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Chance You Take ~ 1965 General Tire and Rubber Company
🕑 Added 2020-10-08 20:36:58 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tire
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Continental Tire the Americas, LLC, d.b.a. General Tire, is an American manufacturer of tires for motor vehicles. Founded in 1915 in Akron, Ohio by William Francis O'Neil, Winfred E. Fouse, C.J. Jahant, Robert Iredell, & H.B. Pushee as The General Tire & Rubber Company (also referenced as The General Tire & Rubber Co.; commonly referred to as General Tire starting in the 1960s) using funding from O'Neil's father, Michael G., who owned Akron's O'Neil's department store, the company later diversified (in 1984) into a conglomerate (GenCorp) with holdings in tires (General Tire), rubber compounds (DiversiTech General), rocketry and aeronautics (Aerojet), entertainment and news (RKO General), and real estate. The tire division was sold to Germany's Continental in 1987, becoming Continental Tire North America, before its re-incorporation again to its current name. The compounds division was spun off & became OMNOVA Solutions. The rocketry business was kept and expanded, and after a couple company name changes, the parent company is now Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings...
Formation
William Francis O'Neil had a Firestone franchise in Kansas City. He started a small manufacturing facility for tire repair products, and called it The Western Rubber & Supply Company (also referenced as The Western Rubber & Supply Co.) initially, then The Western Tire & Rubber Company (also referenced as The Western Tire & Rubber Co.).
As Firestone grew, it sold additional franchises, reducing the territories of its earlier franchisees. Dissatisfied, O'Neil decided to compete with Firestone instead, using the expertise he had gained with Western Tire and Rubber. He went into partnership with four other men, using funding gained from his father, and formed The General Tire & Rubber Company in 1915 using $200,000 in capital borrowed from the store. O'Neil & his associates hired away some Firestone managers.
Initially, they focused on repair materials, as with Western Tire & Rubber, but in 1916 they expanded into tire manufacturing, focusing on high-end products. Early products included:
General Jumbo, a premium replacement for Ford Model T trucks
Low-pressure General Balloon Jumbo
Dual 90 tires
Growth...
Conglomeration
Radio, television, and film
Because the Depression was particularly hard on manufacturing, The General Tire & Rubber Company bought several Ohio radio stations on which it advertised. In 1943, it diversified the core business strategy, purchasing the Yankee Network and the radio stations it owned...
Among other stations, it added KHJ-AM-FM in Los Angeles and KFRC-AM-FM in San Francisco to its stable from the Yankee acquisition. In 1952, it bought WOR/WOR-FM/WOR-TV in New York City and merged its broadcasting interests into a new division, General Teleradio (purchased from R. H. Macy & Company alongside WOR & Bamberger Broadcasting; named as a result of The General Tire & Rubber Company's increased investment in WOR).
The company's final move into entertainment was the acquisition of RKO Radio Pictures from Howard Hughes in 1955 for $25 million. The General Tire & Rubber Company was interested mainly in using the RKO film library to program its television stations, so it sold the RKO lot at Sunset and Gower in Hollywood to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions in 1956 for $6 million... The radio stations became some of the leading broadcasters in the world, but the division was dragged down by unethical conduct at its television stations. This culminated in the longest licensing dispute in television history, eventually forcing RKO General out of the broadcasting business by 1991.
Rocketry
In the late 1930s, the United States Army became interested in rockets. A group of California Institute of Technology engineers won a contract to produce rocket engines to speed airplane liftoff, and formed a company named Aerojet. The group succeeded with liquid-fuel rockets, but needed additional materials science and manufacturing expertise to create more sophisticated solid-fuel rockets. Aerojet went into partnership with The General Tire & Rubber Company, using their capitalization, expertise with rubber binders, and chemical manufacturing facilities. The partnership was renamed Aerojet-General...
