Eclipse Gasoline Dispenser

Winner: 2000 IDEA Gold in Business & Industrial Products

Designers: Herbst LaZar Bell, Inc.

Client: Marconi Commerce Systems

The Ergon chair, with an innovative gas-cylinder post mount to absorb impact of "heavy" sitters, was designed by William Stumpf for Herman Miller, Inc. and introduced in 1976.

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Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), the first new US regional transit system since 1907, went into service three years behind schedule. Designed in 1965 by Carl Sundberg, R. Figgins and Montgomery Ferar of Sundberg-Ferar and Rohr Industries, it set a new typeform for modern mass transit.

The Boeing 747 "jumbo-jet" made its first public flight in 1969. It carried 342-490 passengers and was 231 feet long. Interiors were designed by Walter Dorwin Teague Associates (WDTA). It went into transatlantic service in early 1970 for Pan American Airlines.

Amana Refrigeration, a subsidiary of Raytheon Manufacturing Company, in 1967 introduced this first compact microwave oven, called the Radarange. It was a 115 V countertop model, retailing for $495, and cooked hamburgers in 35 seconds. The compact size was made possible by a small, efficient electron tube, developed in 1964 by the Japanese, which replaced older, bulkier tubes called magnetrons.

This elegant Royal Traveller attaché case, designed by Clair Samhammer, FIDSA of Design West Inc. for the Samsonite Corp., was a refined improvement of its predecessor.

The original design, the Classic, introduced in 1962 by Samsonite, was also designed by Samhammer, at that time with Melvin Best Associates, in Pasadena, CA.

In 1963, Kodak introduced its Instamatic 100 camera designed by Frank A. Zagara of Kodak staff. It could be loaded with film cartridges ready to shoot. Price was $15.95. The Instamatic won a Certificate of Design Merit from the Industrial Designers Institute, and was produced until 1966.

With the company on its last legs in 1961, new Studebaker president Sherwood H. Egbert called on Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) in desperation to design an innovative sports car.

Loewy had worked with Studebaker since 1936, designing, with Virgil Exner (1909-1973) and Clair Hodgeman (1911-1992), the lightweight 1939 Champion, the highly successful 1947 postwar models (with Exner), and, with Robert E. Bourke (1916-1996), the acclaimed 1953 hard-top Starliner and Starlight coupes.

Chevrolet's new compact car, the Corvair, designed by Ron Hill and GM Styling Staff, entered the market in 1960, and received a coveted annual design award from the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI). To most designers, it was a welcome innovative design response to compact European imports, and hailed as a pointed departure from the tail fin and chrome excesses that dominated the previous decade in Detroit (see 1957 Chrysler "Forward Look").

The first automatic office copier to make copies on plain paper, the 914, is introduced by Haloid Xerox. A floor-mounted device, it was designed by James G. Balmer of Armstrong-Balmer & Associates, in collaboration with Don Shepardson, John Rutkus and Hal Bogdenoff of Xerox, who had developed an engineering prototype.