In 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression in the United States, on a foggy summer night at the country club in Bradford, Pennsylvania, George Blaisdet was talking to a friend about that. My friend was lighting a cigarette with a $1 lighter made in Austria. It was an ugly contraption that could be set on fire by removing the copper cover.
"Based on what you're wearing, couldn't you use a decent lighter?" Blaise asked.
"You know what? George," his friend said, "this thing works!" Blaisdale was inspired, and he bought the distribution rights of this lighter in the United States, but the sales did not go to What profit does he bring. This lighter is troublesome to use. Blaisdale set out to design a machine that would be both functional and good-looking.
Blaisdai knows his own strength well. He learned the trade in his father's workshop as a young man, working 59 hours a week and earning 10 cents an hour.
He changed the Austrian lighter into a square box, which fit nicely in his hand. The lighter cover is connected to the body with a hinge, and there is an air net around the cotton core.
The "easy-to-use and beautiful" lighter was born. Inspired by another great invention at the time, the zipper, Blaisdale decided to name his new lighter Zippo. Aside from some improvements to the spark wheel and case finish, Blaisdale's original remains largely unchanged to this day.
In 1932, the first ZIPPO was launched. Ten years later, the production volume exceeded one million. By 1969, there were more than 100 million ZIPPO lighters on the market. On April 15, 1996, the 300 millionth ZIPPO left the factory. If these 300 million lighters were laid flat, it would be enough to cover a football field including the shooting area with a layer 12.8 centimeters thick. More than 300 million lighters produced by ZIPPO enjoy lifetime maintenance services, and no one is left behind. The first generation ZIPPO has long been a treasure of collectors, and the price of replicas of the out-of-print 1932 prototype is much higher than the price of regular ZIPPO.