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Carl Otto
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Otto, Carl

Author: 
Carroll Gantz
Birth/Death Age: 
d.c. 1986
Carl Otto

U.S. industrial designer, who was born Carl Louis Otto in Michigan and was trained as an engineer at Michigan State University. He began his career as a draftsman with Duesenberg in Auburn, Indiana, then came to New York to work for Norman Bel Geddes. He joined Raymond Loewy in 1935 to work on Pennsylvania Railroad designs and opened Loewy's pre-war office in London in 1938, which he ran until 1940, becoming a Loewy associate. One of his Loewy accounts was Standard Auto (Triumph). Another was Coca-Cola, which in 1947 debuted a new soda-fountain dispenser designed by Carl and Clare Hodgman for Dole Deluxe. Carl resigned from Loewy's office in 1951 and opened his own firm, with offices in New York, Stockholm and London, which closed in 1954. His best-known designs during this period include the 1951 Schick Model 20 electric shaver in collaboration with Norman Gray, chief engineer at Schick. He reduced the bulk and length of the shaver by rearranging the internal components from the traditional "in-line" configuration to a more compact, wider shape more easily held. The design became the typeform for shavers thereafter. He also designed the 1952 Edison Voicewriter. Both of these last designs won national design awards by the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI).

Sources: 
100 Years of Design consists of excerpts from a book by Carroll M. Gantz, FIDSA, entitled, Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Designs of the 20th Century, published August 2005 by Schiffer Publications, Ltd.
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