Move over, Hummer – there’s a new bad boy macho car (or masculine overcompensation, your pick) in town. Behold the Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition armored car, developed by Russian carmaker RussoBaltique. How bad is this bad boy? Let’s just say that it has seats covered with "whale-penis leather":

On its official website, the company says the whale-penis leather is the same as that used by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on the yacht Christina O.

Onassis is rumoured to have had some of the barstools on the yacht, the world’s most expensive at the time, covered in the controversial leather.

The leather is not the only tacky accessory on the Prombron, which Dartz claims is the world’s most expensive SUV.

The bulletproof windows are gold-plated, the exhaust is made of tungsten, the gauges are encrusted with diamonds and rubies and the exterior has a Kevlar coating.

The car also comes with three bottles of the world’s most expensive Vodka, RussoBaltique, although the website does warn prospective buyers not to drink and drive.

Link

British jeweler Donald Edge was asked to create a gold, pearl, and diamond-encrustled bottle of Chambord raspberry liqueur. His work is estimated to be worth $2 million and contains 1,100 individual diamonds. It will be entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Most Expensive Bottle of Spirits.” The bottle was created for promotional purposes at London Fashion Week, a design exhibition that ended today. It now moves to a display at a stage production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in London.

Link via Geekologie

Image: Vogue (UK)

For most of its history, science has always been done by individual or at best a small group of scientists. World War II changed that: during the war, government-sponsored laboratories employing thousands of scientists sprung up to do large-scale research on weapons and technology. Since then, scientific research has entered a new era dubbed "Big Science".

Whether "big" science is any better than "small" science is a matter of controversy. Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory Alvin Weinberg (who coined the term "Big Science" in the 1960s) defended the organization and big-budget financing of Big Science as the only way to continue research into progressively more complex scientific matters. On the other hand, science historian Paul Forman posited that defense-related funding by the government shifted the focus in physics from basic to applied research.

Whatever the answer, Big Science is here to stay. So let’s take a look at some of the biggest Big Science projects in the World:

1. The Manhattan Project

During World War II, urged by physicists Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd, President Franklin Roosevelt sanctioned a secret government project to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. Dubbed the Manhattan Project, this secret weapon program employed more than 130,000 people over 30 different research and production sites and cost $2 billion ($24 billion in today’s dollar).

The Manhattan Project was initially called the Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Metals (a purposely deceptive cover name by the military). Concerned that even that name would attract too much attention, the military changed it to the Manhattan Engineer District or the Manhattan Project for short.

The very first problem facing the scientists was how to initiate a controlled and self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. In 1942, scientists at the University of Chicago’s "Metallurgical Laboratory" (yes, another cover name) achieved such a reaction. Physicist Arthur Compton promptly placed a coded telephone call to Washington, D.C., saying "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world, the natives are friendly." And so began the atomic age.

What Happens in Oak Ridge, Stays in Oak Ridge: World War II-era billboard at the Oak Ridge Facility, part of the Manhattan Project. (Photo: Life)

Calutron at the secret Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It was used to enrich the uranium fuel required for nuclear weapons. (Source: DOE)

Perhaps what’s more remarkable than making the first atomic bomb was that the scientists managed to keep the mega project secret, even from their wives:

At a social gathering a few days later, Laura Fermi noticed her husband being bombarded with congratulations. She wanted to know why, but no one would give her a reason. Woods finally whispered to her: "He has sunk a Japanese admiral!" When Laura Fermi asked her husband if that was true, he replied, "Did I?" The obvious next question was asked: "So you didn’t sink a Japanese admiral?" Without changing his sincere expression, Fermi said, "Didn’t I?" Laura Fermi would not learn of the events of December 2 for another two-and-a-half years.

The very first nuclear explosion was conducted on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The detonation was equivalent to the explosion of about 20 kiloton of TNT. It marked the beginning of the Atomic Age.

[YouTube Clip]

(Note: the history of the Manhattan Project is very fascinating. Interested readers are highly recommended to read the early history of the Manhattan Project over at Argonne National Laboratory: Link)

2. Space Race

Although it’s debatable whether "science" was much of a part of the Space Race, there’s no doubt that it definitely filled the "Big" part of "Big Science." From 1957 to 1975, the United States spent approximately $100 billion competing with the Soviet Union in space exploration.

The Space Race was kicked off in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik-1, making it the first space power. A couple of months later, they launched Sputnik-2 with the first living passenger to go to space, Laika the dog. Then Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited Earth in 1961. There’s no question that the Soviet Union took the early lead (United States’ first attempt at space exploration, the Vanguard rocket, pathetically blew up on the launching pad).

In 1961, President Kennedy proclaimed that Americans would land a man on the Moon before the decade was out. In public, Kennedy said that NASA’s Apollo Program would benefit the economy, close the missile gap in which the Soviets have more ballistic missile weapons than the Americans, and spur science and technology in the United States. In private, Kennedy said that his main motivation was to beat the Soviet Unions and show them who’s better.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon, photo taken by Neil Armstrong (Photo: NASA)

Video of the very first moon landing of the Apollo 11 mission [YouTube Clip]

In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the lunar surface. The momentous event marked the apex of the Space Race, and intense rivalries between the US and the Soviet Union dwindled from that point on. In 1975, the Space Race came to an end with the rendezvous of the Apollo and the Soyuz spacecraft in orbit.

3. Human Genome Project

Fluorescent In-Situ Hybridization identification of human chromosomes (better known as "chromosome painting"). This technique uses DNA probes attached to fluorescent markers to identify the various human chromosomes. Photo: Steven M. Carr

Not all Big Science projects are physics and engineering. The Human Genome Project is a project to sequence the entire 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up the human DNA and identify all the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes that make up our genome.

The project formally began in 1990, and was estimated to take 15 years to complete. In contrast to other Big Science projects listed here, the Human Genome Project was actually completed two years earlier than expected due to better technology (take that, physics!). The final sequencing of human DNA was completed in 2003, though analysis of the data is ongoing till today.

It’s easy to envision the benefits that the Human Genome Project for humanity: advances in understanding our genetics would undoubtedly aid medicine and research to cure diseases. But some people point out that the ethical, legal and social costs may be high: who owns and should have access to our genetic information? Do people’s genes make them behave in a particular way and if so, how would this factor in determining guilt or innocence when it comes to criminal behaviors?

4. International Space Station

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked to the Russian Mir Space Station in 1995 (Photo: NASA)

The International Space Station in 2009 (Photo: NASA)

Hands down, the biggest Big Science project ever launched is so big, so expensive, and so ambitious that it is – literally – out of this world. The International Space Station, a joint collaboration of space agencies of a couple dozens of countries, is not so much a scientific project as an exercise of engineering prowess and political will.

The ISS is so expensive that it’s hard to pin down its actual cost. The European Space Agency estimates that the entire station costs €100 billion over a period of 30 years. Critics pointed out that the amount of science being done is paltry as compared to the sums of money being spent, but its advocates defended the program as a necessary first step towards manned exploration of space.

5. Hubble Space Telescope

In 1923, pioneers of modern rocketry imagined that rockets could propel a telescope in Earth’s orbit, but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the Hubble Space Telescope project got off the ground (after an intense lobbying of Congress by astronomers, no less).

Hubble Space Telescope released by the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990
(Photo: NASA/IMAX)

Hubble Space Telescope, as seen from the Space Shuttle Discovery on its second servicing mission in 1997 (Photo: NASA)

Like many Big Science projects, the Hubble Space Telescope was fraught with errors and setbacks. The Challenger disaster brought US space program to a halt and forced the project to be postponed for years. When the telescope was finally launched, scientists found that it was out of focus because its primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape! The telescope became the butt of jokes (an editorial cartoon likened the telescope as being built by the nearsighted Mr. Magoo)

Three years later, scientists gave the telescope a new set of "eyeglasses" and Hubble began producing some of the most fantastic images from space ever seen. The telescope went from being the butt of jokes into the apple of Big Science’s eye.

"Pillars of Creation", the star-forming pillars in the Eagle Nebula, one of Hubbles’ most famous photos. Image: NASA, Jeff Hester, and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University)

In its nearly two decades of service, the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped over 570,000 pictures of the birth and deaths of stars and galaxies.

6. Super Kamiokande

Every second, 50 trillion solar neutrinos pass through your body so it’s no wonder that this "ghostly" elementary particle is so darned difficult to detect. But that doesn’t deter physicists building the Super Kamiokande (Super-K, if you want to be cute) neutrino detector in Japan.

All photos from the Super Kamiokande Photo Gallery

The Super-K is basically a tank filled with 50,000 tons of ultra-pure water, buried some 1,000 m (3,280 ft) underground. The idea is that once in a great while, a neutrino will interact with electrons or nuclei of water that will create a detectable electromagnetic radiation called the Cherenkov radiation (the blue glow we usually see in nuclear reactor cores).

7. Superconducting Super Collider

Perhaps the most difficult part of a Big Science project is actually not science – it’s the politics, and there’s no better example of this fact than the birth and demise of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas.

In late 1982, Fermilab Director Leon Lederman proposed a gigantic particle accelerator that would be the world’s largest. Dubbed "The Machine in the Desert" or Desertron, the particle accelerator would be 54 miles long tubes of capable of producing enough energy to snag the Holy Grail of particle physics, the elusive Higgs Boson.

Initial estimate of the project pegged the cost at $3 billion, but in just a couple of years, the projected total cost had quadrupled to $12 billion and the SSC became a political football. In 1992, the Collider was killed by the House only to be resurrected by the Senate ("It’s not the science, it’s the jobs"). The next year, the House killed it again and the Senate revived it again ("It’s actually not the jobs, it’s America’s supremacy in science"). A few months later they ran out of excuses, the House killed the SSC again and this time, it stayed dead.

Photo: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

When it was cancelled, $2 billion had been spent and some 23 km (14 mi) of tunnels had been dug, thus leaving Texas with a super-sized hole in the ground.

8. Very Large Array

Remember the scene in the 1997 movie Contact, where the character played by Jodie Foster received signals from outer space? All those antennas are actually real – they’re part of the radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico called the Very Large Array (VLA).

Very Large Array (Photo: Lee Otis [Flickr])

Very Large Array and the Moon (Photo: NRAO/AUI)

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s VLA is composed of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration, located on the Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico. Each antenna is 25 m (82 ft) in diameter and weighs about 230-ton. They’re programmed to work together as a single instrument (hence the name).

The Very Large Array is actually going to be even larger – 8 new stations as distant as 250 km (155 mi) from the current array are planned (but not yet funded).

9. National Ignition Facility

Laser beams entering the target chamber at the NIF. Photo: Dave Bullock (more at his gallery at Wired)

The interior of the NIF target chamber (Photo: Lawrence Livermore National Lab)

The mild name of the National Ignition Facility belies one big fact: it is the world’s largest laser, capable of heating and compressing a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point of nuclear fusion. Simply said, the NIF recreates the condition of an exploding star right here on Earth.

The NIF is designed to deliver nearly 2 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy in billionth-of-a-second pulses onto a target of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head, heating it up to 100 million degrees while simultaneously subjecting it to pressures 100 billion times Earth’s atmosphere. If everything goes well (and that’s a very big if – there’s a lot that could go wrong. For instance, the NIF has some 60,000 points of control, 30 times as many as on the space shuttle), it would deliver the holy grail of energy: nuclear fusion.

The NIF is so full of technical marvels that it’s hard to pick just one to highlight. But if we had to pick one, it would be this: when fired, the pulses of NIF’s 192 laser beams – comprised of nearly 60 miles of mirrors, fiber optics, crystals and amplifiers – must arrive within trillionths of a second of each other and must strike within 50 micrometers on the target. The NIF website describes it as such:

NIF’s pointing accuracy can be compared to standing on the pitcher’s mound at AT&T Park in San Francisco and throwing a strike at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, some 350 miles away (Source).

10. Large Hadron Collider

Photo: Maximilien Brice, CERN

CMS Detector commissioning in Cessy, France, VR Photography by Peter McCready

If there’s a science project that is synonymous with Big Science, it’s CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Everything about this project is big: at 27 km (17 mi) circumference, the LHC is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is built by over 10,000 scientists and engineers from hundreds of universities and laboratories from over 100 countries.

It’s expensive, too: the LHC cost the member countries of CERN and other participating countries an estimated €4.6 billion (about US$ 6.4 billion), not including extras like detectors and computing capacity (an additional €1.43 billion).

The risks are also big. Doomsday scenarios include micro black holes with a mass of Mt. Everest, killer strangelets, magnetic monopoles, and vacuum bubbles which would pop all of us out of existence.

For more, see:
- 10 Things About the LHC You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
- I Survived the Large Hadron Collider T-Shirt

More Fun Science & Tech Articles on Neatorama:

Wonderful World of Early Computing	Evolution of Tech Logos	9 Laws of Physics That Don’t Apply in Hollywood
Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents	30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits	5 Really Weird Things About Water

Recession schmecession. Hipsters never let a little global financial tsunami interefere with fashion! Here’s the "Spin Jean" by Daniel Hirst, in collaboration with Levi’s.

Bold and brash, he teams up with Levi’s on the release of a new denim style. Hardly wearable, the jeans seen here should be considered much more a re-appropriated piece of art than fashion. A multi-colored splatter pattern covers every square inch of a pair of iconic Levi’s denim. The Spin Jeans comprise of only 8 instances worldwide with a suggested retail price of ¥2,625,000 JPY (approximately $27,000 USD).

Link

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.
                                                               - Confucius

Photo: Fotografiert von Mario Sarto

There's no denying that diamonds are a traditional symbol of romance and love. Why, a man needs a diamond ring to ask the woman of his dream to marry him, right? But was it always that way? Did you know that someone worked very, very hard to make diamond rings de rigueur in marriage proposals? Or that diamonds aren't actually very rare at all? Or that they make lousy investments?

Here 10 Facts About Diamonds You Should Know:

1. The Earliest Use of Diamonds: Polishing Axes

If you ask a hundred people what they think of first when they hear the word "diamond," I bet you get 99 who say a diamond engagement ring.

Truth is, the majority of diamonds mined today are used for industrial purposes - and that may also be the very first use of diamonds by humans.

Harvard physicist Peter Lu and colleagues found that ancient Chinese used diamonds to polish ceremonial burial axes in the late stone age or over 4,500 years ago.

The axes, which are made from corundum (or ruby in its red form and sapphire in other colors), were polished to a mirror finish. Corundum is the second hardest naturally occurring substance on Earth and close examination of these axes revealed that they could've been made only with diamond abrasives. (Source)

It's quite fitting since today, 80% of mined diamonds (about 100 million carats) are used for the industrial purposes of cutting, drilling, grinding, and polishing.

2. Diamonds Are Not The Hardest Substance on Earth

"Diamonds are the hardest substance on Earth" is practically a mantra for jewelers trying to impress you with its physical properties if you're not swayed by its beauty. Too bad it's not true: while diamonds are the hardest natural mineral substance, it is not the hardest substance known to man.

In 2005, physicists Natalia Dubrovinskaia and colleagues compressed carbon fullerene molecules and heating them at the same time to create a series of interconnected rods called Aggregated Diamond Nanorods (ADNRs or "hyperdiamond"). It's about 11% harder than a diamond. (Photo: ESRF)

3. De Beers: The Diamond Cartel

We can't talk about diamonds without talking about De Beers, the company that single-handedly made the diamond industry what it is today. De Beers was founded by Cecil Rhodes, who also founded the state of Rhodesia which later became Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Rhodes Scholarship is also named after him, and funded by his estate.

Rhodes started by renting water pumps to miners during a diamond rush in 1867 at Kimberley, South Africa. He expanded into mines and about twenty years later became the sole owner of all diamond mining operations in the country.

Rhodes built De Beers into a diamond cartel (well, they prefer "single-channel marketing" and since they're one company, they're technically a monopoly). De Beers mines diamonds, then handle their sales and distribution through various entities (in London, it's known as the innocuously named Diamond Trading Company; in Israel, it's simply called "the syndicate"; in Belgium, it's called the CSO or Central Selling Organization.)

If you want to buy diamonds from De Beers, you've got to play by their rules: diamond are sold in events known as "sights." There are 10 sights held each year, and to buy, you have to be a sightholder (these are usually diamond dealers whose business is to have the stones cut and polished and then resold at diamond clearing centers of Antwerp, New York, and Tel Aviv).

The diamonds are sold on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. A sightholder is given a small box of uncut diamonds priced between $1 and $25 million. De Beers set the price - there is no haggling and no re-selling of diamonds in uncut form. It is rare for sightholders to refuse a diamond package offered to them, for fear of not being invited back. And those who dare to purchase diamonds from other sources than De Beers will have their sightholder privilege revoked.

In the early days, De Beers controlled about 90% of the world's diamond supply. Today, its monopoly on diamonds has been significantly reduced. It is estimated that the cartel now controls about 60 to 75% of the world's diamond trade (source)

4. So Why The Name 'De Beers'?

De Beers was actually named for the brothers Johannel Nicholas de Beer and Diederik Arnoldus de Beer, whose farm Cecil Rhodes bought when diamond mines were discovered on it.

5. Are Diamonds Rare?

Diamonds are actually quite rare in the past but not any more. While it's true that the process of extracting diamond is quite laborious (mines move many tons of dirt per carat of diamond found) and that gem-quality diamonds are relatively few (only about 1 in 1 million diamonds are quality one carat stones, only 1 in 5 million are 2-carat; and 1 in 15 million are 3-carat), diamonds are not rare in an economic sense because supply exceeds demand. (Photo: mafic [Flickr])

To maintain the high prices of diamonds, De Beers creates an artificial scarcity: they stockpile mined diamonds and sell them in small amounts.

Perhaps De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer said it best: "diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill." (mental_floss, vol 7 issue 6, p. 21 "Diamond Engagement Rings" by Rebecca Zerzan)

6. Moon-Sized Diamond

So - diamonds aren't rare on Earth, and it may not be rare in space either. In 2004, astronomer Travis Metcalfe of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues discovered a diamond star that is 10 billion trillion trillion carats!

The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.

Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. (Source)

According to scientists, if you wait long enough, our own sun will eventually turn into one such large diamond star!

7. Famous Diamonds

Just because they're not rare, it doesn't mean that there aren't exceptional diamonds. There's the 45-carat Hope Diamond (and its famous Curse), the mystical Koh-I-Noor Diamond, and the largest diamond ever found, the 546 carat Golden Jubilee.

But this is Neatorama, so here's a truly fascinating story about the Bokassa Diamond. In 1977, a crazy Central African dictator named Jean-Bédel Bokassa declared himself an emperor and asked Albert Jolis, the president of a diamond mining operation, for a diamond ring (he made sure Jolis knew that nothing smaller than a golf ball-sized rock would do!)

Jolis didn't have the money to buy such a large stone but if he didn't deliver one, his company would lose the mining concession in Central Africa. So he devised a clever ruse: Jolis found a large piece of black diamond bort (a poorly crystallized diamond usually fit only to be crushed into abrasive powder) that curiously resembled Africa in shape. He ordered the diamond polished and mounted on a large ring. A one-quarter carat white diamond was then set roughly where the country is located on the continent.

Jolis presented the "unique" diamond to Bokassa, and the clueless emperor loved it! He thought that the $500 ring was worth over $500,000! Just two years later, when Bokassa was overthrown in a coup, Jolis heard that he went into exile with his prize diamond ring, and noted wryly: "It's a priceless diamond as long as he doesn't try to sell it." (Source)

8. The Most Brilliant Advertising Campaign of All Time: A Diamond Is Forever

The 1930s was a bad decade for the diamond industry: the price of diamond had declined worldwide. Europe was in the verge of another war and the idea of a diamond engagement ring didn't take hold. Indeed, engagement rings were considered a luxury and when given, they rarely contained diamonds.

In 1938, De Beers engaged N.W. Ayer & Son, the first advertising agency in the United States, to change the image of diamonds in America. The ad agency suggested a clever ad campaign to link diamonds to romance in the public's mind. To do this, they placed diamonds in the fingers of Hollywood stars and suggested stories to newspapers on how diamond rings symbolized romance. Even high school students were targeted:

N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. "All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions," the agency explained in a memorandum to De Beers.

The agency had organized, in 1946, a weekly service called "Hollywood Personalities," which provided 125 leading newspapers with descriptions of the diamonds worn by movie stars. [...] The idea was to create prestigious "role models" for the poorer middle-class wage-earners. The advertising agency explained, in its 1948 strategy paper, "We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer's wife and the mechanic's sweetheart say 'I wish I had what she has.'" (Source)

In 1948, an N.W. Ayer copywriter named Frances Gerety, had a flash of inspiration and came up with the slogan "A Diamond is Forever." It's a fitting slogan, because it reminds people that it is a memorial to love, and as such, must stay forever in the family, never to be sold (see below). Ironically, Gerety never married and died a spinster. (Source)

But equating diamonds with romance wasn't enough. Toward the end of the 1950s, N.W. Ayer found that the Americans were ready for the next logical step, making a diamond ring a necessary element in betrothal:

"Since 1939 an entirely new generation of young people has grown to marriageable age," it said. "To this new generation a diamond ring is considered a necessity to engagements by virtually everyone." The message had been so successfully impressed on the minds of this generation that those who could not afford to buy a diamond at the time of their marriage would "defer the purchase" rather than forgo it. (Source)

Then the clever ad agency went one step further. N.W. Ayers noted that when women were involved in the selection of the engagement ring, they tended to pick cheaper rings. So De Beers encouraged the "surprise" engagement, with men picking the diamond on their own (with the clear message that the more expensive the stone, the better he'll look in the eyes of a woman).

They even gave clueless men a guideline: American men should spend two months wages, whereas Japanese men should spend three. Why? Because they can:

But the guidelines differed by nation. A "two months' salary" equivalent was touted in the United States, whereas men in Great Britain got off the hook with only one month. Japan's expectation was set the highest, at three months. I asked a De Beers representative why the Japanese were told to spend so much compared to the Americans or the English.

"We were, quite frankly, trying to bid them up," he answered. (Source: The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire by Tom Zoellner)

In 1939, when De Beers engaged N.W. Ayer to change the way the American public view diamonds, its annual sales of the gem was $23 million. By 1979, the ad agency had helped De Beers expand its sales to more than $2.1 billion (Source).

9. Diamonds are Actually Lousy Investments

De Beers is quite famous for never lowering the price of diamonds. During the Great Depression, the cartel drastically cut supplies and stockpiled diamonds to prop up their price. But do diamonds make good investments?

Unless you're a certified diamond seller, the answer is no: you won't be able to sell a diamond ring for more than what you pay for it. And the reason is simple: with diamonds, you buy at retail and sell at wholesale, if you can sell it at all.

In 1982, Edward Jay Epstein wrote an intriguing article for The Atlantic, titled "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?" In it, he wrote about an experiment to determine a diamond's value as an investment.

The [Money Which?] magazine conducted another experiment to determine the extent to which larger diamonds appreciate in value over a one-year period. In 1970, it bought a 1.42 carat diamond for £745. In 1971, the highest offer it received for the same gem was £568. Rather than sell it at such an enormous loss, Watts decided to extend the experiment until 1974, when he again made the round of the jewelers in Hatton Garden to have it appraised. During this tour of the diamond district, Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04 carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the appraisal. In that same year, Watts, undaunted, bought another diamond, this one 1.4 carats, from a reputable London dealer. He paid £2,595. A week later, he decided to sell it. The maximum offer he received was £1,000.

Why is there no active after-market for diamonds? It is estimated that the public holds about 500 million carats of gem diamonds - if a significant portion of the public begins selling, then the price of diamond would plummet. To prevent this from happening, the diamond industry spent a huge sum in making diamonds "heirloom" properties to be passed down for generations, keeping the price of diamond artificially high (so people wouldn't be tempted to unload them for fear of losing money) and discourage jewelers from buying diamonds from the public.

10. Artificial Diamonds

The idea of making artificial diamond isn't new. H.G. Wells proposed exactly such a thing in his story "The Diamond Maker" in 1911. Since then, scientists have come up with ways to create synthetic diamonds and diamond simulants like cubic zirconia - but experts could always tell them apart. Until now.

In the past decade, scientists have perfected a technique called Chemical Vapor Deposition, where carbon gas cloud is passed over diamond seeds in a vacuum chamber heated to more than 1,800 degrees. In a matter of days, they are now able to "grow" diamonds that are virtually indistinguishable from natural ones, even to the experts:

Seeking an unbiased assessment of the quality of these laboratory diamonds, I asked Bryant Linares to let me borrow an Apollo stone. The next day, I place the .38 carat, princess-cut stone in front of Virgil Ghita in Ghita's narrow jewelry store in downtown Boston. With a pair of tweezers, he brings the diamond up to his right eye and studies it with a jeweler's loupe, slowly turning the gem in the mote-filled afternoon sun. "Nice stone, excellent color. I don't see any imperfections," he says. "Where did you get it?"

"It was grown in a lab about 20 miles from here," I reply.

He lowers the loupe and looks at me for a moment. Then he studies the stone again, pursing his brow. He sighs. "There's no way to tell that it's lab-created." (Source)

But if you think that the price of diamond will fall precipitously, think again. Companies that make cultured diamonds like Apollo and Gemesis aren't stupid: they're not going to kill the goose that laid the diamond egg by flooding the market with cheap stones.

End Note

Whether you love or hate them, diamonds are endlessly fascinating. I'll be the first to acknowledge that we haven't touched topics like blood diamonds, J. Walter Thompson's brilliant campaign to insert diamond engagement rings into Japan's wedding custom, and so on.

Quick: who is the richest man of all time? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Not even close, though there's no denying they're very, very rich. The richest man of all time, when wealth is measured as a percentage of the national economy, was John D. Rockefeller, whose fortunes made Gates' and Buffet's look downright puny.

Keeping score of who's wealthier is like a spectator sport with Forbes magazine as its official referee. Last year, Forbes counted 946 billionaires (there are too many millionaires to count, so they don't bother with that anymore) with combined net worth of $3.5 trillion. That's larger than the GDP of Germany, the third largest economy in the world.

But the richest people ever belong in their own special club. These people (all men) have built fortunes of legendary proportions when calculated at the peak of their wealth. Here is the list of the 10 Richest People of All Time and How They Made Their Fortunes.

1. John D. Rockefeller

Peak wealth: $318.3 billion (based on 2007 US dollar). Age at peak wealth: 74

As a young man, John Davison Rockefeller said that his two greatest ambitions were to make $100,000 and live to be 100. He died two months shy of his 98th birthday, but boy did he make good on the first goal.

Rockefeller wasn't born to a rich family. His father, William Avery "Big Bill" Rockefeller was a shiftless man who spent most of his times thinking up schemes to avoid actual work! Nevertheless, thanks to the guidance of his mom Eliza - a homemaker and devout Baptist - John D. grew up to be quite a hardworking man.

Rockefeller started out in business as a wholesale grocer and went on to found Standard Oil, which through shrewd business decisions and some say predatory and illegal practices, grew to be a gargantuan monopoly. At its peak, Standard Oil had about 90% of the market for refined oil (kerosene) in the United States (in the early days of Standard Oil, gasoline wasn't an important component of the oil industry - indeed, gasoline produced by the refineries were dumped in rivers because they were considered useless!)

In 1911, the US Supreme Court declared Standard Oil a monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered it to be broken up into 34 independent companies with different boards of directors. By that time, Rockefeller had long since retired from the company but still held a large percentage of shares. Ironically, the busting up of Standard Oil unlocked share values and his fortunes doubled overnight.

Rockefeller got his first job at 16 as a bookkeeper. In a move that portended his lifelong commitment to philanthropy, he tithed 10% of his income - from his first paycheck on - to charity. As his wealth grew, so did his charitable contributions. When he died in 1937, Rockefeller had given away half of his amassed fortune, and established philanthropic foundations to continue giving after his death.

2. Andrew Carnegie

Peak wealth: $298.3 billion. Age at peak wealth: 68

Andrew Carnegie immigrated as a young child to Pittsburgh from Scotland and began working at 13 years old as a bobbin boy in a textile mill. He changed spools of threads for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for a weekly wage of $2. At 16 years old, Carnegie became a telegraph messenger boy, and soon after was promoted to be a telegraph operator.

Carnegie became a personal assistant to Thomas Scott, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and learned the ins and outs of the railroad business. It was Carnegie who invented a brutally efficient way to clear the tracks after a railway accident: by burning the railroad car!

When he was 20, Carnegie mortgaged his mother's house and made his first gutsy investment of $500 for 10 shares of the Adams Express company - sort of the Fed Ex delivery company of the 1800s - and was handsomely rewarded. He then invested in a company making sleeping cars for the railway. By the time he was 30, Carnegie had expanded his investments to iron works, steamers, railroads, and oil well.

But the real money came from steel. In the late 1880s, Carnegie built his steel empire to become the world's largest manufacturer of steel rails, pig iron, and coke.

In 1901, at the age of 66, Carnegie retired by selling his shares to John Pierpont Morgan for more than $225 million (a large sum today and an astounding amount of money back then) in form of gold-bonds. When the bonds were delivered, a special vault had to be built to physically house them!

Carnegie was big proponent of philanthropy - in a famous 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth," he wrote that wealth should be distributed to promote welfare of other people and enrich society. True to his words, Carnegie gave away more than $350 million or almost 90% of his fortune.

Note: At the end of the Spanish American War, the United States bought the Philippines from Spain for $20 million. Carnegie was appalled at what he perceived to be an imperialist move and personally offered $20 million to the Philippines so it could buy its independence from the US (they didn't take him up on his offer).

3. Nicholas II of Russia

The last Russian Imperial family

Peak wealth: $253.5 billion. Age at peak wealth: 49

Nicholas II of Russia (born Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov) was the last Tsar of Russia. He ruled (badly) from 1894 until he was forced to abdicate in the Russian Revolution of 1917 by the Bolsheviks. His reign was marked with antisemitic pogroms, a crushing defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, revolutions, internal unrests their bloody suppressions, undue influence by the mystic Rasputin and World War I. A year after he was deposed, Nicholas and his entire family were executed by Lenin's order.

The life of the last tsar of Russia was filled with fascinating myths, legends, and history - and readers interested in it are encouraged to read more about Nicholas II and the Romanovs. Suffice it to say that Nicholas II became the third richest man in history the old fashioned way: he inherited his wealth.

4. William Henry Vanderbilt

Peak wealth: $231.6 billion. Age at peak wealth: 64

William Henry Vanderbilt had a pretty good start in life: he inherited nearly $100 million from his father, the railroad mogul Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt (if you want to read a rags to riches story, Cornelius' is pretty good - see below).

William Vanderbilt was groomed by his father to be a businessman (at times harshly - the imperious and domineering Cornelius liked to call his eldest son a "blockhead," "blatherskite," "sucker," and "good for nothing") and William turned out to be quite an able businessman. He expanded the family's railroad empire and thus the family fortune, finally earning his father's respect and friendship.

When William died in 1885, he was the richest man in the world.

5. Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII

Peak wealth: $210.8 billion. Age at peak wealth: 50

Asaf Jah VII (whose given name was Osman Ali Khan Bahadur) was the last Nizam or ruler of the Princely State of Hyderabad and Berar, before it was invaded and annexed by India in 1948.

By most accounts, "His Exalted Highness" the Nizam of Hyderabad was a benevolent ruler who promoted education, science and development. He spent about one-tenth of his Principality's budget on education, and even made primary education compulsory and free for the poor. In his 37-year rule, Hyderabad witnessed the introduction of electricity, railways, roads, and other development projects.

In 1937, Asaf Jah VII was on the cover of Time Magazine, labeled as the richest man in the world.

6. Andrew W. Mellon

Peak wealth: $188.8 billion. Age at peak wealth: 80

Andrew William Mellon was the son of a Pittsburgh banker Thomas Mellon (who founded the Mellon Bank). Andrew got his start early: he started a lumber company at the age of 17 and by the age of 27 had taken over his father's bank. He also got into oil, steel, shipbuilding, and construction business.

In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed the financier Mellon as the Secretary of the Treasury, where he served for 10 years (under three U.S. Presidents). At that post, Mellon increased federal revenue by decreasing the taxation rate and cutting federal spending.

7. Henry Ford

Peak wealth: $188.1 billion. Age at peak wealth: 57

If Henry Ford's father had his way, Henry would take over the family farm and become a farmer. But after the death of his beloved mother, Henry, who didn't particularly like farming, left home in 1879 at the age of 16 to work as an apprentice machinist.

At 28, Henry Ford became an engineer at Thomas Edison's company and started experimenting with gasoline engines (with Edison's approval). In 1896, at the age of 36, Ford started his first car company, the Detroit Automobile Company, which went bankrupt two years later.

Soon afterwards, he set up his second company, the Henry Ford Company. A year later, his partners hired Henry M. Leland to troubleshoot problems on the shop floor. Ford clashed almost immediately with Leland, and was forced out of the company bearing his name with only $900 cash. The Henry Ford Company was renamed Cadillac, and Ford went on to form his third car company, the "Ford & Malcomson" company ...

... and immediately got into trouble when he couldn't pay his suppliers, the Dodge brothers. Ford's partner, Alexander Malcomson was able to convince the Dodge brothers to invest in the company instead and the company was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company. And a good thing they did because third time was the charm. The Ford Motor Company made Henry Ford a very rich man.

Henry Ford's name became synonymous with automobiles for good reasons: he introduced the Model T, the first inexpensive car for the masses. He also popularized the use of assembly lines in mass productions, high workers' wages to attract talent and discourage employee turnover, franchise model car dealerships, and even the 5-day workweek.

One interesting note about Henry Ford: he didn't believe in accountants. On one occasion, his son Edsel contracted the building of a new office building with much needed space for the Accounting division. When Henry asked what the space was for, Edsel acknowledged that it was for the accounting department. The very next day, when the accountants showed up for work, they found their office had been stripped - no desks, chairs, or telephones; even the carpeting was gone - and that Henry had fired them all. (Source: Edsel.com)

8. Marcus Licinius Crassus

Peak wealth: $169.8 billion. Age at peak wealth: 62

Marcus Licinius Crassus (ca. 115 BC to 53 BC) is the earliest historical figure in this list. He was a Roman general and politician who defeated the slave revolt led by Spartacus.

If you think the rest of the businessmen on this list were ruthless - in reality they've got nothing on Crassus. The Roman general became wealthy when he bought the homes and belongings from the victims of Sulla's sacking of Rome (Crassus was one of Sulla's generals) for cheap. He then re-sold them at a princely profit. Crassus then expanded his wealth through the slave trade, silver mining, and real estate, especially by buying houses of those declared enemies of the state for next to nothing.

But it was Crassus' acquisition of burning houses that earned him his lasting notoriety. He maintained a troop of 500 skilled builders - and when a fire broke out in Rome (back then a frequent occurrence), he negotiated the sale of the burning properties and those nearby for cheap. Once he obtained the properties, he called upon his men to demolish the burning property and save the nearby buildings (that was the preferred technique of fighting fire during Roman times). He then rebuilt and leased back the property to the original owners! At one point, Crassus owned a large part of Rome and some wondered whether the fires might not have actually been his doing ...

Crassus was so greedy that when he died, his enemies had his head severed and molten gold poured into his mouth as a mark of his greed (Source).

9. Basil II

Peak wealth: $169.4 billion. Age at peak wealth: 67

Basil II (or Basil the Bulgarslayer) was a Byzantine emperor from the Macedonian dynasty who reigned from 976 to 1025. For historians, Basil II's reign represented the apex of the Middle Byzantine Empire - he expanded the territory of the empire by annexing Bulgaria, making it the largest and strongest it had ever been in nearly five centuries.

Basil had no heir, and within half a century of his death, the Byzantine Empire crumbled.

10. Cornelius Vanderbilt

Peak wealth: $167.4 billion. Age at peak wealth: 82

Cornelius Vanderbilt is a true rags-to-riches story: he quit school at the age of 11 (famously saying "If I had learned education, I would not have had time to learn anything else") to work on ferries in New York. By 16, persuaded his mom to loan him $100 for a boat to start his own ferry business carrying freight and passengers between Staten Island and Manhattan. He repaid the loan with an additional $1000 one year later. It's from this business operating ships that he got his nickname "Commodore" that stuck for the rest of his life, even after he started getting into the railroad business.

Vanderbilt was ruthless in business. He once wrote a short (and now famous) letter to Charles Morgan and C.K. Garrison of the Morgan & Garrison company. The two men manipulated his steamship company's stock in his absence and took it over. The letter read "Gentlemen: you have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt." True to his words, two years later Vanderbilt forced them out of business by running a competing business.

Despite of their wealth - or perhaps because of it, the Vanderbilt family wasn't a happy one. The Commodore was constantly thinking of his will, which he called "that paper." He wanted the money to remain intact, and thus it must be handed down to a single heir. Indeed, he disowned all of his sons other than William (see above), believing that only William was ruthless enough in business to be capable of maintaining his empire.

__________

A note about the list: since it is based on the proportion of peak wealth to the national GDP in the country the individual lived in at the time they were alive, the list is dynamic: it changes as the GDP fluctuates, though it's rare to have a large shift in its composition.

I didn't come up with the idea for the list - the top 10 list presented here is but a small part of a larger list on Wikipedia. For the complete list, visit Wealthy Historical Figures 2008

When the Ambani residence is finished next year, it will be the most expensive home in the world: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai. The cost? $2 billion!

But the Ambani family can well afford it, because Mukesh Ambani, head of India’s petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, is the fifth richest man in the world and is worth $43 billion.

Forbes has the story:

The home will cost more than a hotel or high-rise of similar size because of its custom measurements and fittings: A hotel or condominium has a common layout, replicated on every floor, and uses the same materials throughout the building (such as door handles, floors, lamps and window treatments).

The Ambani home, called Antilla, differs in that no two floors are alike in either plans or materials used. At the request of Nita Ambani, say the designers, if a metal, wood or crystal is part of the ninth-floor design, it shouldn’t be used on the eleventh floor, for example. The idea is to blend styles and architectural elements so spaces give the feel of consistency, but without repetition.

Antilla’s shape is based on Vaastu, an Indian tradition much like Feng Shui that is said to move energy beneficially through the building by strategically placing materials, rooms and objects.

Link | Photo Gallery – via Growabrain

The Three Twins Ice Cream shop in the Oxbow Public Market in Napa is selling the World’s Most Expensive Ice Cream Sundae for $3,333.33 (a banana split made with syrups from three rare dessert wines, served with an ice cream spoon from the 1850s. If you order a day ahead, they’ll have a cellist perform while you eat).

But if the World’s Most Expensive Ice Cream Sundae is not glam enough, you should try their “The World’s More Expensive Most Expensive Ice Cream Sundae”. For $60,000, you’ll get ice cream made from the disappearing glacier from Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa!

Link – Thanks Sabrina!

Imagine the shock of this poor ol’ tycoon: he wanted to build the world’s most expensive home only to find that he has a squatter in the garden!

A billionaire is planning to transform a vacant London stately house into the world’s most expensive home – but can’t evict a squatter who’s been living there for the past 21 years.

Harry Hallowes, 71, was awarded squatters’ rights last year, which means he can continue living in his tent in the grounds. His small plot is now worth a staggering £4million.

Link – via One Large Prawn

Carl Huber of theWAREHOUSE blog talked to a chicken farmer who was selling organic (though not "certified organic" – apparently, getting certified is an expensive process), free-range eggs in a farmer’s market. Naturally, the guy was touting all of the benefits of his eggs as compared to regular eggs from the grocery store.

So Carl did the next logical step: he performed a scientific test to compare the two.

We each had half of each egg. The tastes were totally different! I honestly did not think there would be much of a difference, especially since I don’t have the world’s most developed sense of taste, but in a side by side comparison: there is no comparison. The grocery store brand seemed watered down, flimsy and pale. The robust taste of the public market eggs was immediately noticeable. I really thought it might be something only noticeable by, say, testing nutrient levels in a lab. But everyone involved in the taste test (er, my wife and I) clearly preferred the public market eggs.

I’d never have guessed that free range eggs are yummier than supermarket eggs. Maybe it’s time to give ‘em a try: Link – Thanks Carl!

BTW, theWAREHOUSE blog is running a "fan sign" contest. You can win a prize simply by taking a picture of yourself holding a sign that says "I love theWAREHOUSE" and emailing it to him. Details here: Link – Sorry this didn’t get posted before Carl, I got a little swamped!

This article should come in handy for the next time you’re stuck in traffic: have you ever wondered why the Audi in front of you has a logo of four interlocked rings? Did you know that the Cadillac emblem was inspired by a family crest of a nobleman who later turned out to be a fraud? Or that Volkswagen was Hitler’s idea?

We took a look at the evolution of tech logos before. Today, let’s take a look at the fascinating stories behind the logos of some of the most popular cars in the world:

Alfa Romeo

Source: Cartype

Surprise! Alfa Romeo, the car manufacturer and pride of Italy, traced its beginnings to France. In 1910, Milan aristocrat Cavaliere Ugo Stella collaborated with the French car company Darracq to market the line in Italy. When the partnership failed, Stella moved the company and renamed it Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (Lombard Automobile Factory, Public Company) or A.L.F.A.

Alfa Romeo’s distinctive logo was created in 1910 by a draftsman named Romano Cattaneo. One day, while waiting for a tram at the Piazza Castello station in Milan, he was inspired by the red cross in the Milan Flag and the Coat of Arms of the noble House of Visconti, which featured a biscione (grass snake) with a man in its jaws, symbolizing "Visconti’s enemies that the snake [was] always ready to destroy." (Source) Two Savoia dynasty knots separated the words ALFA and MILANO.

The Romeo part came in 1916 when Neapolitan businessman Nicola Romeo bought the company and converted its factories to produce munitions and machineries for World War I. After the war, the company went back to producing cars and took on its owner’s last name to become Alfa Romeo.

Aston Martin

In 1913, Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford founded a company that later would become Aston Martin. At the time, Martin & Bamford Limited produced Singers racing cars, but the duo wanted to create a more sophisticated model of their own. They named their first car Aston Martin after the founder Lionel Martin and the Aston Clinton hill climb racing course where their Singers car had won previously.

We can’t talk about Aston Martin without mentioning James Bond. In 1959, Ian Fleming put his super spy James Bond in an Aston Martin DB Mark III. When it was made into a movie in 1964, Bond drove an updated, supersleek silver Aston Martin DB5 (complete with machine gun, passenger ejector seat, and revolving number plates!)

James Bond and his Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger

Interestingly, Ian Fleming himself didn’t drive Aston Martin. He preferred the 1963 Studebaker Avanti!

Audi

German engineer August Horch, who used to work for Karl Benz, founded his own automobile company A. Horch & Cie in 1899. A decade later, he was forced out of his own company and set up a new company in another town and continued using the Horch brand. His former partners sued him, and August Horch was forced to look for a new name.

When Horch was talking to his business partner Franz Fikentscher at Franz’s apartment, Franz’s son came up with the name Audi:

During this meeting Franz’s son was quietly studying Latin in a corner of the room. Several times he looked like he was on the verge of saying something but would just swallow his words and continue working, until he finally blurted out, "Father – audiatur et altera pars… wouldn’t it be a good idea to call it audi instead of horch?". "Horch!" in German means "Hark!" or "listen", which is "Audi" in Latin. The idea was enthusiastically accepted by everyone attending the meeting. (Source: Wikipedia, A History of Progress (1996) – Chronicle of the Audi AG)

And so Audiwerke GmbH was born in 1910. In 1932, four car makers Audi, Horch, DKW, and Wanderer merged to form Auto Union. The logo of Auto Union, four interlinked rings that would later become the modern Audi logo, was used only in racing cars – the four factories continued to produce cars under their own names and emblems.

Four car companies became Auto Union (1932)

Fast forward to 1985 (skipping a whole lot of history), when Auto Union ultimately became the Audi we know today.

BMW

Source: Motorcycle

In 1913, Karl Friedrich Rapp and Gustav Otto founded two separate aircraft factories that would later merge to form BMW or Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (Bavarian Motor Works). Rapp and Otto actually had little to do with BMW’s manufacturing of cars. Josef Popp, Max Friz and Camillo Castiglioni were the ones who played big roles in making BMW a modern car manufacturer.

Source: Cartype

The circular BMW logo was a representation of a spinning propeller of a Bavarian Luftwaffe. At the time, aircrafts were painted with regional colors and the colors of the Bavarian flag were white and blue. It is said that the pilot saw the propeller as alternating segments of white and blue, hence the logo. The roundel was a nod to Karl Rapp’s original company.

During World War I, BMW was a major supplier of airplane engines (and later airplanes such as the Red Baron) (thanks Redditors!) to the German government. After the war, Germany was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles to manufacture airplanes and BMW was forced to change its business: it first made railway brakes before making motorized bicycle, motorcycles and cars.

Update 3/6/08: Neatorama readers Dan S. and Bruce Kennedy who pointed out that the idea of BMW logo being derived from spinning propeller was actually an advertisement by the company (scroll down about halfway). Also thanks to klaus who pointed us out to the logo of EMW, which BMW took over in 1928.

Buick

Early Buick emblems (source: Buick Car Club of Australia)

The Buick Motor Company was founded in 1903 by David Dunbar Buick, a Scottish-American inventor who invented the overhead valve engine. If you didn’t recognize the name, you’re not alone – but remember this: Buick, a high school drop out founded a company that later became the world’s largest auto company, General Motors.

At 15 years of age, Buick dropped out of school to work for a plumbing fixture manufacturer. When that business failed, Buick and his friend took it over – but within a few years, Buick had an argument with his partner because he preferred to spend his time tinkering with car engines. Buick sold his share in the company and quit.

With the money, Buick founded the Buick Motor Company and within a few years ran it to the ground. He was kicked out of the company by his partner William "Billy" Durant in 1906 and later sold his stock for a mere $100,000. Had he held on to his shares, it would’ve been worth well over $100 million today. In his later years, Buick held low-paying jobs and couldn’t even afford a telephone. He died penniless as an inspector at the Detroit School of Trades. Ironically, years later Durant himself would be forced out. General Motors, the company that Durant built, refused him pension and he died almost penniless. (Source)

Buick crests and tri-shields (source: Buick Car Club of Australia)

Back to the logo story: Early Buick logos were variations of the cursive word "Buick." In 1930s, General Motor Styling researcher Ralph Pew found a description of the Scottish "Buik" [sic] family crest and decided to use it as a radiator grille decoration. In 1960, the logo incorporated three such shields, to represent the three Buick models then built: LeSabre, Invicta, and Electra.

In 1975, Buick changed their logo to a hawk named "Happy" with the launch of their Skyhawk line. However, in the late 1980s, as the Skyhawk car was retired, Buick went back to the tri-shield logo.

Cadillac

Source: car-nection.com, who has lots more Cadillac emblems.

When Henry Ford left his second automobile company, Henry Ford Company (see below), his financial backers tried to liquidate the company’s assets. An engineer named Henry M. Leland persuaded them to continue the company instead. They listened, and so Cadillac was born.

Cadillac’s first logo was based on a family crest of a minor aristocrat that the company was named after: Antoine de La Mothe, Seigneur de Cadillac (Sir of Cadillac). In 1701, de La Mothe founded Fort Pontchartrain which would later become Detroit. Cadillac was named after de La Mothe in 1902, following a bicentenary celebration of the founding of the city.

Problem was, de La Mothe was never a nobility! Born Antoine Laumet, de La Mothe was forced to leave France for America under a mysterious circumstance (some say he committed a crime or was unable to pay his debt). In the New World, he was able to assume a new identity and cobbled together a famiy crest with elements "borrowed" from, shall we say nobler sources.

Source: car-nection.com

In 1998, Cadillac had a new design philosophy called "art and science" and had its logo redesigned. Gone were the six birds called the merlettes, the crown, and the entire fabricated de La Mothe family crest as the company tried to shake up its stodgy image. The new logo made its debut a few years later, looking positively like it was made by Piet Mondrian!

Fiat

Source: Fiat

Fiat, then named Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Automobile Factory of Turin), was founded in 1899 by a group of investors, including Giovanni Agnelli who later became its Managing Director. Agnelli bought his shares for $400 (about $10,000 in 2007 money). It’s worth billions now, and there had been an Agnelli in Fiat management ever since. Regardless or perhaps because of its wealth, the Agnelli clan remained a fractious and complicated group of people.

Supposedly, the famous Fiat "scrabble tiles" logo of the 1960s was designed by the company’s Chief Designer who was driving past the Fiat factory during a power outage and saw an outline of the factory’s neon sign against the dark sky (Source: The Language of Auto Emblems)

Ford

Most people know that Ford was founded by (who else?) Henry Ford. What most people didn’t know was that this was his third automobile company. Ford experimented with cars while working for Thomas Edison, and left to found his first auto company, The Detroit Automobile Company, which went bankrupt in just 2 years. He then built a race car and founded Henry Ford Company. Ford left that one after just one year (the company later became Cadillac – see above).

In 1902, Ford went on to create his third automobile company, the Ford & Malcomson, Ltd., and almost lost that one when sales were slow. He was unable to pay his bills to John and Horace Dodge, who supplied parts. Ford’s partner brought in a group of investors and even convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept shares in the company, which was renamed Ford Motor Company. Later, the Dodge Brothers went on to form their own car company (can you guess what?)

In 1909, Childe Harold Wills, Ford’s first chief engineer and designer (who also help to design the Model T), lend a script font that he created to make his own business card, to create the Ford logo. The famous blue oval was added later for the 1927 Model A – it remained in use until today.

Mazda

Source: Mazda [wikipedia] and Mazda Brand Evolution

Mazda began its life in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co. in Hiroshima, Japan. At the time, there was a cork shortage because of World War I, so the company was founded to process a cork substitute made from the bark of an Abemaki or Chinese cork oak tree. It was a good idea at the time, but shortly afterwards Japan could get real cork again and the company foundered.

In 1927, Jujiro Matsuda came onboard and the company began manufacturing tools, three-wheeled "trucks" and then cars. After World War II, the company formally adopted the name Mazda, which depending on who you ask, stood for the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda or an anglicized pronunciation of Matsuda the founder’s name (or both).

In the 1936 logo, the M shaped curve was inspired by the emblem of Hiroshima city. The 1991 and 1992 logos symbolized a wing, the Sun and a circle of light. Mazda’s current logo, nicknamed the "owl" logo, was designed by Rei Yoshimara in 1997. The stylized "M" was meant to look like stretched wings, but many people saw a stylized tulip instead.

Mercedes-Benz

Source: Mercedez-Benz UK

The modern Mercedes-Benz traced its lineage to a 1926 merger of two car companies, Daimler-Motored-Gesellschaft or DMG, founded by Gottlieb Daimler (along with Wilhelm Maybach), and Benz & Cie, founded by Karl Benz. Both Daimler and Benz worked independently to invent internal combustion-powered automobiles. Their factories were actually just 60 miles apart, yet they didn’t know of each other’s early work.

After World War I, the German economy was in tatters, and to survive, the two companies formed a syndicate in 1924, where they would continue to sell their separate brands but would standardize design, share purchasing and advertising. In 1926, however, the two companies merged into Daimler-Benz.

The name "Mercedes" came about in 1900. A wealthy European businessman and racing enthusiast named Emil Jellinek began selling Daimler’s cars. He wanted a faster car, and specified a new engine to be designed by Maybach and to be named after his 10-year-old daughter’s nickname, Mercédès or Spanish for "grace." "Mercy" (See below)

Jellinek was quite a character. He used to pepper DMG’s engineers with colorful suggestions and criticism such as "Your manure wagon has just broken down on schedule" and "You are all donkeys". However, as he actually sold a lot of cars, he was tolerated and even listened to. Later, Jellinek would add Mercedes to his own and became Emil Jellinek-Mercedes. (Source: My Father Mr. Mercedes by Guy Jellinek-Mercedes and MBUSA Biographies)

The star in Daimler’s logo came from an old postcard where Gottlieb Daimler had drawn a star above the picture of his house and wrote that "this star would one day shine over [his] own factory to symbolize prosperity." The three-pointed star symbolized Daimler’s ambition of making vehicles "on land, on water and in the air." (Source: Daimler)

After the merger, a new logo was designed. It combined the symbols of the two companies: the three-pointed star of DMG and the laurel wreath of Benz.

Update 2/18/08: There’s a dispute on the origin of the name “Mercedes.” According to Baby Names World, Mercedes is a girl’s name of Spanish origin meaning “Mercy.” It was taken from the Virgin Mary’s liturgical title “Maria de las Mercedes” (Mary of the Mercies; ‘Our Lady of Ransom’):

Latin ‘mercedes’ originally meant ‘wages’ or ‘ransom’.
In Christian theology, Christ’s sacrifice is regarded as a ‘ransom for the sins of mankind’, hence an ‘act of ransom’ was seen as identical with an ‘act of mercy’.

Mitsubishi

Source: Mitsubishi

In 1854 feudal Japan, a man named Yataro Iwasaki, son of a provincial farmer whose grandfather sold the family’s samurai status to settle some debt, began his career on the wrong foot: he was called home from school at the age of 19 when his father was injured in a dispute with the village leader. Iwasaki asked a local magistrate to hear his case, and when refused, accused the man of corruption. Iwasaki was promptly jailed for seven months.

Fast forward to 1868: Iwasaki was working for the Tosa clan when the Meiji Restoration abolished Japan’s feudal clan system. He acquired Tsukumo Shokai, the Tosa clan’s shipping business and renamed it Mitsubishi in 1873.

It was a fourth-generation Iwasaki, a man named Kayota Iwasaki, who turned Mitsubishi into a giant corporate group that included an automobile manufacturing company, Mitsubishi Motors.

The name Mitsubishi was a combination of the words "mitsu" (three) and "hishi" (water chestnut, used in Japan to mean a rhombus or a diamond shape). The official translation of the name was "three diamonds."

The Mitsubishi logo was a combination of the Iwasaki family crest, three stacked diamonds, and the three-leaf crest of the Tosa Clan.

Peugeot

Source: Peugeot Fan Club

Peugeot got its start in 1812 in Montbeliard, France, when two brothers, Jean-Pierre and Jean-Frédéric Peugeot converted their windmill into a steel mill. Their first products were rolled steel for saw blades and clock springs, as well as cylindrical steel rods. For decades, the Peugeot family business made metal goods, machine tools, crinoline dresses, umbrellas, wire wheels, irons, sewing machines, kitchen gadgets and by 1885, bicycles.

Indeed, Peugeot’s entry into the automobile business was by way of bicycles. At the time, the company was one of the largest bicycle manufacturers in France. In 1889, Armand Peugeot created the company’s first steam-powered car. A year later, he abandoned steam in favor of gas-powered internal combustion engine after meeting Gottlieb Daimler.

The Peugeot "lion" logo was designed by jeweler and engraver Justin Blazer in 1847. It was based on the flag of the Région Franche-Comté. The logo was stamped on Peugeot kitchen gadgets to denote the quality of their steel. It took Armand 14 years to convince his family that cars could be a moneymaker. Only then did they allow him to use the Peugeot lion logo. (Source: Independent)

Now, you may not drive a Peugeot car, but I bet you’ve used a Peugeot invention of 1842: the peppermill. The mill’smechanism was so reliable that it remained virtually unchanged until today.

Renault

Source: Renault

Louis Renault was 21 when he made his first car in the backyard of his parent’s home. He soon got orders for cars, so in 1898, along with his brothers and friends, Louis opened the company Société Renault Frères in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.

The first Renault logo, drawn in 1900 featured the three initials of the Renault brothers: Louis, Ferdinand and Marcel. In 1906, the logo changed to a front end of a car enclosed in a gear wheel.

Renault FT-17 tank, driven by American troops, going forward to the battle line in the Forest of Argonne. (Source: The National Archives)

During World War I, Renault manufactured light tanks for the Allies called the Renault FT-17. This was so popular that after the war, Renault actually changed its logo into a tank. The diamond shape was introduced in 1925 and remained until today. The modern Renault logo was created in 1972 by Victor Vasarely [offical website | wikipedia], the father of Op art (or optical art).

Saab

If you’ve ever seen a Saab car commercial, then you’d know that the company was "born from jets". You wouldn’t know it from the car’s staid style, but historically this was accurate: In 1937, an aircraft company called Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget ("Swedish Aeroplane Limited" or simply SAAB) was created to meet the needs of the Swedish Air Force.

When World War II ended, SAAB the airplane company started making cars to diversify its business. The first car it made was a prototype called the the Saab 92001 or ursaab (meaning "original Saab") in 1946. It was test-driven for nearly 330,000 miles (530,000 km) in utter secrecy, usually on narrow and muddy forest roads in the early mornings or late nights.

In 1947, the Saab Automobile company was incorporated. The company’s first car was the Saab 92, named because it was simply the company’s 92nd design project (the previous 91 had all been aircraft).

The griffen logo, featuring the head of a mythological beast that had a body of a lion and head and wings of an eagle, came from Vadis-Scania, a truck manufacturer that merged with SAAB (airplane) company. The griffen was a coat of arms of the province Scania.

In 2000, Saab Automobile company was bought out by General Motors, and thus no longer had any connection with SAAB outside of its history and logo similarities.

Source: The Saab Brand, Saab History

Confused? Don’t worry about it, just enjoy the pictures.

Volkswagen

Source: TheSamba

You wouldn’t know it from the company’s website but Volkswagen (German for "People’s Car") can trace its history straight to the villain of World War II: Adolf Hitler.

Here’s the short version of the story: After World War I, Germany’s economy was shot and cars cost more than most people can afford. When Hitler rose to power and became Chancellor, he spoke at the 1933 Berlin Auto Show of his idea to create a new and affordable car.

At the same time, Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) was designing an odd-looking yet inexpensive car (which would later become the Volkswagen Beetle). Porsche met with Hitler in 1934, who asked that the car to have the following specifications: it should have a top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph), a fuel consumption of 42 mpg, and could carry 2 adults and 3 children. He said the car should look like a Maikaefer – a May beetle and even gave Porsche a sketch of the basic design. Porsche promised to deliver the design, with prototype cars to be built by Daimler-Benz.

In 1937, the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH was created (it became simply Volkswagenwerk GmbH a year later). In 1938, Hitler opened the state-funded Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, which was to produce the KdF-wagen (kraft durch freude, meaning "strength through joy"). Few were actually built, instead, the factory (employing forced labor) churned out military car, based on the same chassis: the Kübelwagen, Schwimmwagen, and Kommandeurwagen.

(Source)

It was later found out that Hitler had this in mind all along. He added an extra secret specification to Porsche’s design: the car was to be able to carry 3 men, a machine gun, and ammunition.

After Germany was defeated in World War II, the British took over the Volkswagen factory and the KdF-Wagen was renamed the Beetle. The British then sought to give control of the company – first they asked the Ford Motor Company, then the French Government, other British car manufacturers and lastly, Fiat. All turned down this "free offer" because they thought the Beetle’s design was inferior and that the company would be a money drain. (Source: The Auto Channel)

So, the British gave the Volkswagen company back to the German government in a trust. Later, having sold more than 21 million cars, the Volkswagen Beetle would become one of the world’s best selling cars ever.

The VW logo itself was supposedly designed by Franz Xavier Reimspiess, an employee of Porsche, during an office logo design competition. He was given a one time payment of 100 Reichsmarks (about $400).

If you didn’t see your favorite car’s logo history, chances are it is because its logo didn’t change much over the years. There are also dozens of large car companies in the world (many more if you counted the defunct ones), and we couldn’t fit every single one in this article. If I missed anything, please let me know in the comment.

Don’t Miss These:

Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos	Wonderful World of Early Computing	Wonderful World of Early Photography

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

Let’s take a look at the origin of tech companies’ logos and how they evolved over time:

Adobe Systems

Source: Adobe Press

In 1982, forty-something programmers John Warnock and Charles Geschke quit their work at Xerox to start a software company. They named it Adobe, after a creek that ran behind Warnock’s home. Their first focus was to create PostScript, a programming language used in desktop publishing.

When Adobe was young, Warnock and Geschke did everything they could to save money. They asked family and friends to help out: Geschke’s 80-year-old father stained lumber for shelving, and Warnock’s wife Marva designed Adobe’s first logo.

Apple Inc.

In 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs ("the two Steves") designed and built a homemade computer, the Apple I. Because Wozniak was working for Hewlett Packard at the time, they offered it to HP first, but they were turned down. The two Steves had to sell some of their prized posessions (Wozniak sold his beloved programmable HP calculator and Jobs sold his old Volkswagen bus) to finance the making of the Apple I motherboards.

Later that year, Wozniak created the next generation machine: Apple ][ prototype. They offered it to Commodore, and got turned down again. But things soon started to look up for Apple, and the company began to gain customers with its computers.

The first Apple logo was a complex picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. The logo was inscribed: "Newton … A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone." It was designed by Ronald Wayne, who along with Wozniak and Jobs, actually founded Apple Computer. In 1976, after only working for two weeks at Apple, Wayne relinquished his stock (10% of the company) for a one-time payment of $800 because he thought Apple was too risky! (Had he kept it, Wayne’s stock would be worth billions!)

Jobs thought that the overly complex logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999.

Rumor has it that the bite on the Apple logo was a nod to Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple. Janoff, however, said in an interview that though he was mindful of the "byte/bite" pun (Apple’s slogan back then: "Byte into an Apple"), he designed the logo as such to "prevent the apple from looking like a cherry tomato." (Source)

In 1998, supposedly at the insistence of Jobs, who had just returned to the company, Apple replaced the rainbow logo ("the most expensive bloody logo ever designed" said Apple President Mike Scott) with a modern-looking, monochrome logo.

Canon

Source: Canon Origin and Evolution of the Logo

In 1930, Goro Yoshida and his brother-in-law Saburo Uchida created Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory in Japan. Four years later, they created their first camera, called the Kwanon. It was named after the Kwanon, Buddhist Bodhisattva of Mercy. The logo included an image of Kwanon with 1,000 arms and flames.

Coolness of logo notwithstanding, the company registered the differently spelled word "Canon" as a trademark because it sounded similar to Kwanon while implying precision, a characteristic the company would like to be known and associated with.

Google

In 1996, Stanford University computer science graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin built a search engine that would later become Google. That search engine was called BackRub, named for its ability to analyze "back links" to determine relevance of a particular website. Later, the two renamed their search engine Google, a play on the word Googol (meaning 1 followed by 100 zeros).

Google.com in 1998

Two years later, Larry and Sergey went to Internet portals (who dominated the web back then) but couldn’t get anyone interested in their technology. In 1998, they started Google, Inc. in a friend’s garage, and the rest is history.

Google’s first logo was created by Sergey Brin, after he taught himself to use the free graphic software GIMP. Later, an exclamation mark mimicking the Yahoo! logo was added. In 1999, Stanford’s Consultant Art Professor Ruth Kedar designed the Google logo that the company uses today.

The very first Google Doodle: Burning Man Festival 1998

To mark holidays, birthdays of famous people and major events, Google uses specially drawn logos known as the Google Doodles. The very first Google Doodle was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1999. Larry and Sergey put a little stick figure on the home page to let people know why no one was in the office in case the website crashed! Now, Google Doodles are regularly drawn by Dennis Hwang.

IBM

Source: IBM Archives

In 1911, the International Time Recording Company (ITR, est. 1888) and the Computing Scale Company (CSC, est. 1891) merged to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR, see where IBM gets its penchant for three letter acronym?). In 1924, the company adopted the name International Business Machines Corporation and a new modern-looking logo. It made employee time-keeping systems, weighing scales, meat slicers, and punched-card tabulators.

In the late 1940s, IBM began a difficult transition of punched-card tabulating to computers, led by its CEO Thomas J. Watson. To signify this radical change, in 1947, IBM changed its logo for the first time in over two decades: a simple typeface logo.

In 1956, with the leadership of the company being passed down to Watson’s son, Paul Rand changed IBM’s logo to have "a more solid, grounded and balanced appearance" and at the same time he made the change subtle enough to communicate that there’s continuity in the passing of the baton of leadership from father to son.

IBM logo’s last big change – which wasn’t all that big – was in 1972, when Paul Rand replaced the solid letters with horizontal stripes to suggest "speed and dynamism."

LG Electronics

LG began its life as two companies: Lucky (or Lak Hui) Chemical Industrial (est. 1947), which made cosmetics and GoldStar (est. 1958), a radio manufacturing plant. Lucky Chemical became famous in Korea for creating the Lucky Cream, with a container bearing the image of the Hollywood starlet Deanna Durbin. GoldStar evolved from manufacturing only radios to making all sorts of electronics and household appliances.

In 1995, Lucky Goldstar changed its name to LG Electronics (yes, a backronym apparently not). Actually, LG is a chaebol (a South Korean conglomerate), so there’s a whole range of LG companies that also changed their names, such as LG Chemicals, LT Telecom, and even a baseball team called the LG Twins. These companies all adopted the "Life is Good" tagline you often see alongside its logo.

Interestingly, LG denies that their name now stands for Lucky Goldstar… or any other words. They’re just "LG."

Microsoft

Microsoft’s "groovy logo" source: Coding Horror

In 1975, Paul Allen (who then was working at Honeywell) and his friend Bill Gates (then a sophomore at Harvard University) saw a new Altair 8800 of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS. It was the first mini personal computer available commercially.

Allen and Gates decided to port the computer language BASIC for the computer (they did this in 24 hours!), making it the first computer language written for a personal computer. They approached MITS and ended up licensing BASIC to the company. Shortly afterwards, Allen and Gates named their partnership "Micro-soft" (within the year, they dropped the hyphen). In 1977, Microsoft became an official company with Allen and Gates first sharing the title general partners.

On to the logo history:

In 1982, Microsoft announced a new logo, complete with the distinctive "O" that employees dubbed the "Blibbet." When the logo was changed in 1987, Microsoft employee Larry Osterman launched a "Save the Blibbet" campaign but to no avail. Supposedly, way back when, Microsoft cafeteria served "Blibbet Burger," a double cheeseburger with bacon.

In 1987, Scott Baker designed the current, so-called "Pac-Man Logo" for Microsoft. The new logo has a slash on the ‘O’ that made it look like Pac-Man, hence the name. In 1994 Microsoft introduced a new tagline Where do you want to go today?, as part of a $100 million advertising campaign. Needless to say, it was widely mocked.

In 1996, perhaps tired of being the butt of jokes like "what kind of error messages would you like today?", Microsoft dropped the slogan. Later, it tried on new taglines like "Making It Easier", "Start Something", "People Ready" and "Open Up Your Digital Life" before settling on the current "Your potential. Our passion."

Oh, one more thing: what was Microsoft’s original slogan? It was "Microsoft: What’s a microprocessor without it?"

… Microsoft’s very first advertising campaign "Microsoft: What’s a microprocessor without it?," which touted how Microsoft’s line of programming languages could be used to create software that would take advantage of the early microprocessors. The first advertisement in the campaign appeared in a 1976 issue of a microchip journal called Digital Design and featured a four panel black-and-white cartoon titled "The Legend of Micro-Kid." The cartoon depicted a small microchip character as a boxer who possessed speed and power but quickly tired out because he had no real training. The other character, a trainer complete with a derby on his head and big stogie hanging out of his mouth, related the story of how the Micro-Kid had a great future but needed a manager, such as himself, in order to succeed. (source: PC Today)

Motorola

Motorola, then Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, was started in 1928 by Paul Galvin. In the 1930s, Galvin started manufacturing car radios, so he created the name ‘Motorola’ which was simply the combination of the word ‘motor’ and the then-popular suffix ‘ola.’ The company switched its name in 1947 to Motorola Inc. In the 1980s, the company started making cellular phones commercially.

The stylized "M" insignia (the company called it "emsignia") was designed in 1955. A company leader said that "the two aspiring triangle peaks arching into an abstracted ‘M’ typified the progressive leadership-minded outlook of the company." (I’m serious, look up the logo-speak here: Motorola History)

Mozilla Firefox

In 2002, Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross created an open-source web browser that ultimately became Mozilla Firefox. At first, it was titled Phoenix, but this name ran into trademark issues and was changed to Firebird. Again, the replacement name ran into problem because of an existing software. Third time’s the charm: the web browser was re-named Mozilla Firefox.

In 2003, professional interface designer Steven Garrity, wrote that the browser (and other software released by Mozilla) suffered from poor branding. Soon afterwards, Mozilla invited him to develop a new visual identity for Firefox, including the famous logo.

Update 2/7/08: I goofed on this one, guys: it was John Hicks of Hicksdesign that actually made the Firefox logo, designed from a concept from Daniel Burka and sketched by Stephen Desroches – Thanks Jacob Morse and Aaron Bassett!

Nokia

Source: about-nokia.com

In 1865, Knut Fredrik Idestam established a wood-pulp mill in Tampere, south-western Finland. It took on the name Nokia after moving the mill to the banks of the Nokianvirta river in the town of Nokia. The word "Nokia" in Finnish, by the way, means a dark, furry animal we now call the Pine Marten weasel.

The modern company we know as the Nokia Corporation was actually a merger between Finnish Rubber Works (which also used a Nokia brand), the Nokia Wood Mill, and the Finnish Cable Works in 1967.

Before focusing on telecommunications and cell phones, Nokia produced paper products, bicycle and car tires, shoes, television, electricity generators, and so on.

Nortel

Source: Nortel History

In 1895, Bell Telephone Company of Canada spun off its business that made fire alarm, call boxes, and other non-telephone hardware into a new company called the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company Ltd. It began by manufacturing wind-up gramophones.

In 1976, Northern Electric changed its name to Northern Telecom Ltd. to better reflect its new focus on digital technology. Nineteen years later in 1995, it became Nortel Networks "reflecting its corporate evolution from telephoney manufacturing company to designer, builder, and integrator of diverse multiservice networks."

Palm

Palm Computing Inc. was founded in 1992 by Jeff Hawkins, who also invented the Palm Pilot PDA. The company has gone through some rough patches in its history: its first PDA called Zoomer was a commercial flop. Next, it was bought out by U.S. Robotics who was promptly sued by Xerox for patent infringement over its Graffiti handwriting recognition technology.

Then it gets convoluted: U.S. Robotics was bought by 3Com, and Hawkins, disgusted with office politics, left to create his own company Handspring. Ironically, not long after he left, 3Com spun off Palm Inc as a separate company. Palm Inc split into two, PalmSource (the OS side) and palmOne (the hardware part). palmOne then merged with Handspring and then bought PalmSource to coalesce back into … Palm, Inc.!

Got that? No? Never mind. All along this journey, they not only change names, but logos as well. Well, at least the graphics designers got some money.

Xerox

Source: Xerox Historical Logos

Xerox Corporation can trace its lineage back almost 100 years ago to the Haloid Company, which was founded in 1906 to manufacture photographic paper and equipment.

In 1938, Chester Carlson invented a photocopying technique called electrophotography, which he later renamed xerography (Carlson was famous for his persistence: he experimented for 15 years and through debilitating back pain while going to law school and working his regular job). Like many inventions ahead of its time, it wasn’t well received at all. Carlson spent years trying to convince General Electric, IBM, RCA, and other companies to invest in his invention but no one was interested.

Until, that is, he went to the Haloid company, who helped him develop the world’s first photocopier, the Haloid Xerox 914. The copier were so successful that in 1961, Xerox dropped the Haloid from its name.

In 2004, fresh from a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for cooking the books, Xerox tried to re-invent itself (complete with a new logo). Four years later in 2008, it tried to get away from the image that it’s only a copier company and adopted a new logo. The good news is people don’t think of copier when they see the new logo. The bad news is, they think of a beach ball.

Update 2/7/08: And yes, I missed the “Digital X” logo of Xerox. Check out Brand New blog for the entire scoop.

Previously on Neatorama:
- Wonderful World of Early Computing
- Wonderful World of Early Photography
- Lots more neat articles in the "Neatorama Only" Archive

Update 2/7/08: Hello diggers, redditors and del.icio.us readers! For more fun stuff, check out the rest of Neatorama or subscribe via RSS. Thanks for visiting!

Update 2/8/08: Here’s the Russian translation by Vadime Kuzmitsky. Update 2/14/08: Another one by Alexander Shiryshev

How much would you pay for a good haircut? Twelve dollars at Supercuts (like me) or $400 at a high-end salon (like John Edwards)?

Or would you pay even higher like Beverly Lateo, a blond millionaire who paid celebrity hair stylist Stuart Phillips £8,000 ($16,260) for a hairdo:

Yes, that’s £8,000. For a haircut. OK, so the price did include her first-class flights from Italy, where Beverley, originally from Essex retired to 15 years ago, a limousine from the airport, Stuart’s services for the entire day as well as the promise that Beverley’s every whim would be indulged.

But in the event, her only indulgence was a cream tea and a trim and blow dry that took less than a hour. The result is Stuart’s pocketed more than 50 times the normal £150 he’d charge for a standard cut in profit.

Nonetheless, Beverley, 50, insists her trim was worth every penny. "Some people would say £3,000 is too expensive for a Hermes handbag," she says. "Others would say £8,000 is too much for a haircut. "I’d say it’s up to you to decide what you are prepared to pay for the things you want in life."

This is the third time Beverley has paid £8,000 for Stuart to cut her hair. She first came over a year ago after a hairdresser in Italy ‘butchered’ her hair. "My long blonde hair is my pride and joy and I want to be sure it won’t be messed up," she says.

Must be nice to be rich! Link – via BornRich

We’ve covered a lot of luxury items on Neatorama…. like the world’s most expensive book and whatnot. Usually the trick is to add gold, diamonds, and the like to whatever it is you want to make expensive.

This is no different: Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid created the Gold Pill, guaranteed to make your poop glitter with gold! For $425, these pills containing 24K gold leaves will "turn your inner most parts into chambers of wealth!"

Link – via DVICE

This Christmas, don’t go with that ho-hum, run-of-the-tree-farm tree your family always gets year after year. Try something new and unusual…. Like these 10 strange Christmas trees, for instance:

Upside Down Christmas Tree

The upside of this upside-down 7-foot pre-lit Christmas tree is that you’ll have more room for presents underneath! This strange tree was originally designed for specialty stores to display ornaments while using as little floor space as possible.

It’s $600 and is currently sold out at Hammacher Schlemmer: Link

Whoville Christmas Tree

In Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Grinch may have realized that Christmas doesn’t come from a store, but in this case, the Whoville desktop Christmas tree does come from one! Link

Charlie Brown’s Pathetic Christmas Tree

Good Grief! If Cindy Lou’s Whoville Christmas tree above wasn’t sad enough, maybe you’ll like this one: Charlie Brown’s Pathetic Christmas Tree as featured in Charles Schulz’ excellent comic strip Peanut…. This tree needs you!

Afterall, Linus van Pelt did say "It’s not a bad little tree. All it needs is a little love." Link

Mountain Dew Christmas Tree

It’s probably too late for you to start doing this one: the awesome Mountain Dew Christmas Tree. It took about 3 months of soda drinking (approximately 400 cans of Mountain Dew) and 4 days of building. Link (with video clip)

Grolsch Beer Christmas Tree

Mountain Dew? Weaklings… Try Grolsch beer instead: Link

Knitted Christmas Tree

If you’re into knitting and crafts, why not knit yourself a Christmas tree? Like this big one done by about 1,000 knitters at Eden Project: Link (scroll down)

The Shelf Tree

Don’t want to bother with shedding pine needles or the hassle of putting together an artificial Christmas tree? You can make one out of books and magazines like this Shelf Tree by Frank Visser of IJM [Flash] instead.

World’s Most Expensive Christmas Tree

Last year, Singapore jeweler Soo Kee Jewellery created this Christmas tree with 21,798 diamonds totaling 913 carats and 3,762 crystal beads. The tree looked like (and was actually worth) a million bucks! Link

Giant Christmas Tree

This is the mother of all Christmas trees: a gigantic 7-story "tree" made from 350 regular-sized artificial trees! Approximately 70 staffers of Yilong Media company of China constructed a steel framing and then stacked this pyramid of Christmas trees. Link

Festivus Pole

Not celebrating Christmas? Are you celebrating Festivus [wiki] instead? Then you’ll need this Festivus Pole!

In case you don’t know anything about Festivus, it’s a made up holiday popularized by the TV show Seinfeld. The holiday includes such traditions as the "Airing of Grievances," in which you tell people how they disappointed you over the past year, and the "Feats of Strength," where the head of the household is wrestled to the floor.

The photo is Mark Metcalf ("Maestro" from Seinfeld) standing with his Festivus Pole at his restaurant Libby Montana in Mequon, Wisconsin. More photos here: Link

You can get Festivus Pole from The Wagner Companies here: Link

This Russian guy must really, really like whisky! The anonymous bidder paid £29,400 (about $60,000) for a bottle of a Bowmore single malt whisky, bottled in 1850:

The Bowmore single malt whisky is the oldest bottle of Bowmore known to be in existence and is believed to have been bottled on Islay around 1850 by W & J Mutter. It was being sold on behalf of a private owner during the fine and rare whisky wine and port auction held at McTears auctioneers in Glasgow. [...]

The bottle was presented to William Mutter in 1851 at the time of him giving up his share of the distillery and has remained in the family for generations. It had been inherited by a family descendent and was accompanied with hand written provenance.

Link – Thanks Ewan Morgan!

Dancing with the Bear is Roger Shashoua’s story about making money – lots of money – in Russia:

One prospective buyer showed interest in a bullet-proof car. "Is this car bullet-proof?" he asked. He was told that it was, whereupon he pulled out an automatic pistol and sprayed the side of the vehicle liberally with bullets. "It is bullet-proof!" he declared. "I’ll take two of them, but not this one as it is damaged."

Taking yet another advantage of the mega-rich Russians, Roger is selling what is believed to be the world’s most expensive book: a £3 million diamond-encrusted copy of his Dancing with the Bear book.

Link | Dancing with the Bear website – via Spluch

It may not look like much, but this miniature 5-inch gundam sculpture made by Bandai is made out of platinum and has diamonds for eyes! No wonder it’s $250,000!

Link

This 1790 intricately designed Valentine is valued at £4,000, making it the world’s most expensive Valentine card (and no embedded diamonds, either!). Link – via A Welsh View

You’re looking at the Limited Edition Mystery Masterpiece pen, the result of a collaboration between Montblanc and Van Cleef & Arpels. To celebrate their centennials in 2006, the two companies made a total of nine pens, each with 840 diamonds and over 20 carats of gemstones. The pen is valued at $730,000, making it the world’s most expensive writing instrument.

Link – Thanks Sinthyia!

Would you believe that this pez dispenser, called the World’s Fair Astronaut B, one of two ever made for the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, is the most expensive pez dispenser in the world? One just sold on eBay for over $30,000!

Links: eBay auction (completed) – via Darren Bare Foot | Candy Addict

Your3DSource has a very neat list of world’s most expensive animation cels (short for celluloid). This one is called "The Band Concert" and comes in at no. 1 as the most expensive ever:

"The Band Concert" was released by Disney in 1935, and is noted as the first color Mickey Mouse cartoon. In it, Mickey is trying to lead a concert of the William Tell Overture, amid various distractions such as Donald Duck playing the wrong tune on his flute, a pesky bee, and a violent storm. Despite these disruptions, the band keeps playing! This original cel was sold in a private transaction for a reported $498,000
USD.

Link – via digg