The Goldberg Brothers - The Inventors of the Automobile Air Conditioner
Here's a little factoid for automotive buffs or just to dazzle your friends.

The four Goldberg Brothers

The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Max, invented and developed the first automobile air-conditioner. On July 17, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97 degrees.

The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford's office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto industry since the electric starter.

Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he come out to the parking lot to their car.

They persuaded him to get into the car, which was about 130 degrees, turned on the air conditioner, and cooled the car off immediately.

The old man got very excited and invited them back to the office, where he offered them $3 million for the patent.

The brothers refused, saying they would settle for $2 million, but they wanted the recognition by having a label, 'The Goldberg Air Conditioner,'on the dashboard of each car in which it was installed.
Now old man Ford was more than just a little anti-Semitic, and there was no way he was going to put the Goldberg's name on two million Fords.

They haggled back and forth for about two hours and finally agreed on $4 million and that just their first names would be shown.

And so to this day, all Ford air conditioners show -- Lo, Norm, Hi, and Max -- on the controls.

I can hear your groans from here. Control yourself !!!

 

That's not even a groaner. It's a failure of a joke.

The punchline is inadequate because "Hi" isn't a first name, and the historical set-up is too in-depth for a punchline that doesn't deliver.

It'd be better if you cut the set-up down to, "Hey, you know who invented the air conditioner?" and then cut down the punchline to "Lowe, Norm and Max". The elaborate details of the set-up are only worth it if they somehow all tie in to the punchline; neither Ford, Goldberg, antisemitism nor details of the weather tie in at all. The only worthwhile reason to keep the details is if you make the set-up four times longer and turn it into a shaggy dog story.

 

 

hey thanks begle

 

Nobody ever said that life as a critic is easy.

 

But when you toss that much emphasis into it.

 

 

It's a vocal joke, not a written one.