The trouble with that - a historical and relative lack of cheap, ready-to-use cups for everyone else. So to distinguish a rich man’s cup from a poor man’s, cups of the wealthy and ruling classes needed to be “made with great labor.” Hence, golden chalices, carved rhino horns and glass tankards. The problem with this, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry for drinking vessels, is anyone could afford a coconut. The first were likely natural - hollowed-out ostrich eggs, coconut shells, etc. Though to get there, I need to explain a few things about beverage receptacles. Most likely, the cup was part of a natural evolution, created without any clear innovation. “When we bought (Solo) in 2012, we were really frustrated at how little company history and artifacts they had retained,” said Margo Burrage, communications director for Michigan-based Dart. Such as, well: When exactly was the red Solo cup invented and why. The red cup, says Louise Harpman, New York architect and design expert (whose “Coffee Lids,” a new book with architect Scott Specht, is the history of another Solo-related innovation), became a deeply American tradition, “the opposite of wimpy, a firm handshake that always feels right when you grab it.” Conversely, a Disney screenwriter working on a teen movie once told the Los Angeles Times that the cup is so associated with youthful transgression, “a red-Solo-cup conversation” is filmmaker code for uneasy implications.Īnd yet, according to Dart itself, mysteries remain. (You can also find the best of John’s stories, read aloud, on in his weekly segment “Out There In It.Since it was created in the early ’70s, the red Solo plastic cup has become synonymous with good times, backyard picnics, frat-house keggers, tailgating. You can now watch Kristin’s cartoons evolve before your eyes on Facebook at JohnLorsonSendHelp. The gathered remains of a high school science project, circa 1979, the skeleton of an arm-lamp from Kristin’s college art table (1986), a piece of shelving scavenged from the demolition of the old Orrville Public Library (1999), a 2-foot length of vinyl fencing and a random assembly of wing-nuts and aluminum rod that I scooped up at the local Goodwill became, over the course of one evening, an articulated boom capable of positioning and holding Kristin’s iPad directly over her artwork without interfering in her own creative flurries. Call it “inspiration driven by threat.” (You’d think after 30 years she’d cut straight to this step every time.) With the help of a hacksaw, drill press, bench vise and that blunt force doer of all things that must be done - a 16-ounce ballpeen hammer - I set about inventing. There is no more effective call to action in our household. For example, it’s doubtful the world at large would benefit from a cat door made from a length of furnace duct pipe, yet such is the perfect solution for my own problem of conveying a cat to the basement in a rapid and Border collie-proof fashion.Īs is often the case when my own procrastination presses beyond the wide latitude afforded by my wife’s abounding patience, my most recent “one of these days” was met with the threat of her forking out real money to spring for some expensive, store-bought assembly capable of doing the job. I have a great admiration for the folks who come up with these “big picture” inventions as my own inventions all tend to be “one-off” stuff created to solve problems that are mine alone. The place was electric with the spirit of invention and I saw a thing or two that may very well one day blossom to alter the course of human history, solve a vexing world problem or at the very least earn someone a decent part-time income. I was there playing “water boy” for my wife, Kristin, as she led kids in various adventures of creative mess-making. The place was filled with tabletop engineers, shoe-string designers and creative kooks of all shapes and sizes - the Thomas Edisons of the 21st Century. It’s impossible not to “geek out” at an event like the Wayne College Maker Faire that took place a few weeks back in Orrville.
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