One fun thing: I have often been asked why most drums are painted black. I can only surmise that it is the same reason why Henry Ford painted his early cars black. Black paint was readily available, affordable, easy to apply, and provided the best coverage.
The primary founder of the automotive industry and the modern factory, Henry Ford, has often been criticized for his failure to embrace change. Most have heard the story of his famous response to criticism over the lack of color choices for his early models: “Buyers could have any color they wanted as long as it was black.”
An article from American Business History shares those automobiles had very special needs that most paints of the time could not meet. The real history of how we got cars in the colors we wanted is a little more nuanced, interesting, and informative, “Yet few know the real story of Ford’s intransigence about color, or how we came to have colorful automobiles.” Ford did not solve the problem of viable paints, but in fairness, he did the best he could until someone else solved the problem.
Go deeper: For those of you who want to go down the rabbit hole, click here for a link to the full story.