IVIV: Golden Fang/Howard Hughes

[John Bailey]

I thought I remembered reading here that Channel View Estates is
basically on top of Hughes' old joint (or near it). Tried to find that
ref in the novel and the closest street-names given are where Doc
parks on his first visit to the complex: "[Doc] parked at what would
be the corner of Kaufman and Broad and walked back".

Kaufman and Broad is a Fortune 500 prefab homebuilding company!
Completely missed that joke. And "what would be"? What will be? The KB
Home headquarters in LA is just across the road from the FBI and the
veterans cemetery.

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Was gonna briefly mention Hughes before from one of the Hughes Nixon Rebozo
> connections I read about while following the GF leads. Rebozo was a banker
> connected to the mob and Cuba and was Nixons best friend and they met on a
> boat and hung out on his boat. If I remember right Rebozo carried money from
> Hughes to Nixon and was caught but wiggled  out of it. So are you connecting
> the drill bit to the Dentistry gig in IV?  Hughes also connects us to
> Hollywood.
> On Nov 3, 2009, at 4:11 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
>> Proverbs for Paranoids numero cero: JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID . . .
>>
>> Trust me, I'll develop this thread. But for the moment, I'm going to say
>> that the Golden Fang, in addition to being a swell metaphor for Capitalism
>> in the corporate age, also points to Howard Hughes.
>>
>> This is developing thought, but noted that the device/invention that got
>> the Hughes fortune initiated was the drill bit patented by Howard Hughes
>> father, Howard Robard Hughes, Sr:
>>
>>        Hughes drill bits:
>>
>>        Hughes engaged in various mining business endeavors before
>>        capitalizing on the Spindletop oil discovery in Texas, as a result
>>        of which he began devoting his full time to the oil business. On
>>        20 November 1908 he filed the basic patents for the Sharp-
>>        Hughes Rock Bit, and on 10 August 1909 was granted two
>>        patents for this rock drill. Hughes had patented a two-cone
>>        rotary drill bit that penetrated medium and hard rock with ten
>>        times the speed of any former bit, and its discovery
>>        revolutionized oil well drilling. It is unlikely that he actually
>>        invented the two-cone roller bit, but his legal experience helped
>>        him in understanding that its patents were important for
>>        capitalizing on the invention. According to the PBS show
>>        History Detectives, several other people and companies had
>>        produced similar drill bits years earlier. In its initial tests at
>>        Goose Creek Oilfield in 1909 where the first offshore drilling for
>>        oil in Texas was occurring in Harris County, twenty-one miles
>>        southeast of Houston on Galveston Bay, the Sharp-Hughes
>>        Rock Bit penetrated 14 ft (4.3m) of hard rock in 11 hours which
>>        no previous equipment had been able to penetrate at all.
>>
>>        He co-founded the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company with Walter
>>        Benona Sharp based in Houston, Texas in 1909, and after
>>        Sharp's death in 1912 took over management. Hughes began
>>        purchasing the Sharp stock immediately and by 1918 had
>>        acquired full ownership of the company. The essential asset of
>>        Hughes Tool Company (renamed) were the 10 August 1909
>>        patents for his dual-cone rotary drill bit. The fees for licensing
>>        this technology were the basis of Hughes Tool's revenues, and
>>        by 1914 the dual-cone roller bit was used in eleven U.S. states
>>        and in thirteen foreign countries. After Hughes Sr.'s death in
>>        1924, his only child Howard R. Hughes, Jr. assumed control of
>>        the company as its sole owner. Nine years later Hughes Tool
>>        Company engineers created a tri-cone rotary drill bit, and from
>>        1934 to 1951 Hughes' market share approached 100 per cent.
>>        Sharp-Hughes Rock Bit found virtually all the oil discovered
>>        during the initial years of rotary drilling, and Howard Junior
>>        became the wealthiest person in the world. During 1972 he
>>        made the tool company public and realized $150 million the
>>        day it sold.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_R._Hughes,_Sr.
>
>