 |
| Image via the fabulous Lantern media history site |
Product endorsements from Arctic explorers are nothing new -- way back in 1863, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane had given his seal of approval to
Borden's Meat Biscuits, and MacMillan's old boss Robert Peary had endorsed, among other things,
Howard Watches (not to be outdone, Peary's wife Jo appeared in ads for
Jaros Hygenic Underwear). But unlike biscuits, watches, and underwear, radios had an enormous capacity to decrease the hazards of Arctic travel -- not only, as this ad notes, by reducing one's sense of solitude, but by enabling lost explorers to, well, not be so
lost.
My friend Susan Kaplan at the Peary-MacMillan Museum, whose research covers MacMillan's early use of radios, pointed out to me that he was good friends with Eugene McDonald, the founder of the Zenith corporation. The Lantern database has lots of other images of MacMillan, both with and without radios.
ReplyDelete