George Grant Blaisdell was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania on June 5, 1895. He was the son of Philo and Sara Blaisdell. He stopped attending school in fifth grade when he walked out and told his family he wasn’t going to go back. His father then sent him to a military academy, he attended school there for 2 years before we was dismissed for reasons unknown. Upon coming home he immediately started working in the family business, a machine shop where he learned metal work and the skills that later help him develop the Zippo lighter. He eventually took over the family business and sold it to invest in oil. He did very well in the Oil industry until the Great Depression hit and the oil market came to a dead halt.

One night he was on the porch of the Bradford County Club and he asked businessman Dick Dresser why he was using such a strange lighter. Dresser responded “Well, it works.” The lighter had been produced in Austria and was windproof. This is where his idea for the Zippo came from. Blaisdell had always liked the word zipper, which he used for inspiration in coming up with the “more modern” name Zippo. Blaisdell wanted to make an affordable windproof lighter which was the key to having it succeed during the great depression.

He immediately started working on this and 1 year later, in 1933 the first Zippo lighter was born. It was on the market for $1.95 and was guaranteed for life, just like it is today. Since then Zippo has made over 400 million Zippo lighters. Blaisdell died on October 3, 1978 in Miami Beach Florida, but the quality of the product and service of the company is still the same as he had it since the beginning.