Historic Hood River
US Patent 1610131
9-2-2025
Notes
Here’s another random museum artifact. In 1926 Emil Ernest Grabner of Hood River was granted a US patent for his invention of a radiator heater. You can read about his invention here, but it looks like a small burner you could use to heat up your radiator so your Model T starts more easily on a cold morning. I think today we might use an electric dipstick to heat the oil if we lived in a very cold climate.
We know from the Hood River household directory that he lived at 13th and Lincoln. He doesn’t appear in the local newspapers, though in 1927 an E. G. Grabner, who I think was his son, severely burned his hand in a blowtorch explosion.
Dale Nicol
This is a interesting invention. I wonder if the son’s burns were a result of blowtorch soldering these units for production sales??
L. E.
In the June 13, 1926 Sunday Oregonian p.4:
Two Hurt at Hood River….John Guignard’s leg was crushed and Emil Grabner, a mechanic suffered serious injuries to his head today when a lathe, weighing more than a ton, toppled on them at an apple-grading machine factory operated by young Guignard’s father, August Guignard. The back of Mr. Grabner’s head was badly gashed and it was feared that his skull was fractured.
Dale Nicol
So it appears with L.E.’s findings, both father and son were hurt in industrial accidents.
L. E.
This is in the March 25, 1934 Sunday Oregonian p. 46
I couldn’t get OCR to read this correctly so I will just highlight the article. I wonder what happened to this display?
TOYS DRAW ATTENTION: Hood River special:
Hood River Machinist Constructs Mechanical Village.
Emil Grabner, formerly a machinist at The Dalles, has established a machine shop here.
Mr. Grabner a native of Germany, won note for making miniature working models of types of engines used on the rail lines of the company for which he worked has spent his time here in manufacturing novelty toys.
He recently exhibited an assembly of toys, operated by intricate mechanism, which represented a village street scene of days of high wheel bicycles. A horse drawn carriage moved down the street, followed by pedestrians. At the roadside a laborer was busy chopping wood.
Mr. Grabner, when in need of tools, makes them instead of purchasing them. He has just completed the manufacture of a powerful lathe for use in his own shop