A Leslie Wong Blog

I have a peripheral interest in design and aesthetics. Who doesn’t like functional devices that look nice?

My sister gave me a membership to the Museum of Modern Art when I first moved to New York in the 70’s. Later, when I worked at ABC, I had the benefit of their corporate membership for admission. I used to walk to MOMA on 54th Street just to wonder at the things in the Architecture and Design Collection on the third floor.

The collection has a cast aluminum ice cream scoop that was designed by Sherman L. Kelly (American, 1869-1952) in 1935. The manufacturer, Zeroll, describes Kelly’s thinking:

“… As the story goes, Kelly was vacationing in West Palm Beach, Florida, when he observed a young woman dipping ice cream. Noticing the blisters on her hand from the constant use of the disher in the hard ice cream, he thought to himself, “there must be a better way to serve ice cream.” Kelly resolved to find it. In 1933, Sherman Kelly developed the design for the Zeroll® Ice Cream Dipper and received a patent. The dipper was a non-mechanical ice cream scoop, made of cast aluminum, with fluid inside the handle. Its unique design transferred heat from the user’s hand, warming the fluid, which in turn defrosted the ice cream dipper…”

I’ve wanted one of these since I saw it at MOMA. After the head broke off our last scoop, I bought a slightly updated version of the Zeroll Ice Cream Scoop for $18.

When I installed relays and Cibie headlamps in my cars, I used 10 gauge wire. That’s probably larger than I need since I’m using only 60/55 watt H4 bulbs and 55 watt H1 bulbs, but it can’t hurt.

I couldn’t find any good sockets locally that use 10 gauge wire. Most of the connectors were phenolic resin that used 16 gauge wire. I’d read about ceramic sockets for headlamps on the Internets but never looked for them in earnest. When I broke a soldered wired off of one my headlamp sockets while troubleshooting a non-working turn signal, I thought I should find a socket compatible with the rest of the robust wiring.

I found these ceramic sockets on eBay and bought four of them.

They’re OK quality. The cover, which has a plastic hinge, snaps closed after inserting the contacts. I had to trim the tabs that hold the cover closed with an X-Acto knife before it would close completely. I soldered the wire to the connectors before inserting them in the sockets. At least they worked with the 10 gauge wire.