Quote:
Originally Posted by 213e90n51
BMW logo is one. From airplane front.
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Pst.
In July 1917, Franz Josef Popp registered the name Bayerische Motoren Werke, thus distancing the new company from the former Rapp Motorenwerke aero engine company. This was a necessary move if the new company was to find new clients and prosper. While the name was registered there wasn’t yet a new logo.
It was on October 5, 1917 the BMW trademark was registered with the Imperial Trade Mark Roll under No. 221388. It featured the circular design of the Rapp logo but with the letters BMW at the top of the outer ring. The inner quadrants featured the Bavarian Free State colors of blue and white – but in the opposite order – as it was illegal to use national symbols in a commercial trademark.
The design was not in any way connected with aircraft engines or propellers. The idea that the blue and white had anything to do with spinning propellers comes from a 1929 advertisement, which featured aircraft with the image of the Roundel in the rotating propellers. This advertisement came at the beginning of the Great Depression, which coincided with BMW acquiring the license to build Pratt & Whitney radial aircraft engines. The advertising department used the Roundel and BMW heritage in an attempt to increase sales of the new radial motors.
The idea of the spinning propellers was given greater credence in an article by Wilhelm Farrenkopf in a BMW journal of 1942. This also featured an image of an aircraft with a spinning Roundel. These were powerful images and the legend of the spinning propeller was born.