The Dodge Brothers

I got this from Hemmings Motor News:



The Dodge brothers weren't Jewish, so why did their logo look like a Star of David? Mac's Motor City Garage this week.

When John and Horace Dodge adopted the interlocking-triangle theme for their company logo in 1914, it wasn’t solely regarded as the the symbol of Judaism as it is today. More broadly, it was interpreted simply as a sign of good fortune. In iconography and numerology, the symbol is ancient.

As you might expect, theories have arisen to explain the intertwined black and white triangles as the Dodges understood them. The triangle or delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, D in English, so the interlocking triangles could symbolize the the close partnership of the two Dodge brothers. The D and B in the logo are also interlinked, which lends some weight to the theory. (DB symbols can be found on millions of Ford parts manufactured by the Dodge Brothers between 1903 and 1914.) Or it could be that the brothers and their art staff simply liked the paired triangles, not fully aware of the Judaic symbolism.

Here's another "theory"
One popular belief was that the symbol was chosen to anger their competitor Henry Ford, a notorious anti-Semite, though the Dodge Brothers Club insists it wasn’t so: they were friends at the time. Plus, the club points out, the “Star of David” was not universally linked to Judaism when the logo first appeared in 1914.

And did everyone notice the back ground was the earth and not just peeling paint. Two fascinating brothers. Their life is a great story.

Just to connect the Dodge brothers to today's "unprecedented" pandemic, read the following:

"By 1919, the Dodge Brothers Company was manufacturing 500 cars daily and still couldn't keep up with customer demand.The following year, however, Horace Dodge got sick. The rumors at the time said he had consumed bad liquor, but his physician said he contracted Spanish flu, which would kill over 500,000 Americans during the epidemic. John Dodge, who slept outside his brother's bedroom while he was ill, soon caught the same influenza. He passed away at age 55 on January 14, 1920. Horace recovered but by many accounts was a broken man from the loss of the older brother he was so close to. He died at age 52 from cirrhosis of the liver on December 10, 1920."

str12-340 said:

Just to connect the Dodge brothers to today's "unprecedented" pandemic, read the following:

"By 1919, the Dodge Brothers Company was manufacturing 500 cars daily and still couldn't keep up with customer demand.The following year, however, Horace Dodge got sick. The rumors at the time said he had consumed bad liquor, but his physician said he contracted Spanish flu, which would kill over 500,000 Americans during the epidemic. John Dodge, who slept outside his brother's bedroom while he was ill, soon caught the same influenza. He passed away at age 55 on January 14, 1920. Horace recovered but by many accounts was a broken man from the loss of the older brother he was so close to. He died at age 52 from cirrhosis of the liver on December 10, 1920."

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Boy the ending of that story really sucked.

Jadaharabi said:

Boy the ending of that story really sucked.

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Yep, Stay safe friends. Mask Up!

He died of cirrhosis of the liver, so there may be some truth to the bad liquor story as well, and like today, mental and physical health contributes to to the survivability rate of the flu.

"The Dodge brothers weren't Jewish, so why did their logo look like a Star of David?"

No, no, no. It would be an upside-down Star of David, which would be terribly sacrilegious. It is really two interlocked Greek letter deltas, for Dodge, which was supposed to symbolize how close the brothers were.

A56 said:

He died of cirrhosis of the liver, so there may be some truth to the bad liquor story as well, and like today, mental and physical health contributes to to the survivability rate of the flu.

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The Dodge brothers were known as the bad boys of early US car manufacturing at that time and known for their drinking, carousing and even some bar fights. Cirrhosis comes as the result of long term alcohol use. If you go to a browser and look up Dodge brothers you can find quite a lot about the history of our "founding fathers", including their extensive philanthropy. As the 1918 pandemic continued to rage the surviving brother gave enormous sums to local hospitals. All of the folks who prospered at the time were far from saints, but they had lots of good qualities... they were ,after all human...