Tire pumps

[rusty]

Hmm, odd, it is rather high. In Today-dollars the $5 is over $125, rather pricy for a glorified bicycle pump. 1906 dollars are about double just-before-crash dollars (1920), so even at that it's expensive.....

Aside from the depression, WWI is in there also, many companies got converted for the first war effort also, and never bothered going back to what they were making before...

[Branson]

Keep in mind the number of fast colors available in the 20's was rather limited...
The paint pigments were mostly metal compounds that happened to be a certain color..
It may simply be that green paint was cheap - P

Um, this isn't entirely accurate.  The old colors were fast (non-fading) because, well, they were made from rocks, and a look at the now cleaned Sistine Chapel murals show just about no color change over hundreds of years.  A number of metallic oxides produce really rich, vibrant colors.  The cadmiums especially have been used to produce vivid reds, yellows, and oranges.  Another set of reds (also poisonous) come from mercury based stone like cinnabar.  I suspect the green we're talking about has a chromium oxide base, and yes, chromium oxide is cheap.  And lasting.

Various "earths" have been used just as long.  Yellow ochres, red ochers, umber and sienna date back over 30,000 years, along with carbon blacks.  Ultramarine blue began as powdered lapis lazuli.  All these colors have been available since the Middle Ages.

Machine colors are also subject to fashion.  The late 1800s and early 1900s machines that I've worked with have been almost exclusively painted black -- the big Orton planers and stickers were black.  Later,  that sort of hunter's green came into fashion.  Jaeger used it, Erie Tool Co used it on the pipe vise I just acquired, Faye and Egan machines were green at this same period.  The green was replaced by gray, like the American 30 inch planer we used in the old mill shop.  That seems to have been followed by a light, somewhat dull, slightly metallic green still favored by some of the Taiwan tool makers.

[clovis]

I thought I would chime in on the tire pump conversation...even though it doesn't really apply.

There was a company in Indiana, called Arvin, that was owned by Noblitt-Sparks. They were first in Indianapolis, but later moved to Columbus, IN.

They made most of the tire pumps for Ford, especially in the early years. They had patented a continuously automatic, machine welded tube that they used for the body of the pump. The process, and the machinery they invented to make a seamless tube, with the contract to supply pumps for the Ford Model T gave them their claim to fame. If I understand correctly, they made tire pumps for Ford for many, many years. I was told that they were the sole supplier to Ford for tire pumps.

Arvin moved into the car part business, especially with exhaust parts, using their seamless welded tube.

Arvin stayed in business until they merged with a company called Meritor, sometime in the last decade...a sad story how the exhaust business got ran into the ground...thousands of Americans lost their jobs...but the CEO's and money men who orchestrated the deals got big, fat, crazy sized bonuses that were reported to be up to $16 million.