Inventor in Menlo Park

Like most Americans, Engineer Hans Goldschmidt knew that one of the quickest ways to make a fortune is to invent a new gadget or machine. Unlike most Americans, who never get beyond the daydreaming stage, Goldschmidt made his daydream come true. His invention: a home power tool that could be used as a lathe, vertical and horizontal drill, sander, saw--and do almost anything else needed for woodworking. Last week Goldschmidt's streamlined new model of the "Shop-smith," the do-it-yourself boom's most versatile power tool, went on display at a do-it-yourself exhibition in Manhattan.

Ready at a twist or two of the wrist to perform more than 100 different jobs, the new Shopsmith contains the first important improvements since the original model hit the market with a bang in 1947. The exposed drive belt, a hazard to juvenile fingers, has been enclosed, and a new speed control enables the woodworker to adjust the speed of saws, sanders, etc. simply by turning a dial to "saw" or "disc sand" in the same way a housewife adjusts an electric mixer. Price: $269.50.

Farewell to Chiseling. German-born Hans Goldschmidt, who earned his doctor's degree in administrative engineering at the University of Berlin, set out in 1945 to invent the machine that would make his fortune. He was earning good pay as a time-study man at the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond. Calif., but he expected the job to fold after war's end, and he did not want to go back to chiseling out a bare living in a one-man woodwork shop, as he had done in his first few years in the U.S. Recalling a newspaper article that predicted a postwar do-it-yourself boom, Goldschmidt decided that his invention would be an all-purpose power tool for home carpenters who wanted to make furniture or save money by helping to finish their new houses.

Goldschmidt made a crude model, then showed it to Bob Chambers, 35, a Harvard graduate whom he had met at the shipyard. Chambers was enthusiastic, and so was his brother Frank, 37.

Revolutions Ahead. With the Chambers brothers' savings of $8,000, the three rented space in a corner of a lumberyard and built a prototype. Frank took it to Chicago and showed it to Montgomery Ward officials, who astonished the three partners by ordering 250 for the 1947 Christmas season. Ward soon upped the order to 1,000, then 2,000. The partners incorporated as Magna Engineering Corp. (after Magna, Utah, home town of the brothers' parents). In 1948, its first full year, Magna sold $3,000,000 worth of Shopsmiths. Last year it grossed nearly $6,000,000.

Magna, now headquartered in a new, brick-and-glass building in Menlo Park, Calif., is still owned and operated by the three founders. While President Bob Chambers takes care of sales and advertising and Treasurer Frank Chambers looks after purchasing, Vice President Goldschmidt concentrates on inventing. Says he: Some new Magna products "will be just as revolutionary in their way as the Shopsmith was."

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