Samuel Blanc

Samuel Oscar Blanc (born February 13, 1883 in Menominee Falls , Wisconsin , † December 20, 1964 in Des Moines , Iowa ) was an American inventor and entrepreneur who invented a motor-operated pipe cleaning spiral and founded the spirals of the same name Company Roto-Rooter became known.

Life

Coming in from the French derived ancestors Blanc already had to stop schooling age of ten and contribute to the livelihood of his family after his father suicide committed. In the following years he worked as a lumberjack, telephone operator and salesman and also completed distance learning in mechanical engineering .

In 1927 his life took an unexpected U- turn: the kitchen drain in one of his sons' apartments was clogged and neither he nor his son could reach a plumber , so the two of them spent the whole afternoon trying to pull potato peels out of the drain pipes with a pounder and a flexible hose to remove. This chore not only exhausted him physically, it also frustrated him so much that he began drawing plans to make the pipe cleaning easier. The transfer of these plans from paper to reality took six years in his home workshop .

Roto-Rooter plumber at work with the pipe cleaning device invented by Blanc

In 1933 he used a cable with a cutting drill head powered by the motor of his wife's washing machine to clean the first pipe. Shortly afterwards he began the arduous task of setting up a factory to manufacture these drain cleaning devices. The company was given the name Roto-Rooter, invented by his wife Leticia "Lettie" Blanc . The cleaning equipment originally sold for $ 250 , a high price tag during the Great Depression . However, more and more plumbers were purchasing these tools, which made their work much easier, for cleaning stubbornly clogged drains and drainage systems, so that it was no longer necessary to tear up roads to reach the drainage pipes. Blanc himself was President of the Roto-Rooter company from 1935 to 1964.

In the years that followed, the company not only manufactured the cleaning equipment, but also became a drain cleaning company with employed plumbers. In 1954 the company received its famous signature tune "Call Roto-Rooter, that's the name, and away go troubles down the drain" ('Ruf Roto-Rooter, that's the name, and the trouble with the pipe is gone').

In 1980 the family sold the company to Cincinnati- based Chemed Corporation, which continued to use the well-known Roto-Rooter name. The company is the largest provider of plumbing and pipe cleaning services in the United States and is also represented in Canada , Japan , Mexico , Philippines , United Kingdom , Singapore , Hong Kong and Indonesia .

Web links

• Samuel Blanc in the nndb (English)
• Homepage of the Roto-Rooter Company
• Company history in pictures