Posted by Don in Portland [108.162.246.146] on Saturday, December 08, 2018 at 01:49:45 :
In Reply to: OT: Coleman Lantern Case posted by CO Gary [172.68.34.139] on Friday, December 07, 2018 at 13:14:27 :
My grandfather was born in 1880 in England. After service during the Boer War in horse-drawn artillery, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1906. He worked in a hardware store in Boulder, Colorado from 1911 to 1958, selling supplies to the hard rock gold and silver miners in the earlier years. This is from a later interview:
Stevens remembers a tall, well dressed salesman who came into the store with a new type lamp that he had invented. By means of a hand pump, air was brought into the lamp which burned gasoline. There was a Welsbach mantle on the burner, and the effect, when lighted, was a brilliant white glow. The store bought some of these lamps and they proved to be an immediate success. Not long afterwards the inventor added lanterns, stoves, and camp stoves to his line of wares. Valentine's was the first store in the area to introduce these products.
The salesman's name was Coleman - a name which has become synonymous with camping equipment. "Mr. Coleman was a very quiet, polite, and religious man," recalls Stevens. "He always wore a black Prince Albert coat. Each time he came he left lots of pamphlets and religious booklets with us. I think he tried harder to get us to become good Christians than he did to sell us stoves and lanterns."
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