BRAINS BEHIND THE BOOM LIFT: PART ONE
Beginnings
Ted Thornton-Trump. Fellow Canadian. Inventor of the boom lift.
Well, one of our inventors, because there are actually two men who claim that title. Ted Thornton-Trump, and Jay Eitel. Today, we’ll learn Ted’s story, from his early years of post-secondary schooling to his famous invention. Next week, we’ll hear Jay’s story.
The stage of Ted’s life is set in the wintery Yukon, around 1939. The world is coming out of the great depression and transitioning to what we now know as World War II. Ted has recently completed a year-long course in power generation and diesel engineering in sunny California. He greatly desires to continue his education. Due to a lack of funds, he will not be able to afford further schooling until he saves up enough.
Life in the Yukon
So, Ted starts looking for employment. Through a business contact, Ted’s dad informs him of a job opening up in the Yukon, for a company called the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation (YCGC). When Ted learns that the YCGC is hiring men for a mining operation in Dawson City, he moves up immediately, arriving in April 1939. Though he expects to receive employment this spring, the days he spends cold and hungry begin to add up until it becomes clear: the YCGC will not be hiring him this time around.
Luckily, in a pure act of kindness, a family in Dawson City offers Ted a room in their house for him to bunk. He will never forget their kindness. But despite this generosity, nights are still brutally cold. Ted often rolls himself up in a rug to stay warm at night, and his roommates have to pilfer firewood to keep the house warm.
Thankfully, things aren’t cold and bitter for long though. Ted is finally hired as a manual laborer to help construct a building for gold smelting at Bear Creek. All the while, he carefully saves and counts his earnings, waiting for the day he will have enough to attend the University of British Columbia.
“Very carefully every night I would tally up how much closer I was to university,” he said. “And then I got laid off … I came to the conclusion that God was punishing me because I was so greedy about counting up all these pennies, and I made a vow then that I would never ever in my life work for money alone. I would work for the love of the job and the money end of it would look after itself.”
The seeds of success
Shortly after being hired, Ted recognizes a need at the shop he works at and pitches a solution to his boss. He suggests that he builds a special workbench fitted with meters and other instruments to test and repair electric motors. The idea gets approved by Ted’s supervisor, and so Ted spends his free time in the summer developing the bench. It is so well designed that it has remained in the shop for four decades!
His prowess for inventing really begins to take root in this environment, forecasted by many other instances of inventions he would construct around the job site to provide himself and others greater comfort and efficiency.
Many years later, this same knack for inventing things will yield an even greater harvest. Pun intended. He is now living in Oliver, British Columbia. Oliver’s rugged hillsides are groomed with spectacular rows upon rows of green orchards that stretch seemingly forever into the distance. Often, farmers are seen in these orchards, peeking out from the tops of heavy ladders.
Ted has a better idea. Instead of using ladders, which are slow and heavy, he pictures a suspended bucket.
Below the bucket, he envisions a truck. And all he has to do is invent a way to connect the bucket to the truck. He finally settles on a design featuring a hydraulic arm that connects the bucket to the truck, enabling a man to reach considerable heights when working. He originally dubs his invention ‘the Giraffe’, but it becomes more affectionately known as ‘the cherry picker’. We now know it as ‘the boom lift’, a piece of equipment known for its role on film sets, in orchards, and of course, in millions of construction projects.
The rest of Ted’s life is filled with the pendulum of successes and failures that follow any successful inventor. But one thing that has stuck throughout the years is his invention, the boom lift. If you are looking for a boom lift, either to go pick your own cherries or to get work done on the job site, click here or give us a call at 1-800-674-1018!