Robert Davol Budlong (1902–1955) was an American

industrial designer Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactu ...

from

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. He studied art at Cummings School of Art in

Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines () is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, ...

and graduated from

Grinnell College Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846 when a group of New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College. Grinnell has the fifth highest endowment-to-stu ...

, Iowa in 1921. This was followed by further study at the

Chicago Academy of Fine Arts The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum an ...

. He started his design career in 1933, with the Hammond Clock Company and, in 1934–1935, became a design consultant with Zenith Radio. This involvement with Zenith was to last until his death. He designed many of Zenith's pre-war portable radios, and virtually their entire "

Trans-Oceanic The Trans-Oceanic (abbreviated T/O) was a brand of portable radios produced from 1941 to 1981 by Zenith Radio. They were characterized by heavy-duty, high-quality construction and their performance as shortwave receivers. History Zenith's found ...

" line. His other radio designs included a "universal portable" AC/DC radio with batteries (1940), the "Poket" radio in 1941, and the "Transoceanic Clipper" in 1942. Although Zenith wanted him to work full-time as an employee, and head an in-house industrial design group, Budlong wished to remain independent to retain other clients. However, he did relocate his offices to the Zenith building on 333 Michigan Avenue, Chicago, that housed Zenith's corporate showrooms. His other major clients included Sunbeam,

Sears-Roebuck Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

, and Victor Cash Register. For Sunbeam, he designed the T-20 Toaster in 1950 - a newer type of appliance that lowered bread automatically, and raised itself silently when done - and worked with Sunbeam staff designer Ivar Jepson on the "Shavemaster" (1950) electric shaver. This model had a smooth, rounded head and an ergonomic shape to be held in the palm of the hand, rather than the previous elongated shape held like a hammer. Budlong's business was taken over after his death in 1955 by one of his associates, Ken Schory Sr. and renamed Ken Schory Associates.

External links

IDSA Bio of Budlong
1902 births 1955 deaths American industrial engineers American industrial designers 20th-century American engineers Grinnell College alumni {{US-engineer-stub