Advertisement for Wilshire's I-ON-A-CO (c. 1924-1927)
period advertisement · 1926
LINK
SUMMARY
A period newspaper advertisement for Wilshire's I-ON-A-CO, used both as the artifact media lead for the case and as a primary source for the device's marketing claims. Hosted on Wikimedia Commons; rights read from the Commons imageinfo extmetadata on 2026-06-13 (License 'pd' / UsageTerms 'Public domain'); the file's date is given as between 1924 and 1927 and it is credited as scanned from the book The Technological Fix. The advertisement's text was transcribed by direct visual inspection (it is an image, not machine-readable text, so its wording is not entered in a verify-quotes block; an independent vision-capable reviewer confirmed each transcribed element on 2026-06-13). Content: an inset oval portrait labelled 'Mr. Gaylord Wilshire, Originator of Beautiful Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, President Iona Co.'; the headline 'New Road to Good Health'; 'Learn What Wilshire's I-ON-A-CO May Do For You'; the negation list 'No Bathing, No Sweating, No Electrifying, No Dieting, No Psychologizing, No Exercising, No Drugging, No Faith-Curing, No Manipulating'; the body copy 'Wilshire's IONACO is an electro-magnetic appliance which you attach to an electric light socket and place around your body over your clothing... It magnetizes the iron in your body and thus increases oxygen brought to the tissue cells. This oxidation purifies the blood-stream and tends to restore the Ionaco user to perfect health'; an offer of a 'free, delightful treatment' at the office or a free home demonstration; 'FREE LECTURES by Gaylord Wilshire, Inventor of I-ON-A-CO' in San Francisco and Oakland, and 'on the air OVER KTAB EVERY THURSDAY'; and office addresses at 150 Powell Street, San Francisco, and 1924 Broadway, Oakland. Identification basis: the advertisement itself names Gaylord Wilshire and the Iona Company; the inset portrait is captioned with his name. Approximate year set to 1926 within the documented 1924-1927 window. This is a Commons-hosted scan with a stated book provenance (The Technological Fix). On 2026-06-13, of the four supported archives, a Wikimedia Commons search surfaced this advertisement file; a Library of Congress search returned only period newspaper pages mentioning the Ionaco (not this advertisement as a held visual record), and Wellcome Collection and BnF/Gallica hold no record of this American device. No separate institutional holding record was found, so this Commons file is the accepted-residual period-advertising artifact for this case.
NOTES
The I-ON-A-CO’s own newspaper advertisement, the primary marketing document for the case and the source for the device’s stated mechanism and sales practices. It is hosted on Wikimedia Commons under a public-domain status, scanned from the book The Technological Fix, with the file date given as 1924 to 1927. The advertisement headlines ‘New Road to Good Health,’ identifies Gaylord Wilshire by name and portrait as inventor and ‘President Iona Co.,’ states that the appliance magnetizes the body’s iron and increases tissue oxygenation to restore the user ‘to perfect health,’ and lists free demonstrations, free lectures by Wilshire, and a weekly radio talk over station KTAB, with offices in San Francisco and Oakland. The wording was read directly from the image and independently confirmed by a vision-capable reviewer; the caption and claims keep to what the advertisement asserts.