Word: tobe
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...shots now," says Mr. Tobe Deutschmann of Canton, Mass. "But they still send us supplies C.O.D., and I let 'em come that way just to remind myself that I'm not any different now than when this place never even had a drinking fountain...
...Tobe's business, which he likes to describe as "the removal of electrical garbage" (noise suppressers to the layman) was never able to support drinking fountains in its old red-brick factory until war came along. Now it's terrific—and a prime example of how a little businessman with unbridled enthusiasm and pixie screwball-ishness can capitalize 14 years of struggle and adversity to make himself invaluable to the war effort...
...Tobe talked himself into the radio business on a shoestring after the last war, made $68,000 in 1927 on condensers. But that year an engineer showed him how a filter would eliminate static—and since then Tobe hasn't been interested in anything else. "Everybody was making condensers, but nobody was suppressing noises. That was a real service—and I figure you have no right to be in business and make a profit unless you offer a service...
Trouble was, nobody much wanted him to render his service. Since Tobe's noise suppressers go on everything but the radio, he had to try to sell vacuum-cleaner and hair-dryer and clock and fan and telephone manufacturers on adding it to their products. In the depression most of them had enough trouble as it was, without monkeying with a radio silencer no one had ever heard...