Frank J. Zamboni 1901-1988
If necessity is the mother of invention, Frank J. Zamboni might be considered its father. This tireless inventor/entrepreneur never came across an obstacle he couldn't tinker his way around.
Frank moved to Southern California in 1922 with his brother Lawrence to join their older brother George in his auto repair business. After a short time tinkering on cars, the two younger Zambonis decided to open an electrical service business catering to the local dairy industry. The brothers built and installed the large refrigerator units dairies used to keep their milk cool.
When the demand for cooling expanded into the produce industry, the brothers expanded their business vision, as well: they built a plant that made the block ice that wholesalers used to pack their product for transport by rail across the country. But as refrigeration technology improved, demand for block ice began to shrink, and Frank and Lawrence started looking for other ways to capitalize on their expertise with ice.
That opportunity came in the sport of ice skating. Popularity of the sport was growing, but there were few rinks in Southern California, so in 1939 Frank, Lawrence, and a cousin built Iceland Skating Rink in Paramount. (The rink still operates today just blocks from the Zamboni® factory. In fact, it's not unusual to see Zamboni ice resurfacers driving down the neighborhood streets on their way to be tested at Iceland.)
Iceland opened in 1940 as one of the largest rinks in the country, with 20,000 sq. ft. of iced surface -- that's enough room for 800 skaters. The original rink was an open-air facility. But the brothers soon learned that, with the intense Southern California sun and dry desert winds, the quality of their ice sheet was less than adequate, so they covered it with a domed roof. The challenge now was to maintain this much-improved indoor surface.
At the time, resurfacing the ice meant pulling a scraper behind a tractor, shaving the surface. Three or four workers would scoop away the shavings, spray water over the surface, squeegee it clean and allow the water to freeze -- a process that took more than an hour. For Frank, it was a puzzle to be solved: how could he make a good sheet of ice in a short period of time? It wasn't long before he began engineering a machine that would make the task of ice-resurfacing fast and efficient. And the concept of the Zamboni ice resurfacer was born...