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Welcome to the 10th installment of Mystery Monday. Today is National Air Condition Appreciation Day. Purdue Galleries has the archive of this famous Hoosier industrial designer who developed everything from the ubiquitous Duracell Coppertop battery to the modern hospital bed to the first refrigerator with icemaker. Can you guess who he is?
The answer is Donald Earl Dailey (1914-199). Dailey was born in Minneapolis, MN and studied marketing, engineering, and design at the University of Toledo and Toledo Museum School of Design in the 1930s. He worked for several well-known firms such as Van Doren and Servel, Inc. He established his own compnay in 1955 which he ran until his retirement in 1996 shortly before his death in 1997. He was a member of SID (Society of Industrial Designers) and a former president of ASID (American Society of Industrial Designers) now the IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America). In total he held eighty-eight patents on his work.
Purdue Galleries has almost 200 objects from Dailey’s collection, compiled by the Evansville Museum of Arts, History, and Science and then donated to Purdue University in 1997.
In the height of summer, let’s all take a moment and appreciate Don Dailey and his innovations that help keep us cool.
Title: Condenser Unit for ARKLA
Designer: Donald Dailey (1914-1997), American
Date: 1955-1990
Medium: pencil on paper
Technique: drawing
Accession number: 1997.03.089.05