Samuel Taubman's papers include his engineering work at UM and Lockheed, his teaching materials from Aviation Ground School, patents, designs, and photographs of his shower door designs as well as journals and drawings.
The papers have been divided into six series according to the chronology of Taubman's life and work: Pontiac High School, University of Michigan, Aeronautics Administration Aviation Ground School (University of California), Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Naval Training Schools, and National Shower Manufacturing Company and Later Work.
Samuel Taubman was born in Davenport, Iowa on August 17, 1915. He graduated from Pontiac High School in Pontiac, Michigan in 1933 and attended Pontiac Junior College. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1940 in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan. He served as a ground school instructor for the Civil Aeronautics Administration Aviation Ground School at the University of California.
He worked as an engineer at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in the 1940s, where he designed testing equipment and methodology and also designed aircraft components. Taubman also enrolled in naval training schools in Dearborn, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois. While working for Lockheed, he enlisted in the Navy serving on the USS Randolph.
Later in his life, Taubman applied his knowledge of aircraft construction, inventing civilian products using aircraft aluminum, most notably shower door design and manufacture. In the 1950s, he founded the National Shower Manufacturing Company in Detroit and developed more than a dozen patents for his designs.
In 1980, Taubman moved his factory to Sanford, Florida, as it was no longer economically feasible to meet the new EPA pollution control requirements at the Detroit plant. He joined with a man named John Wall expanding his product line, developing products such as roll down shutters to protect windows from hurricanes, archery arrows, parts for medical devices, and window frames. National Shower continued in existence as a division, but was gradually phased out of active production in favor of other pursuits at the new facility.
In 1993, Taubman sold his interest in the factory, but remained as a consulting engineer on numerous projects including the design of an electrostatic paint line. The paint line had a long loop of chain used as a parts conveyor. Taubman calculated that the metal chain would become slack as temperatures rose from the Florida sun. He therefore added a large pulley wheel at one end of the line with hydraulic pistons which would gradually extend to take up slack in the chain. From 1993 to 2004, he also designed the interiors of Gulfstream jets built for his brother, A. Alfred Taubman. He died on December 15, 2004.
