Travis Salisbury was an Industrial Designer who worked for various government agencies before his retirement in 1977. In the late 1950's, Salisbury received an honorary degree in Design from the Montana Institute, and later took a job as director of design for the Montana State Legislature. This was an honorary position i.e. he didn't get paid. His main goal as a designer was to "help people get along and have fun while doing it." He organized a huge number of "supper days" events where opposing politicians would cook each others favorite meal and then eat them together. This helped Montana greatly. In 1961 he designed Chair #406 (named after Helena's area code). This chair looked completely normal except for one small feature -- a V-shape under one of the legs.
The reason for this "V" was to allow a game to be played with multiple chairs. People would play by hitting a ball through the "V" with some sort of mallet. Salisbury wanted people to be able to blow off steam in-between sessions. The "V" was large enough to let a croquet ball pass. All of the #406 chairs have since been sold off or scrapped -- people got too caught up in the game and it became a distraction.
After multiple years of writing proposals to the U.S. mint, Salisbury finally hit the big time in 1965 with his Average Citizen Quarter Program (or ACQP). The idea was simple: put an average citizen on a quarter. For a year, applications were scoured over until Randy Young, a steelworker from Pittsburgh, was selected. The coins were minted in 1967. Less than two months after the coins were minted, Randy Young was arrested for armed robbery -- the coins became known as "Jailbird Quarters." The Mint immediately stopped production of the coins, and the ones that existed were given an acid treatment to hide their features and to shame both Salisbury and Young.
After the public disgrace of the Jailbird Quarters, Salisbury moved to New Jersey and began to write textbooks for elementary school students. The only one of his books that made it very far was Learn to Control Your Machine. The art on the cover was a drawing that Salisbury's uncle drew of Travis at age ten.
The text of the book was simply "Learn to control your machine" over and over again, much like in the movie The Shining. At least five times per page there was a spelling error, 500 errors in the book. Students were graded on the amount of errors that they could find. Salisbury made sure that there were at least 100 variations of the book so that the students couldn't cheat. Some students were actually helped by the book, others were scarred for much of their lives.
After finally making money with his book, Salisbury went back out west to Montana, and got his honorary Design Director position back. This was 1973. After noticing that many of the politicians were making embarrassing and even incriminating doodles in their notebooks, Salisbury made them a custom notebook that would solve the problem. They would have the usual-sized ruled paper, but there would be a bigger column left near the binding when they tore off pages. This notebook had an area for doodles and a doodle book that the politicians could keep for later once all of the pages had been ripped off. A doodle book from the Montana State Legislature recently sold on eBay for $1000.
Salisbury worked four more years in Montana and retired in 1977. Some say that he was a pioneer and others say that he severely hurt the chances of other designers with dreams of working in government. Salisbury still lives in Montana where he's working on a new book about how the Jailbird Quarter fiasco was planned called Randy Young is Innocent.
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Design Fancy is a series of short stories about fictional designers who make fictional things. The stories (and the objects) are by Matt Brown. Special thanks to Greg Burkett.
by Max Eddy | 12:54 pm, February 11th, 2011
The President has recently announced a new plan to free up huge chunks of the wireless spectrum, increase the national coverage of 4G networks, and install a wireless public safety network. These are ambitious goals being set by the administration, perhaps the most being the 4G investment which the President has pledged will cover 98% of Americans.
To make this all work, the White House is planning to raise $27 billion in spectrum auctions, and then turning that money around to fund the investment in these areas:
- $5 billion to bring 4G internet connections to rural America
- $3 billion for 4G research and development to coincide with the construction
- $10.7 billion for the wireless public safety network, which was called for years ago by the 9/11 commission
- $9.6 billion for budget deficit reduction
The push behind this investment invites comparison to the past efforts to bring telephone communication and highway travel to all corners of America, and the administration has framed it’s arguments in support of the investment in the same light. From Networkworld:
“America’s businesses are building out 4G networks to much of the nation,” the White House said in a statement. “Nevertheless, absent additional government investment, millions of Americans will not be able to participate in the 4G revolution. This investment will … extend access from the almost 95 percent of Americans who have 3G wireless services today to at least 98 percent of all Americans gaining access to state-of-the-art 4G high-speed wireless services within five years.”
Commentators have noted, however, that the entire plan hinges on the money brought in from auctions. As any eBay patron can tell you, those don’t always work out how you want. But the emphasis on bringing Internet connectivity (and public safety) to the nation as a whole, is a worthy one. Keep in mind, this isn’t so much about 4G as it is bringing the Internet to mostly poor, isolated, outlying communities. Hopefully this initiative, however it really pans out, will give every American a more equal footing in the burgeoning information economy. Perhaps it will be little things like someone making some extra money on Etsy, or bigger things like a farmer finding a better price for his crop.
Either way, it will bring us a step closer to all being united, as as a people, underneath that glorious community that truly identifies this country: Facebook. I mean, uh, the American dream.
(Via Engadget, Networkworld)
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Florida is becoming a potential new battleground for union rights. New Republican Governor Rick Scott is proposing that teachers in his state contribute five percent to their pensions. Florida teachers rank 47th in the country in salary ...
New York Times - Bill Keller - Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
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