In 1949, a 48-year-old would-be electrician in Paramount made a contraption out of a hydraulic cylinder from an A-20 attack plane, a chassis from an oil derrick and a Jeep engine.
You know, of course, what happened next. Yes, that contraption revolutionized hockey.
The machine was the Zamboni, named after its creator--Frank J. Zamboni--and what it did was scrape off a layer of scruffy, icky ice, at the same time flooding the area with hot water that froze into a smooth and shiny sheet of nice ice.
So when the NHL finals resume Tuesday night, professional hockey will be marking the 50th anniversary of the birth of the greatest invention in the history of ice . . . with the possible exception of the ice cube tray.
Half a century of Zambonis. Frank Zamboni would have been so proud, says his son, Richard.
"He would have really been surprised and pleased," said Richard, 66, who has served as head ice-maker at the Frank J. Zamboni Co., since his father's death at 87 in 1988.
And, although now there are rivals, the Zamboni ice-resurfacing machine remains unique. Besides Zamboni, there are only a few products known by their actual names--Jacuzzi . . . Hoover . . . Cher. . . .
The patriarch of the Zamboni empire had no more than a ninth-grade education, but when it came to ice, he was Phi Beta Kappa. He just loved the stuff. Frank, his brother Lawrence and a cousin built Iceland Skating Rink in Paramount soon after their business of delivering block ice fizzled out because of something called the refrigerator.
Keeping the ice surface suitable for skating was tricky in those days and the slow process of filling in all the cracks and holes by hand, well, it frosted Frank. It took about an hour and a half for five workers to scrape off the ice with shovels and then form a new layer by pouring water from buckets onto the surface.
Frank had a better idea and the motorized vehicle that did the same thing faster and better was born, popping out of the freezer like a runaway Popsicle.
Today, the Frank J. Zamboni Co. employs 65 workers at factories in Paramount and Brantford, Canada, where another Frank Zamboni, Richard's son, runs the show. The factories produce as many as 150 machines a year in seven models that range in price from $6,000-$7,000 to as high as $80,000.
The first Zamboni used in the NHL, old No. 21, glided upon the ice at Boston Garden in 1954. Its current home is the NHL Hall of Fame in Toronto.
