John New Brunswick Canada in the 1920s. In 1916, the company became the Fisher Body Corporation, its capacity was 370,000 bodies per year and its customers included Abbot, Cadillac, Chandler, Church-Field, Elmore, EMF, Herreshoff, Krit, Packard and Studebaker. The company constructed the now-abandoned Albert Kahn-designed Fisher Body Plant 21, on Piquette Street, in Detroit, in 1919; the building is now part of the Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District. At the time, the company had more than 40 buildings encompassing 3,700,000 square feet of floor space. Fisher Body – West Fort & Livernois Fisher Body Plant 2 – St. Antoine Fisher Body Plant 4 – Oakland Ave. Fisher Body Plant 12 – 1961 E. Milwaukee Fisher Body Plant 18 – West End Ave Fisher Plant 21 – 700 Piquette Fisher Plant 23 – 601 Piquette Fisher Plant 37 – 950 E. Milwaukee at HastingsIn a 1919 deal put together by president William C.
Durant, General Motors bought 60% of the company. The Fisher company purchased Fleetwood Metal Body in 1925, in 1926 was integrated as an in-house coachbuilding division of General Motors. Fisher Body Division was dissolved in 1984, with some of its plants taken over by the newly created Fisher Guide Division, the remaining facilities absorbed by other GM operations. Founded in 1947 by members of the Fisher family, Fisher & Company continues to use the name, with such divisions as Fisher Dynamics. From its beginning in the "horseless carriage shop" in Norwalk, Ohio, to its sale in 1919 and 1926 to General Motors, the Fisher Body Company was built by the Fisher brothers into one of the world's largest manufacturing companies; the company owned 160,000 acres of timberland and used more wood, carpet and thread than any other manufacturer in the world. It had more than 40 plants and employed more than 100,000 people, pioneered many improvements in tooling and automobile design including closed all-weather bodies.
Fisher Body's contribution to the war effort in both World War I and World War II included the production of both airplanes and tanks. Alfred J. Fisher was Aircraft Director for Fisher Body. Fisher Body developed the unsuccessful Fisher P-75 Eagle heavy fighter. On August 14, 1944, the Fisher brothers resigned from General Motors to devote their time to other interests, including the Fisher Building on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit; the brothers mounted a bid to take-over Hudson Motors, but their tender offer fell short of its market value and the effort was rejected by stockholders. On January 19, 1972, the last of the Fisher brothers died; the seven brothers donated millions of dollars to schools and other charitable causes and were active in directing those endeavors. The Fisher family has continued on in the automotive industry with Fisher Corporation
