Eureka
There was a time when most schoolchildren in America would have been able to explain why Eureka vacuum cleaners bear that name.
The origin of “Eureka” lies in Ancient Greece, where, according to legend, a certain King of Syracuse commissioned a goldsmith to fashion a new crown for him. The King suspected that the artisan had substituted cheaper silver, and turned to the philosopher Archimedes for a way to prove his case. While mulling the problem over, Archimedes decided to take a bath. While getting into his bath, he noticed that the water rose as he sat down, and realized that gold, being denser than silver, would displace less water than silver, and that the honesty of the King’s goldsmith could be measured by just such a simple test. When Archimedes realized this, goes the story, he leaped from the bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse stark naked shouting “Eureka! Eureka!”, which is Greek for “I have found it!”
Fast forward now to Detroit in 1909, where businessman Fred Wardell was founding his company to produce a new lightweight kind of vacuum cleaner. Dreaming of revolutionizing the industry, Wardell felt that “Eureka” was the perfect name for his creation, and within a few years the industry apparently agreed, awarding Eureka the Grand Prize at the 1915 San Francisco International Exposition. And Fred Wardell didn’t even have to get in a bathtub.
Formica
Devotees of TV home-renovation and decorating shows know that the really important decision in re-doing the family kitchen today has nothing to do with appliances, lighting, or what you put on the floor. No, it’s by your countertops that you will be judged, and many’s the home loan that has been floated to bridge the golden gap betwixt faux marble and the real, preferably imported Italian, article. Whether the subsequent bologna sandwiches taste better for being prepared on such a pricey surface is, of course, debatable.
Back in the 1950s and 60s, however, the fashionable modern home was one whose owners had sprung for the countertop of the future — Formica. By the late 60s and 1970s, in fact, Formica seemed to top nearly every flat surface in the land. Restaurant tables, school desks, retail counters and even the floor of Radio City Music Hall in New York City were all made of sleek, smooth Formica.
For a biology student of the day, the name Formica must have presented a bit of a puzzle. “Formica” is also the genus name of the taxonomic family Formicidae, those pesky little insects better known as “ants.”
Fortunately, there is no connection between the name “Formica” and ants, but the path Formica took from its invention to America’s countertops was a bit convoluted. Way back in 1912, Dan J. O’Conor was a young engineer working for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh when he had a good idea. If you were to coat fabric with resin while it rolled onto a spindle, you could then cut the roll lengthwise, flatten it, and, after curing, you would have a laminate material that would be light, durable, and, most important to O’Conor’s line of work, an excellent electrical insulator. O’Conor promptly took his invention to his bosses at Westinghouse, who agreed that it was a clever idea and paid him, according to standard company policy, the princely sum of one dollar for the patent.
Mr. O’Conor must have been less than thrilled with this treatment, because within weeks he and his friend Herbert A. Faber both quit Westinghouse and started their own company to produce the material. At that time the standard material for electrical insulators was mica, a natural family of minerals. As the new synthetic material was intended as a substitute for mica, the name “Formica” was a natural.
Microsoft
For a company that makes the software that runs most of the world’s computers (and has been accused of trying to run the world), Microsoft seems to have had some surprising difficulty deciding how to spell its own name.
When founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen were just starting out in 1975, Gates wrote a letter to Allen referring to their nascent partnership by the name “Micro-Soft,” an abbreviation of “microcomputer software.” At that time, the dawn of the age of personal computing, any computer smaller than a bathtub was considered to be “micro,” from the Latin for “small.” Slightly larger computers were dubbed “minicomputers,” an abbreviation of “miniature computer.” (Oddly enough, the English word “miniature” does not derive from the Latin “min,” meaning “small.” Ancient and Medieval manuscripts were illuminated with ink made from red lead, “minium” in Latin. As the illustrations were very small, “miniature” came to mean “small drawing,” and eventually simply “something smaller than usual.”)
Meanwhile, back at “Micro-Soft,” versions of the name bounced back and forth in company literature like typographical tennis balls over the next year or so, ranging from the hyphenated forms “Micro-Soft” and “Micro-soft” to the now-fashionable irregularly capitalized “MicroSoft” to the no-frills “Microsoft.” But when it came time to incorporate their creation in 1976, Gates and Allen went with the simplest form, Microsoft, which a cynic might say was the last uncomplicated thing their company ever did.