The Jacuzzi is a well-known symbol of luxury but the company has descended from mechanics who built propellers and industrial pumps.

It must be the name. Candido Jacuzzi did not set out to make his name synonymous with laid-back California luxury. Jacuzzi did not invent the whirlpool; it was others that made his soothing-sounding name generic. His business roots were much less romantic.

Candido Jacuzzi was born in northern Italy in 1903 and emigrated with his family, fifteen strong, to the United States early in the century. The family settled in Berkeley, California, becoming machinists. Candido, the youngest of seven brothers, would never complete grammar school.

The first Jacuzzi Brothers, Inc. product was an airplane propeller known as the Jacuzzi 'toothpick.' America's first military planes sported the specialized propeller in World War I. When World War I came to a close the brothers designed the Jacuzzi J-7, a cabin-style monoplane that was adapted to the delivery of domestic mail. The machinists followed with a breakthrough development of submersible pumps that opened markets worldwide to Jacuzzi. Factories sprouted in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Italy. More than 200 industrial patents are today held by the Jacuzzis.

In 1943 Candido's JacuzziÍs 15-month old son contracted rheumatoid arthritis, leaving the boy crippled and distorted with pain. The boy received regular hydrotherapy treatments at local hospitals but Candido could not stand to see his son suffering between the therapeutic visits. He realized that the water pumps Jacuzzi Brothers was making for industrial use could be adapted to give his son soothing whirlpool treatments in the tub at home. So, In 1948 Jacuzzi designed an aerating pump that could be used in a bathtub. The unit sat right in the water and was portable, able to be moved from one bathtub to another. Over the years, word of these water jets reached sufferers who sought the same home relief provided by the portable whirlpool and Jacuzzi manufactured some for special orders.

Roy Jacuzzi, the current Chairman of Jacuzzi Inc, was raised in northern California, where as a young boy he held a variety of odd jobs for the then family owned and operated company. In 1968 he officially joined the family business, then engaged in manufacturing pumps for agricultural use, as head of the Research Division.

Sensing the American trend toward health and fitness, Roy took Candido Jacuzzi Hydrotherapy pump abd developed and marketed the world's first fully integrated whirlpool bath in 1968. Now considered a legendary marriage of consumer insight and technology, the whirlpool bath was not always a mainstay in new home construction and re-modelling Creating an industry from the ground-up wasn't exactly easy reflects Roy, "Initially, I sold the baths one at a time at county fairs and trade shows.

My family was sceptical at first, until the orders steadily increased. I knew I had tapped into a great opportunity. I just wanted to make sure it was marketed correctly, which is still an aspect of the business that I really enjoy."