A Silver King By Any Other Name

[hygiene903]

Is still a Silver King! It's always great when you can cross a machine off of your want list, and my good friend Ken Wagman recently helped me to cross one off of mine! He gave me a Custom King model AE, which is essentially a Silver King with a slightly different name. It included all the standard cleaning attachments and 3 packs of filters, and I am amazed at how powerful it is, yet so light weight! He also gave me a hose for my Westinghouse SC-1 Canister that will match it a lot better than the white hose I have with it now. He sent it home from the convention with Luke Gebhart, and I picked it up at Luke's about 2 weeks ago.
Now here's a question which I hope we have a Silver King expert or two who can answer for me. Was it a similar situation to Compact and Revelation, where the Silver King would have been sold door to door and the Custom King sold in vac shops? Or was the Custom King private labeled for someone else? Or was one sold as a household machine and the other commercial? Hope someone will be able to answer these questions for me, and yes, I will post pictures as soon as I get some taken.
So thank you again Ken, for this wonderful addition to my collection, and thank you Luke, for bringing it with you and meeting up with me so I could pick it up. Was great visiting with you and Levi and seeing the goodies that you got at the convention and thank you also for the Convertible hose and Royal bags you gave me as well!
Jeff

 

[paul]

Congrats, Jeff! A great addition to your amazing collection - and what a great friend you have in Ken!

I searched an online newspaper database and only found one ad for the Custom-King in the classified section of the April 6, 1977, GADSEN TIMES, (attached) so it may have mainly been sold door-to-door as you mentioned.

If no one else has information, Silver King (commercial line) and Custom-King literature would reveal any differences in features as have been noted in the archives by Airwaylady (Tania) regarding the Silver Knight household line.

I did find Custom-King trademark history at uspto.com, which I have also attached.

Enjoy your Custom-King!

 

[lesinutah]

Jeff

Congrats on your dream vac. I was hoping you will poat pics. I recently seen a silver king upright for the first time in 5 or so years. I messaged them but it was gone.

 

[dysonman1]

Ruth Hollander was a distributor for Thompson and Sons. She sold Silver King as well as Custom King cleaners. She told me all about them. A distributor or dealer could order the Custom King in any design they wanted ("custom"). You would order the same model with a by-pass motor or standard Lamb flo-thru motor. You could order it in any number of different pan capacities. You could order it with disposable reusable bags (I have some). It was designed for dealers who were competing with Filer Queen or Fairfax in their areas.

Interestingly, Silver King built the Air-Way "Wet and Dry" for Air-Way about that same time in history.

 

[hygiene903]

Thank You

Thank you, Paul, Les, and Tom, for your replies. Paul, I had forgotten about uspto.gov, and after seeing your post I went to the sight and looked up Silver King and Silver Knight as well. Found out the Silver King name was first used on 9/22/1947, and the company name was originally Thompson Manufacturing Co. and had a Chicago address. Silver Knight was first used on 4/14/1954, and by that time the company name had been changed to Thompson and Sons Inc., and they had moved to Lyons, Ill. where they remained for over 30 years, and Custom King was first used 8/27/1958.
Les, I'll post pics as soon as I get some taken. Still using film, so may take a while. I did get a digital camera but have a lot to learn about it, including how to download pics to my computer. My Custom King is a cannister, but I think I saw a pic posted somewhere of the upright. I'm thinking that Eureka or Sanitaire built it for them, as that's what it looked like. I don't think Thompsons ever built an upright.
Tom, the Air-Way Wet and Dry is a new one to me! Never seen one or heard of it before. Must be pretty rare. So then, the Custom King is basically a custom-built Silver King. Did the distributor have to order a minimum quantity to get the options he wanted?
Jeff

 

[paul]

You're welcome, Jeff; thank you for the background of Silver King and Silver Knight!

If you're interested in pursuing Silver King's history in greater detail and maybe even locating its archives (including information on the upright), I'd suggest contacting the county museum(s) as I have done for Eureka.

Looking forward to seeing photos of your Custom-King!

 

[dysonman1]

Silver King bought the dies and tooling from Universal. Their Silver King upright was a Universal with the Silver King name.

Custom Kings were ordered in quantity of 8 (there were 2 to a master carton). The attachments were also packed two to a master carton. I remember when Ruth ordered Custom Kings with the small 2 gallon pan. She had been selling Filter Queen and that size appealed to folks better than the commercial look of the wet/dry. She also ordered them with flo-thru motors, as the bypass motors were too loud.

Silver King was first designed as a system to aerosolize glycol. I have the original sales books for the salesmen from 1948. An entire machine with its own cord was started to heat the glycol, and the blower from the King was what dispersed it. Fascinating stuff. It's the reason Rexair changed their Germicide formula to glycol co-efficient in the mid 1950's.

 

[hygiene903]

Amazing!

So they actually did build an upright! I'm assuming they didn't make them very long, as I've never seen one in person and have only once seen a picture of one.
My Custom King has the flo-thru motor and what I'm assuming to be their "standard" size pan, or at least, the size I'm most familiar with. Saw a picture of one with the small pan once, didn't look right to me--looked kind of top heavy, as if the motor unit was bigger than the pan!
I've heard of the aerosolizing unit and at one time I think Hans posted a picture of one connected to the exhaust of his Silver Knight and the cord plugged into an outlet on the side of the machine. I think Silver King called it a vaporizer and I've heard that when it is in operation it actually puts a cloud in the air!
I'll bet those sales manuals are amazing! I have one for the Galaxy Prestige 990 from when I was selling them in the 70's (they were sold through the Electro-Hygiene dealerships) and another one for the Electro-Hygiene 285.
Jeff