Just moments ago, whilst sitting here in Starbuck’s cruising le’ web, I discovered that people the world over know, use, and I’m quite sure savor the phrase Shore hardness.
And suddenly everything seems so right with the world.
Ha, ha. No, but anyway, I’ve never known much at all about my grandparents on either side: except for one brief visit to our house from my father’s mother when I was six, I’ve never met my grandparents, nor or any of my uncles, aunts, cousins, or anyone like that. Tracing back my genealogical roots takes me as long as it takes to say, “Mom, Dad.” Then I’m done. That’s about all I know.
Now, thanks to the Internet, I can add to my knowledge of my forefathers that in 1930 my paternal grandfather, Albert Shore, founder of The Shore Instrument & Mfg. Co., of Jamaica, New York, invented an Apparatus for Measuring the Hardness of Materials, the original patent for which you can see here.
A bit more Internet research taught me that the modern iteration of his invention is the still-used Shore durometer. It turns out that within the world of metals testing, my grandfather set “the international standard for hardness measurement.”
The Shore international standard for hardness measurement.
Man, I wouldn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole.
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