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Goodrich and Air Inflatable companies



A guy I know in the very small world of Colorado River historians is researching a boat called the CHARLIE, which was the very first inflatable boat designed specifically for river running  (1938).  The vulcanized rubber was produced by Goodrich Rubber Co., but (I just learned) the design work was apparently done by an outfit called Air Inflatables from New Jersey.  I tried a web search for AIR INFLATABLE and ended up with literally thousands of sites about those inflatable promo balloons in the shape of just about anything, but nothing that looked like they used to design boats.  So, the question: any archivists from New Jersey who might happen to know anything about this company?  Is it still in existence?  If so I'd like to try to contact them to see if they have a records manager or archivist.

Our strangest reference questions involve, as you might well imagine, the LDS church (although we do get the occasional lost Spanish gold mines map query).  TO be honest, I refer to them as "Mormon Angels on the Head of a Pin" questions, since it seems like they are trying to answer those kinds of questions.  They'll want to pore over the records of people like George Albert Smith, John Taylor, Rudger Clawson, and others, all of whom were LDS church leaders, to see if they can discover some fine point of doctrine that's been missed by their predecessors.  They are always so intense and so ready to be rejected that they positively bristle when they come in the door, and are invariably surprised when we tell them yes, you can look at all of those records, and no, we don't care what you do with anything you find.

Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections Dept.
J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah
295 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073
roy.webb@library.utah.edu 

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