December 9, 2019 • 50 mins
As the holiday season sets in, Robert and Joe open up Santa’s toy bag to consider the invention of various toys -- toys intended to teach, toys intended to puzzle and toys that leverage technology for good old fashioned childhood fun.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Santa Talos is back to spread holidays year, to crush
you in the warm heart of his fiery embrace, chestnuts
roasting on his open fire, cold outside of my body.
If that's just bless us. Everyone. Welcome to Invention, a
(00:28):
production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we
are back to discuss some more invented toys. That's right. Uh,
we're opening Santa Talus's bag once more, pulling out some
(00:48):
classic toys to discuss where they came from, Like how
do these various gadgets and novelties factor into human techno history? Now,
last time we talked about the discuss or frisbee, and
we talked about the hula hoop? What else? The Jack
in the box, and with at least two of those
things that I feel like there were times like there's
(01:10):
an ebb and flow for demand. They're like moments when
suddenly a toy, uh even a classic toy that's been
around for a long time, suddenly gets very popular again. Uh,
and then and then demand goes away, And I wonder
what creates those cycles? Like I remember when I was
in elementary school, there was suddenly a yo yo craze.
(01:31):
And I don't know if this was like worldwide, nationwide
or just my school. I don't know exactly why it
was or exactly which year it was, but there was
like a year or two when everybody went yo yo
crazy and then it just disappeared. I wonder if it's
kind of an age thing too. I mean, just like
how there's a certain age at which as a child
(01:51):
you discover the magic of the yo yo and it
is incredibly magical, but then it goes away, uh you know,
or you or at least very few individuals stick with
it long term. But I know even at my son's school,
they had a like a professional yo yo uh performer
come in and do some sort of demonstration about the
(02:11):
yo yo. Oh. I wonder if we had something like
that maybe that caused it. But I do remember there
was like I remember the brand names, like everybody wanted
a butterfly or I remember or something like that. Well. Also,
I think an important thing perhaps is that certainly you
have this like twenty year cycle roughly for toys whatever,
it was popular twenty years ago when you were a kid.
(02:33):
Then statistically when you're having children. You then turn return
to the same toys and inflict them on the next generation.
But during that time, material sciences tend to evolve, right,
and if not only not only material sciences, but also uh,
you know, electronic gadgetry. So suddenly it's possible to have
a butterfly yoyo that is not only just a yo yo,
(02:56):
but also has uh you know this say, really glean
plastic form, and perhaps it had lights in it. Now
that's sort of thing. Uh what what were those automatic
retraction yo yo? Do you remember those? Now? Isn't that
just a yoyo? I don't know that? Like the yo yo,
in order to get it to climb back up the string,
you've got to get the momentum just right. You gotta
kind of tug it, you know, at the just like
(03:18):
this is like an electric yo yo. It's like the
electric bicycle of yoyo. I don't know know if it
was electric, it might have been spring powered, but basically
it was. It was automatically retracting, so you could throw
it down the thread and then when it hit the end,
it would just get sucked back in. I don't like
a lot of fun it seems more like a like
like a weapon than a yo yo. Well that it's interesting,
(03:39):
you should mention that. Yeah, so the first toy we're
gonna mention here is the yo yo, and the yo
yo it is a magical implement like anytime. I don't
use one daily or anything, but every now and then
I'll happen upon a yo yo and I'll have to
do the one trick I know how to do with it,
the sort of not the standard, but the one who
(03:59):
you kind of roll your hand and I have no
idea what the name of the trick is. The roll
your hand, I don't know, you know where instead of
going I'm doing no way, but nobody can see this.
Instead of going like this, you go like this, I
see like underhand instead of overhand. Yeah, it's like more
of a flourish to it. I remember the tricks everybody
was trying to do when I was a kid. Where
walk the dog, where when I guess, roll ahead of
(04:19):
view or something. Uh. Then they would do like the
they'd like make a cat's cradle with the string while
it's still spinning. Yeah, and the thing is nowadays on
YouTube you can go and look up yo yo tricks
and Yoyo tricks are amazing, Like, there are people doing
incredible things with yo yo's and yoyo related toys. So
(04:40):
the basic, though, is pretty standard. The toy consists of
two discs that are connected by an axle with a
string looped around the axle. You unwind it, the yo
yo spins down and then it spins back up. That
is the basic yo yo trick. Yeah, and I would
say that's good enough. If you never learn any tricks,
yoyo is still pretty fun. Yeah, yeah, solutely. So where
(05:01):
does this come from? Well, let's start with the American
history of the yo yo, because a lot of these
toys is just as in the last episode, there's kind
of the American history and then there's kind of the
global history of it. But the American history of these
toys tends to sort of dominate our current understanding of
them generally because they ended up being revamped by various
American toy companies. So they made a lot of money. Yeah,
(05:24):
it made a lot of money in doing so, and
then generally got to rename them. And this isn't another
case whereas something like that comes into place. So the
American history of the yo Yo is often tied back
to the nineteen twenties, and one of the key names
here is Donald F. Duncan, the founder of Duncan Toys Company.
And uh, you know, refer back to Charles pinalts Extraordinary
(05:47):
Origins of everyday Things, and he points out that Duncan
took inspiration supposedly for his yo yo from observations of
the Philippine hunting weapon known as a yo yo um
as it was known in the tag law language. Uh.
And this would have been I read, a larger wooden
take on the basic concept, with the twine intended to
(06:08):
wrap around a prey animal's legs. So it's more like
a bolus basically, right, like the weapon that is a
sort of two balls on a string and you throw
it and it's I guess, can get tangled up in
an animal's legs and trip them. Yes, So sometimes you'll
you'll find accounts that point to Donald F. Duncan as
an inventor of the yo yo or like the key
(06:29):
modern innovator of the yo yo, But this appears to
not be truly the case. It appears that a Filipino
immigrant by the name of Pedro Flores actually brought the
invention to the toy market in Santa Barbara and ran
the yo Yo manufacturing company, but then he sold his
interest in the company and the trademark to Duncan, who
then marketed it heavily. Um But but even Flores hadn't
(06:53):
been the first person to patent some form of yo
yo technology in the United States, a form of bandalore
had been attended already, which is a very similar gadget.
But more to the point, the basic yo yo toy
pre dates all of this, even seemingly the Filipino weapon,
because there are Greek vase paintings from around four forty
(07:15):
b c E that depict the use of a yo
yo Yeah, and the Chinese had an ivory and silk
chord version of basically the same device as early as
a thousand BC, and earlier versions date back to the
Neolithic Himudu civilization, potentially from five thousand, five hundred BC
(07:37):
two UH three thousand, three hundred BC, where it may
have spun off from spinning top technology, which I think
is interesting to note because the yo yo, you can
you can watch the yo yo in action, and then
you can watch a spin top in action, and you
can realize that they're both basically revolving around the same principle,
the idea of using a length of string or twine
(08:00):
to spin another physical object. In the top, you're spinning
it on the ground, but then the yo yo is
taking basically the same concept and applying it above the ground.
Uh And and they're both benefiting from the kind of
magic that that appears to happen when you preserve angular
momentum in a way. I don't know if they technically count,
but they're they're sort of analogous to them. The mechanical
(08:23):
object a flywheel, which you know, it preserves the ability
to do work in angular momentum stored in a rotating object. Yeah,
to sort of abuse the pun a little more. Basically,
this the toy is a spinoff of immerging technology of
the time. Uh And And also, I think it's the
(08:45):
point that toys are not merely toys. You know, they
don't exist in isolation. They're they're directly connected to advances
in technology, material sciences, and etcetera. So I was looking
a little bit more about about the Chinese Top. I
was looking at a paper title The Chinese Top, publish
in two thousand and eight in the Chinese Journal for
the History of Science and Technology by Yan Ping at All,
(09:08):
and they point that, yes, the likely origin is roughly
five thousand b C or thereabouts during the Mudu civilization,
but actual writings on tops and diabolos don't emerge until
the song in Ming dynasty, so that would have been
the song would have been nine sixty through twelve seventy
nine and the Ming dynasty thirteen sixty eight to sixty four. Now,
(09:31):
what's the deal with this diabolo or diablo? So it
is if you look up the diabolo on on YouTube,
for instance, you'll see plenty of videos of people using
the toy, the technology, and it is a standard. Essentially.
You can think of it as like a Chinese yo yo.
You may have even seen one before, let's say, um,
(09:52):
you know an Asian cultural event like a street festival,
and you might have thought to yourself, oh, it's like
a Chinese yo yo or something. But they're often the
person using the often uses sticks as well. Uh. And
it's it's widely used, often as a kind of a
circus prop for really elaborate tricks. The main difference is
that it's instead of it being two discs joined by
(10:14):
an axis. It's two hour glass shapes bridged by an
axle and then manipulated with you know, with the string
and with sticks to perform a variety of tricks. Uh.
And today you'll find plenty of of diabolo models wherever
you might order a western yo yo, like it's typical,
very yo yo manufacturer of note you probably offer where yeah,
(10:36):
you want to be the master of all like above
ground spinning top like toys. We've cornered the angular momentum market.
But you know, it's I think one of the reasons
that the yo yo is such a successful toy and
has been for so long is because it it fits
that classic trope of being something that is very easy
(10:58):
to use but then difficult to match stair like, there's
a lot of depth that can be added. You can
you can get off at the first stop on the
yo yo train, or you can ride the yo yo
train all the way to the end and become one
of these masters of string and spin. I wonder if
there's a way of studying exactly what it is about
the mechanical action of certain toys bringing such pleasure, like, like,
(11:23):
why is it in particular that say, two spinning discs
on a string or a paddle board ball or something
like that like that, it's just normal physical interactions bring
such visceral pleasure, whereas other random combinations of objects don't
necessarily Like say, a stick with the string on the
end with a rock on it, You don't think that
(11:45):
would be very fun, but why would have? But a
paddle board with a bouncy rubber ball is fun. And
there's some difference there in like how it feels in
your hand and how it bounces, But like what makes
one thing fun and another thing not one? I think
one possibility is is, first of all, it's the toy
doing something or achieving something that feels um slightly unnatural
(12:10):
because with the the yo yo, as opposed to just
a string on the end of a stick, the yo
yo returns to you. And certainly we know the physics
of how this works, but but you can imagine like
the seeming miracle of the thing, you know, so the
boomerang effect of of the object that you created returning
to its master. And then I think it might be
(12:31):
a situation too. And certainly the more um clockwork our
toys become the idea that the toy is doing something
on its own that we've created something that has, if
not you know, actual mind and intent, it at least
has it seems to have a certain amount of life
unto itself. Yeah, I guess so, yeah, I mean, I
guess you could even look at something as simple as
(12:53):
a discus or a frisbee uh in this way because
it is in effect a wing and so like it
sales farther than it seems like it should. Maybe. Yeah,
I like this idea having some kind of hidden mechanism,
even if that mechanism is not clockwork on the inside
or something, but it's just some counterintuitive effect of basic physics.
(13:13):
And actually the next toy I want to talk about
I think fits into this category of doing something that's
just slightly mechanically counterintuitive. And that's where the fund seems
to come in. But before we go there, I think
we need to take a break. Okay, so we all
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(15:01):
watch what you want and protect yourself at express vpn
dot com slash invention. Alright, we're back. Let's move on
to our next toy. Alright, so this next story starts
with an American man named Richard Thompson James, who was
born in Delaware in nineteen fourteen. And it wasn't until
(15:22):
reading up on this guy that I realized how many
mildly famous people there were named Richard James. This is
not Richard D. James, the British electronic musician also known
as a f X twin. This is not Rick James,
the super freaky musician. It is not many of the
other Richard james Is who are various kinds of politicians
and scientists and other stuff. This Richard James grew up
(15:43):
in Delaware, went to Penn State, got a degree in
mechanical engineering there, and in nineteen forty three, Richard James
was working as a mechanical engineer for a ship building
company at Cramps Shipyard in Philadelphia. So this was in
the middle of World War Two, and naval technology, of course,
(16:03):
was not just big business. It was an essential part
of the Allied war effort. According to one story I
read in The Atlantic by Emma Jacob's Cramps shipyard at
this time alone employed up to eighteen thousand workers at
once during the height of the war, and many of
these employees, of course, we're engineers working on design improvements
(16:25):
for ships that would fight in fronts like the the
long running Battle of the Atlantic of you know, that
was going on for many years at the time. Uh So, personally,
Richard James was trying to design mechanisms to quote, support
and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. So
you can kind of think about the challenges to fragile
(16:46):
navigation instruments and scientific detectors that might be present aboard
a battleship pitching around in the waves or submarines climbing
up and down through the water column. And so he's
working on this and his workspace is covered in steel parts,
including tension and torsion springs, and apparently one day in
ninety three, Richard James accidentally knocked over a container of
(17:10):
metal parts that he was storing on a shelf above
his desk. One of these parts was a spring and
instead of just falling with a splat, the spring kind
of walked downhill in arcing steps, down onto a stack
of books, and then onto the floor, where it came
to rest. And according to James, he immediately saw the
(17:31):
potential of a spring like this as a toy, primarily
for the reason that if he were to make the
spring of just the right tension and mass, it would
walk around gracefully and surely bring delight to children everywhere
with a simple demonstration of everyday physics. Now, obviously I
cannot help but picture Richard James here as looking exactly
(17:53):
like the man in the the old Mst. Three k
Rift short a case of spring fever. That was spring. Yes,
a man who in a in a moment of weakness,
wishes that there were no springs upon the earth, and
then Coyly, the the spring grimlin spirit God Uh answers
(18:13):
this wish, grants this wish, and uh and shows him
just how broken the world would be without springs. He
takes it back to his please bring all the springs back.
Coyly just immediately brings springs back into the world, and
then he becomes an ambassador of springs to all his friends,
he becomes a profit of springs. It's a complete rip
(18:33):
off of It's a wonderful life. But replacing George Bailey
with springs. Uh yeah, that is a great short. If
you've never seen it, you should look it up. But anyway,
so Richard's wife, Betty James came up with the name
for this toy by picking a word out of the dictionary,
and that name was, of course you all know it,
the slinky. Now, I think we associate that word more
(18:56):
with the toy than we actually do with the original
meaning of the word. It was a word in the
English language. Miriam Webster now defines it as stealthily quiet
or sleek, insinuous in movement or outline, And I think
it's more that like second definition that Betty James had
in mind. But also I believe she said something about
it making a sound asn't move that kind of sounded
(19:18):
like slink. Okay, that would make it makes sense, because yeah,
the original word is more like you know, more more
like it's describing the serpent or the tiger burning bride
in the darkness of the night, you know, um as
opposed to a coil of metal that makes a weird
noise as it goes down the stairs. But it is
a kind of graceful, almost kind of stealthy little noise.
(19:40):
When you think about what a slinky sounds like, it's
you know, you hear the mass transfer, uh, Like, like
you hear the tone of it rapidly moving as the
mass transfers. Yeah, there is something about the sound of
the slinky alone that is intoxicating, especially to a young child.
But I think two adults too, but a child especially,
(20:02):
we'll get the slinky and begin to do the back
and forth with it, creating that sound effect until adults
tell them to please be quiet with that slinky. Uh.
But yeah, just that sound of the going from hand
to hand. I mean, of course the feel of that
as well, totally. It's it's orally an tactually intoxicating. It's
(20:23):
just one of those things, I mean, kind of like
a yo yo. There's just some kind of basic mechanical
action that we find very appealing and want to keep
paying attention to. The slinky especially feels very organic and
in a way it does its movements do have at
least slight parallels and say that the world of worms
(20:43):
and even human digestion. So it's kind of parastalsis. Yeah,
but the versions we're familiar with are like the later
versions that were that were perfectly calibrated to work like
a worm or an esophagus or however. You know. So,
in the years following the discover the design actually had
to get there, so Richard James tinkered with it, trying
(21:04):
to find the perfect material and design for the spring.
I read that he ended up using a high carbon
steel wire about like one point four six millimeters wide. Uh.
And when he demonstrated the slinky for kids who lived
in the neighborhood, they were enchanted. They really liked it.
So Richard and Betty James they thought, hey, you know,
I think we've we've got a business on our hands.
(21:26):
We could manufacture this toy and and make some money.
So to start a business, they secured a five hundred
dollar loan from a friend, and Richard contracted a machinist
to build four hundred slinkies to his specifications. Apparently, initial
marketing wasn't easy. I was reading about this in an
article in the History of the Slinky written by a
writer named Zachary Crockett, and this makes it clear that
(21:50):
the toy was not an instant hit in the commercial sense.
Like apparently some toy sellers believed the original slinky to
be kind of plain, dull or bore ring and couldn't
be convinced that there would be any demand. And I
remember at this point, even though it was basically the
same toy we have today, it was just dull carbon
seal wire. There was no there were no tided eye
(22:10):
colors or anything like that, which you might find on
some plastic slinkies of the present. It's still the classics slinky,
the classic uh, just gray, dull slinky Like that's I
feel like that's the one that's ultimately the most intoxicating
because it has that metallic sound and it has that
it has a smell. The slinky has a distinctive smell
(22:31):
that is weirdly pleasing. Slinky by Calvin Clin. Yeah, it's
um od to slink like it's you know, it has
kind of like that. It's the metallic taste of of
you know, having bit the inside of your lip, except
without the pain. You know, there's something you know, there's
a taste of blood in the smell with a slinky,
(22:53):
and uh, I feel like that's part of its weird appeal. Yeah,
I see what you're saying. I mean, I I also
think that the original, like the regular dull metal slinky
without all the plastic colors and all that stuff, it
is beautiful. I don't think of it as dull. But
I think maybe it had something just to do with
the packaging at the time. I think they were selling
(23:13):
it just wrapped in sort of unadorned paper, you know,
like they didn't have a colorful box or anything like that.
All right, And also when the slinky is not in motion,
if it's just presented to you as this this weird
cylinder to yeah, it's like what you need is at
least an image of it opening right of it, assuming
(23:34):
it's bipedal form. But after a lot of early disappointment,
Richard and Betty James did have a major success in
nineteen five when Richard decided to give a live demonstration
of the slinky in Gimbal's department store in Philadelphia during
the Christmas shopping season. And this demonstration included James showing
(23:54):
how the slinky would walk down a ramp from top
to bottom. So you know, they set up a plank
and set it at the top up and let it
arc and walk all the way down, and of course
the people there, who were presumably out doing the Christmas shopping,
were so into it. James ended up selling his entire
stock of four hundred slinkies in about ninety minutes. And
(24:14):
then there was a whole crowd of shoppers who wanted
more slinkies, so by Christmas they'd had more manufactured by
the machinist. Uh. They sold thousands of them, and then
all sorts of opportunities opened up. There was interest in
Richard and Betty James pitch at major toymaker's conventions. I
think there was one in nineteen forty six, and Richard
James filed for a patent on his invention in August
(24:38):
nineteen forty six and was granted it in January nineteen
forty seven. H Robert, I've got an illustration of the
patent for you here. I think it looks essentially identical
to the slinky you would buy into toy store today. Yeah,
it's it's undeniably a slinky. Yeah, there's no major design
difference I can tell. And the thing you know might
have changed very slightly in the gauge of the wire
or something, but it's it's a slinky. It's the slink,
(25:00):
you know. And after this it kind of was an
instant hit. So like by seven, the slinky was known
all over the United States. It was clearly a huge
success as a toy. The company, owned by Richard and
Betty James, began to manufacture the slinkies themselves instead of
going contracting with this outside machinist. They massively scaled up
(25:20):
production and in the first couple of years they sold
more than a hundred million slinkies at one dollar apiece.
And then, of course there were tons of derivative toys,
right like you've seen them, the the cattery, the slinky caterpillar,
the slinky doll in toy story, Yeah exactly, you know,
they're all kinds of things like that. Um, it wasn't
(25:40):
just the regular old slinky, but I think the regular
old slinky always remained sort of a centerpiece of the business, right. Yeah,
you know, I'm thinking back now on all the uses
I put a slinky too. So obviously you can do
the back and forth in your hand, you can have
it walked down some stairs. Because of course, parents and
grandparents love it. If you find new ways to play
on a long flight of wooden stairs in a house. Um.
(26:04):
But then there are other things too, like the like
sticking your arm through the slinky, making like a robot
arm um, pretending the slinky is some sort of communications tube,
putting it around figurines and stuff. I wonder if part
of the appeal of the slinky is that it is this.
It is undeniably like a piece of industry, a piece
(26:26):
of industrial technology that then you are free to um
play with with your imagination. Uh yeah, even though it
sold us a toy, it almost feels like a found toy.
And isn't a found toy so much more magical the
way that a cat will love a crumpled up ball
of aluminum foil in a way that it will never
(26:47):
love a toy manufactured to be enjoyed by cats. Right, yeah,
I mean in a way. Really, what James did was
he figured out how to sell springs to children, but
not quite that. Like if I if we were just
to say that, we wouldn't be giving enough credit, because
obviously he took the basic concept of the spring, worked
on it, refined it to create not a true spring,
(27:09):
but like a spring based toy. I mean, it is
still a spring. It's probably not a spring that would
be I don't know, especially useful in all that many
mechanical contexts. But but I think is you know something
that is much like a slinky and about the same tension,
and that is used in a few ways, right, and
it's still in its own way, it is sort of
(27:29):
storing energy, right, absolutely, just maybe not it's not as
pronounced as the spring that's say, shoots a toy across
the room or you know, factors into the suspension of
some sort of a vehicle. Yeah, well, well I think
we know, Yeah, it is working as a spring. You know,
it's storing potential energy in the in the tension or
the tension or the torsion on the wire. So yeah,
(27:52):
I think it absolutely is a spring. Like the enjoyment
we get out of it is the enjoyment of the
action of a spring. But it is at least the
spring made into novelty, yes, And a lot of the
subsequent novelty came from like outside the original family. Like uh,
I don't think it was Richard James who came up
with like the slinky dog. I've seen that attributed that
(28:12):
the slinky dog design was attributed to a woman named
Helen Mall said, who I guess came up with this idea. Um.
But so you might think the story ends there, right,
fame wealth, slinky's a big head. But there is actually
a bizarre twist to the story of the success of
the slinky and the company that Richard and Betty James
(28:32):
founded once they became very successful. I've read about it.
I don't want to go into a lot of detail,
but there was apparently a lot of trouble in the family,
like Richard James apparently showed off some some bizarre and
and not very admirable behavior. Um. One strange quote I
found is Richard and Betty's son Tom at some point
(28:54):
said quote Pop used to say money means nothing to me,
and he would tear it up. I'd find it and
tape it back together. Now, in a way, I have
a lot of admiration for the anti materialist point of view,
but not so much of that just means you end
up tearing up money, which you know you could donate that. Yeah,
there are there are other things you could do with
the money that is not destroying it. Yeah, But then
(29:17):
he did end up donating a lot of money, in fact,
the family's entire fortune, but what he donated it to
was various extreme religious organizations uh and. In nineteen sixty
Richard James abruptly left his family behind and moved to
a rural area of Bolivia to join what his wife,
Betty referred to as an evangelical Christian cult uh and
(29:40):
uh and he stayed there until he died in the
nineteen seventies. But after Richard left, Betty assumed control of
the company that they founded together, and things were really
rough here. Slinky sales were down by nineteen sixty uh
the company was deeply in debt, and Richard James had
had spent all the previous years funneling away all the
profits made by the Slinky into various evangelical religious sects.
(30:05):
And Betty James uh was faced with these problems, but
she actually did manage to turn the company's fortunes around.
Among other moves, I know, she she arranged some kind
of payment schedule with the company's creditors that would help
them get out of debt. She increased sales by introducing
new products and by commissioning a new advertising campaign, which
(30:25):
is where we get those classic Slinky TV commercials with
the song everybody knows everyone loves the slinky. I don't
know if I know that song. Who walks to stay
with advocate and makes the happiest sound that's up being
down just like a cloud. Everyone knows its lanky. The
best President jet to give, I get the favorite all
(30:45):
over town the head of the day. Were you ready
to play? Everyone knows this lanky? It's it's okay, I
have I have heard this? Yes, that jingle is undeniable.
You know, I just realized when we when I was
preparing for this, that the it's log commercial from Bren
and Stimpy is supposed to be the slinky commercial almost
(31:07):
exactly the same. Yes, it's better than bad, it's good.
I love the it's log commercial, especially the way that
it says things that are just obviously untrue, Like it
fits on your back. It's great for a snack. It's
log log log, But there actually is a way in
which the parody runs deeper. The joke being beyond just absurd,
(31:28):
is actually kind of insightful, like the steel spring, Like
the log is something that isn't obviously a toy at
first glance. It's all about how you frame it. To people.
You wouldn't necessarily look at a steel spring and say
that's a toy, the same way you wouldn't assume a
log as a toy. I think the but the joke
is that once you assert that it's a toy, the
steel spring kind of works and the log just doesn't.
(31:51):
I don't know, unless maybe I'm not looking at logs
the right way. No. I mean, the thing is that
like the log is, he is just a log, whereas
the slinky, again, it feels kind of a live it.
It can be manipulated in basic ways that a log cannot,
and then therefore the slinky lends itself to imagination play. Yeah,
I would say that's correct. So anyway, Betty James ran
(32:14):
the company from when she took over in nineteen sixty
until nineteen when she retired, and she passed away in
two thousand eight and h One interesting fact that I
don't know, it's interesting to me is that Slinky has
always remained relatively cheap. The original toys in nineteen forty
five sold at Gimbals for a dollar apiece, but even
as of nineteen ninety six, prices for Slinkies were between
(32:38):
like a dollar eighty nine to sixty nine, and Betty
James once told The New York Times quote, so many
children can't have expensive toys, and I feel a real
obligation to them. I'm appalled when I go Christmas shopping
and sixty to eighty dollars for a toy is nothing.
With sixteen grandchildren, you can go into the national debt.
I wonder if that's a thing a lot of parents
(33:00):
would appreciate that, Like, you can actually have a toy
that people get a lot of enjoyment out of and
it's not like a sixty dollar toy like oh yeah,
I mean that's the best cost next to nothing and
you and you've got so much play out of it,
whereas the worst examples are, of course, the expensive toys
that don't get played with and just uh you know,
just set there. I remember, though, wanting those really expensive
(33:22):
toys when I was a kid, like wanting the I
don't know, the the G I Joe Fortress. They had
some set yeah, they had some like big G I
Joe like cobra um colosseum type structure, and I had
like I had a friend who had one. It was enormous, Like,
I wonder, what how many of those they made and
where they ended up. But do you actually end up
(33:43):
playing with that thing as much as you would play
with the yo yo or a slinky. I don't know. Yeah,
Like take for instance, Castle Gray Skull, the classic the
big item originally for the Masters of the Universe he
Man action figures. UM, Like, I wonder how much I
my main memories are not really playing with it per se,
but of staring in an illustration of it on a
(34:06):
box or something like it. There's something about the the
advertising for the idea of it, and ultimately the you know,
the pining for the thing is more powerful than the product. Um.
Where As the slinky, like the slinky more than delivers
on the promise on the package. I mean, you will
keep playing with the slinky until it gets tangled up
and ruined, right, But even when that happens, you can
(34:28):
get another one for like a buck fifty. Yeah. Some
people swear by the use of of a slinky as
a squirrel prevention device for a bird feeder. Yeah, instead
of you know, of course you can get custom made
devices that prevent a squirrel from climbing up the pole
of a bird feeder. But some say you can just
(34:49):
take a slinky and put it around the pole and
have it hanging there, and then squirrels won't be able
to climb it. I tried it. I found that it
did not work for me. But maybe too crafty, Yeah, squirrels.
Squirrels are crafty. And then they eventually, at least in
my case, they figured out what we were trying to do.
All right, let's take one more break, and then when
we come back, we will discuss another invented toy. All right,
(35:16):
we're back. So I have to admit that I both
love and hate a good jigsaw puzzle. Jigsaw puzzle, you know.
You know what my association with jigsaw puzzles is. For
some reason, we didn't really do them at home, but
I remember the family would always do one on a vacation,
like a beach kind of an environment. Oh you did
that too, Yeah, yeah, my, my, like my uncle and stuff.
(35:38):
I think would like get get a jigsaw puzzle and
do it on the table and uh in like a
beach condo or something. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there are
a lot of jigsaw puzzles out there now, obviously, for
for my money, I think a good jigsaw puzzle has
to be created in line with a piece of art
that I care about, you know, like it's a it's
a puzzle to be solved, even though you know what
(35:59):
the solution is going to be because it's on the
front of the box. But you're you're building this piece
of art, so I have to care about the finished piece.
And I think it also helps that the art needs
to be detailed and varied. For instance, I finally look
back on a jigsaw puzzle that I helped a symbol
on a beach trip of of the Tibetan one depiction
of the Tibetan wheel of sam Sara, which is great
(36:20):
because it's it's perfect as all these little details, these
different scenes, all sorts of intricate little beings. And recently
my family assembled a big Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle featuring an
original work of surreal art. Ravensburger, by the way, a
major German jigsaw puzzle maker. Uh. And they also make
a thousand piece puzzle utilizing the Tower of Babble by
(36:43):
Brugally Elder that i'd I'd love to take a crack
at because you know, again, an intricate piece of art
with a lot of stuff going on. But still, when
I work on a jigsaw puzzle like that, I feel
this weird mixture of pleasure and frustration, you know, tinged
with addiction. Uh As, I just have to keep going,
Like each time I actually find a piece and and
(37:05):
get it in its spot like that, I get this
release of I don't know, dopamine, I guess, and I
have to keep going. And then I'll say I just
one more piece and then I'll go back to whatever
I was working on. But then I keep going until
I just run out of mental energy for the jigsaw puzzle.
We need to talk about your jigsaw puzzle robbers, and
then one more thing about just my experience of them
(37:25):
is of course, the ideal strategy is to assemble the
edges first, and then you work on the more notable
things you can put together, like okay, clearly we've got
a bright color here, or this is clearly there's are
clearly pieces of the same structure or creature. But then
eventually you get to the point where it's just the
most boring pieces left you have to fit into the puzzle. Well,
(37:48):
that's why I think, if if you're going to have
an image for a jigsaw puzzle, it's really good. If
the image is busy, if there's a lot of stuff
going on everywhere and there's not like a lot of
blank space in it, that makes for less fun jigsaw puzzle.
Or for instance, I wouldn't want to do a Jackson
Pollock jigsaw puzzle. Oh yeah, I mean, I love the
work of Jackson Pok. I'm not gonna gonna be one
of those people who, you know, scoffs at it, but
(38:10):
it's one of the last things I would want to
put together on the jigsaw puzzle. I would want. I
want little fairies and demons and figures in medieval peasants representative. Yeah.
So this begs the question where do jigsaw puzzles come from? Well,
they actually have their origins in the eighteenth century creation
of dissected maps. This was a novelty born out of
(38:33):
the world of cartography UH and UH and also with
strong connections to a European imperial zeal for national borders,
as described in Cutting Borders, Dissected Maps and the Origins
of the Jigsaw Puzzle by Martin Norgate, published in a
two thousand seven edition of the Cartographic Journal UH. These
(38:55):
dissected maps were maps that were mounted on wood and
then cut out along national borders, which feels fittingly imperial, right,
the first map the world as it is, then to
divide it artificially with these different human division lines, and
then to physically cut up the map, slice the regions apart,
(39:16):
and then put them back together again for amusement. It
seems like an absolutely perfect outgrowth of like eighteenth century
European culture, like suddenly jazzed up on the idea of
nations with fixed borders and boundaries. You know, this is
something that a lot of people don't realize because we
live in a in a world with uh, you know,
(39:37):
well defined borders today. That is historically not the norm.
You know, in the past, you just had people living
in places and then there might be uh various imperial
powers exerting some kind of pressure on them, and whichever
one was exerting more pressure you might consider your ruler.
But like people were just living in place there there
(39:57):
often wasn't a clearly defined bore or boundary. Yeah, like
some of the early examples here I'm going to discuss
are specifically English, but also French as well, and so
this is a time where to be you know, truly
English was to was to be able to point to
the map and say, behold, there is the there's the
British Empire. And then these are you know, areas of
(40:21):
particular interest to the British Empire. Uh, these are the
enemies of the British Empire. And to you know, to
make a huge put a huge emphasis on these division lines,
and then to h to even teach younger people, uh
you know the importance of all of these abstract divisions.
Oh yeah, I mean that that goes way back in
the British tradition, even Roman Britain. That like the idea
(40:41):
of uh, you know, why was Hadrian's Wall put up?
They're all kinds of things, you know, the ideas about
defending the areas of northern England from the Scots of
the time or whatever, the tribes that were occupying what
is now Scotland. But there's also just an idea that
it was somewhat symbolic. It's symbolizing like, okay, here is
where the conquered the Roman part of Britain begins, and
(41:03):
we're establishing a border by the erection of this wall. Yeah,
that's that's a great point. Uh's in a way, Adrian's
Wall is the the predecessor to the to the proper
jigsaw puzzle. So um, this this article by Inorgate is
is a wonderful overview, um. And he discusses first of all,
(41:25):
the process from making them. And this would have been
rather simple if you had the right tools, and certainly
if you were coming if you were around in the
right time during cartographical history. The basic version is simply
a paper map pasted onto wood, and then the wood
is cut along the boundaries. These pieces, however, could easily warp,
so additional layers tended to be added, such as paper backing.
(41:47):
With the right tools, you could do this as a
craft or even as kind of like a cottage trade.
But then ultimately industrial innovations come along that make stack
cutting possible, so you can cut multiple puzzles, multiple dissected
maps at once. Um. And then of course, today when
we get to actual jigsaw puzzles, they're typically rolled out
(42:08):
via industrial presses and assembly lines, lasers or even used.
Does anybody still use wooden, like actually straight up wooden
jigsaw puzzles or is it pretty much all cardboard these days? Um?
I mean, you'll certainly find wooden very simple wooden puzzles
at times for young children. But the ones that I
(42:29):
tend to see are not like the they're you know,
a shape in a wooden hole. For that shape, I'm
sure somebody is making authentic pieces though. But but originally
this was more of a like a fancy thing that
was created by cartographers and we and we have some,
you know, examples that survived to this day. In terms
of where it comes from, historians often point to a
(42:50):
British cartographer by the name of John Spillsbury who lives
seventeen thirty nine through seventeen sixty nine, and he sometimes
credited as the inventor of the dissected map up and
ultimately the inventor of the jigsaw puzzle. Uh. He was
an apprentice to Thomas Jefferies, royal geographer to King George
the third and surviving Spillsbury puzzles are quite rare, and
(43:12):
they were not cheap even at the time they were Uh,
they were not intended for a mass general audience. But
still he does seem to be the first person to
create them and sell them, and he was certainly doing
so by seventeen sixty three, and then after him others
following in his footsteps, and they advanced the art and
the craft of this new sort of puzzle. However, is
(43:34):
in Orogate points out he was not seemingly the first
person to create a dissected map uh This honor, he argues,
might go to Madame de Beaumont, who lived seventeen eleven
through seventeen eighty, a French author and educator who lived
in England from seventeen forty eight to seven sixty two.
We can't be certain, but she's the earliest figure that
(43:57):
we can really point to on this, apparently, and she
was certainly in the right place to fit into the history.
She was governess to the niece of Lady Charlotte Finch,
and Finch was in turn governess to the children of
George the third and the Beaumont Wooden maps um as
they were referred to in some writings at the time,
were used as educational aids because at the time it
(44:19):
was of course considered important to educate English children about
the pride of their nation, its colonial ventures, and its
place in the world. And at the time educational theory
had come to accept that educational instructions such as in
geography could actually be enjoyable to a child. You could
do something that is fun or fun ish and and
(44:41):
and they could actually learn from it. Well, I think
there are still puzzles like this today. Like I don't
know if we call them jigsaw puzzles, but they are
essentially jigsaw puzzles that are just maps. Like you fill
in the fifty states of the United States with the
with the cutout puzzle pieces. Yeah, you will find dissected maps. Uh,
you can still certainly obtain them. Of course, you can
(45:01):
also find maps as a popular um subject for jigsaw puzzles,
which we'll get to know the distinction here in a minute. Um.
But here's an interesting fact about Madame de Beaumont de Beaumont.
She's actually best known for writing the most popular version
of Beauty and the Beast seventeen fifty six. I think
Beauty and the Beast was oh what's that that that
(45:26):
French folkloreist guy. Well, there was an older version of it,
for sure, but but she uh Abridge did and rewrote it,
and her version apparently was was very well read at
the time. Interesting interesting fact. Also, while in London, she
was also romantically involved with French spy Thomas Pischant. I've
(45:46):
seen her accredited as his wife in some sources, but
it seems that they lived together but never married, and
he continued residing in that home after she returned to France. Now,
how do we get from dissected maps to what we
now think of as jigsaw puzzles. Well, I want to
read a quote from Norgate's article, because I think he
sums it up very nicely. Quote. The idea of interlocking
(46:09):
jigsaw pieces was introduced in the early nineteenth century and
was probably inspired by the shape of dovetail joints in
everyday cabinet making. It was first applied to the surrounding
border of the jigsaw so that the picture would not
slip apart as it was being put together. The distinctive
quote bar Foot interlocking of the period resembles dovetail joints
(46:30):
with rounded corners. Later, still whole puzzles were made of
fully interlocking pieces. So I think that's interesting that we
see we see other innovations emerging for the jigsaw puzzle
out of the carpentry world. Uh. And then at the
same time these new approaches ultimately destroy the geographical educational
(46:51):
aspect of the thing. You know, charting a new course
into pure novel puzzle solving, and yet at the same time,
like we pointed out, you still can find a centrally
dissected maps. You can. Maps are still a popular jigsaw
puzzle subject, but existing and custom artwork have also become
a huge part of the tradition. In a way, it
reminds me of the journey from spring to slinky, you know,
(47:14):
from dissected map to jigsaw puzzle. Taking something that that
an invention that has more of a purpose, and then
finding like the thing that is intoxicating about it and
refining it towards that. Yeah, I agree, and I mean
it's exactly that kind of thing that makes it. I mean,
I I can't prove this is the case, but I
sort of have a gut feeling that among toys you
(47:37):
are more likely to find inventions that are class as
somewhat accidental type inventions. We might talk about more of
those in the future, but the slinky is usually thought
of as something like this because it wasn't something that
was you know, created originally to be a toy. It's
like he saw something, He's like that that's kind of
that looks kind of fun. It could be a toy.
(47:59):
Let me tak her with it, make it even more
toy like. And I guess that's because when you're talking
about toys, you don't necessarily start with function. Instead, you
just witness something that delights you, and and you you
sees on that delight and say, how can I maximize it? Right?
How can we make refined sugar out of this thing
(48:20):
that that is bringing me pleasure? Which is funny because
unlike a lot of unlike a lot of inventions that
solve a specific physical problem, delight is subjective. And yet
there are, for whatever reason, these certain forms that tend
to delight more than slightly altered versions of the same form. Might. Yeah, now,
I will say with jigsaw puzzles, when you're when you're
(48:43):
doing one, you I mean, you do feel like you're
really engaging your brain, so it it perhaps doesn't necessarily
feel like pure novelty, but yet it also is. You're
it's a it's an artificial problem that you have that
you're amusing yourself with. It's not something that would occur
in I mean, I suppose if you were putting back together,
say a broken piece of pottery, But otherwise no one
(49:06):
comes up and says, oh, why is this My My
favorite painting has been has been cut into a variety
of interlocking shapes, and now I must put it back
together so I can observe it again. That's like some
kind of like banks the performance art prank kind of thing. Yeah,
that would that would be a good one. Yeah, like
a self jigsaw puzzling painting. Okay, well does that do
(49:29):
it for today? I believe. So that's all we have
in the toy bag for today. But we're not We're
not entirely certain, but we might just keep going with
toys for the month of December. There are obviously more
toys uh in the history of Invention, and there's some likewise,
there's some more interesting origin stories to consider. In the meantime.
If you want to check out other episodes of Invention,
(49:52):
head on over to invention pod dot com. You'll also
find the show wherever you get your podcasts. And if
you want to support Invention, you want to see Invention
continue you in the new year, The best thing you
can do is make sure you have subscribed and then
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the world huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
(50:14):
producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
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at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio because
(50:34):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Santa Talos is back to spread holidays year, to crush
you in the warm heart of his fiery embrace, chestnuts
roasting on his open fire, cold outside of my body.
If that's just bless us. Everyone. Welcome to Invention, a
(00:28):
production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we
are back to discuss some more invented toys. That's right. Uh,
we're opening Santa Talus's bag once more, pulling out some
(00:48):
classic toys to discuss where they came from, Like how
do these various gadgets and novelties factor into human techno history? Now,
last time we talked about the discuss or frisbee, and
we talked about the hula hoop? What else? The Jack
in the box, and with at least two of those
things that I feel like there were times like there's
(01:10):
an ebb and flow for demand. They're like moments when
suddenly a toy, uh even a classic toy that's been
around for a long time, suddenly gets very popular again. Uh,
and then and then demand goes away, And I wonder
what creates those cycles? Like I remember when I was
in elementary school, there was suddenly a yo yo craze.
(01:31):
And I don't know if this was like worldwide, nationwide
or just my school. I don't know exactly why it
was or exactly which year it was, but there was
like a year or two when everybody went yo yo
crazy and then it just disappeared. I wonder if it's
kind of an age thing too. I mean, just like
how there's a certain age at which as a child
(01:51):
you discover the magic of the yo yo and it
is incredibly magical, but then it goes away, uh you know,
or you or at least very few individuals stick with
it long term. But I know even at my son's school,
they had a like a professional yo yo uh performer
come in and do some sort of demonstration about the
(02:11):
yo yo. Oh. I wonder if we had something like
that maybe that caused it. But I do remember there
was like I remember the brand names, like everybody wanted
a butterfly or I remember or something like that. Well. Also,
I think an important thing perhaps is that certainly you
have this like twenty year cycle roughly for toys whatever,
it was popular twenty years ago when you were a kid.
(02:33):
Then statistically when you're having children. You then turn return
to the same toys and inflict them on the next generation.
But during that time, material sciences tend to evolve, right,
and if not only not only material sciences, but also uh,
you know, electronic gadgetry. So suddenly it's possible to have
a butterfly yoyo that is not only just a yo yo,
(02:56):
but also has uh you know this say, really glean
plastic form, and perhaps it had lights in it. Now
that's sort of thing. Uh what what were those automatic
retraction yo yo? Do you remember those? Now? Isn't that
just a yoyo? I don't know that? Like the yo yo,
in order to get it to climb back up the string,
you've got to get the momentum just right. You gotta
kind of tug it, you know, at the just like
(03:18):
this is like an electric yo yo. It's like the
electric bicycle of yoyo. I don't know know if it
was electric, it might have been spring powered, but basically
it was. It was automatically retracting, so you could throw
it down the thread and then when it hit the end,
it would just get sucked back in. I don't like
a lot of fun it seems more like a like
like a weapon than a yo yo. Well that it's interesting,
(03:39):
you should mention that. Yeah, so the first toy we're
gonna mention here is the yo yo, and the yo
yo it is a magical implement like anytime. I don't
use one daily or anything, but every now and then
I'll happen upon a yo yo and I'll have to
do the one trick I know how to do with it,
the sort of not the standard, but the one who
(03:59):
you kind of roll your hand and I have no
idea what the name of the trick is. The roll
your hand, I don't know, you know where instead of
going I'm doing no way, but nobody can see this.
Instead of going like this, you go like this, I
see like underhand instead of overhand. Yeah, it's like more
of a flourish to it. I remember the tricks everybody
was trying to do when I was a kid. Where
walk the dog, where when I guess, roll ahead of
(04:19):
view or something. Uh. Then they would do like the
they'd like make a cat's cradle with the string while
it's still spinning. Yeah, and the thing is nowadays on
YouTube you can go and look up yo yo tricks
and Yoyo tricks are amazing, Like, there are people doing
incredible things with yo yo's and yoyo related toys. So
(04:40):
the basic, though, is pretty standard. The toy consists of
two discs that are connected by an axle with a
string looped around the axle. You unwind it, the yo
yo spins down and then it spins back up. That
is the basic yo yo trick. Yeah, and I would
say that's good enough. If you never learn any tricks,
yoyo is still pretty fun. Yeah, yeah, solutely. So where
(05:01):
does this come from? Well, let's start with the American
history of the yo yo, because a lot of these
toys is just as in the last episode, there's kind
of the American history and then there's kind of the
global history of it. But the American history of these
toys tends to sort of dominate our current understanding of
them generally because they ended up being revamped by various
American toy companies. So they made a lot of money. Yeah,
(05:24):
it made a lot of money in doing so, and
then generally got to rename them. And this isn't another
case whereas something like that comes into place. So the
American history of the yo Yo is often tied back
to the nineteen twenties, and one of the key names
here is Donald F. Duncan, the founder of Duncan Toys Company.
And uh, you know, refer back to Charles pinalts Extraordinary
(05:47):
Origins of everyday Things, and he points out that Duncan
took inspiration supposedly for his yo yo from observations of
the Philippine hunting weapon known as a yo yo um
as it was known in the tag law language. Uh.
And this would have been I read, a larger wooden
take on the basic concept, with the twine intended to
(06:08):
wrap around a prey animal's legs. So it's more like
a bolus basically, right, like the weapon that is a
sort of two balls on a string and you throw
it and it's I guess, can get tangled up in
an animal's legs and trip them. Yes, So sometimes you'll
you'll find accounts that point to Donald F. Duncan as
an inventor of the yo yo or like the key
(06:29):
modern innovator of the yo yo, But this appears to
not be truly the case. It appears that a Filipino
immigrant by the name of Pedro Flores actually brought the
invention to the toy market in Santa Barbara and ran
the yo Yo manufacturing company, but then he sold his
interest in the company and the trademark to Duncan, who
then marketed it heavily. Um But but even Flores hadn't
(06:53):
been the first person to patent some form of yo
yo technology in the United States, a form of bandalore
had been attended already, which is a very similar gadget.
But more to the point, the basic yo yo toy
pre dates all of this, even seemingly the Filipino weapon,
because there are Greek vase paintings from around four forty
(07:15):
b c E that depict the use of a yo
yo Yeah, and the Chinese had an ivory and silk
chord version of basically the same device as early as
a thousand BC, and earlier versions date back to the
Neolithic Himudu civilization, potentially from five thousand, five hundred BC
(07:37):
two UH three thousand, three hundred BC, where it may
have spun off from spinning top technology, which I think
is interesting to note because the yo yo, you can
you can watch the yo yo in action, and then
you can watch a spin top in action, and you
can realize that they're both basically revolving around the same principle,
the idea of using a length of string or twine
(08:00):
to spin another physical object. In the top, you're spinning
it on the ground, but then the yo yo is
taking basically the same concept and applying it above the ground.
Uh And and they're both benefiting from the kind of
magic that that appears to happen when you preserve angular
momentum in a way. I don't know if they technically count,
but they're they're sort of analogous to them. The mechanical
(08:23):
object a flywheel, which you know, it preserves the ability
to do work in angular momentum stored in a rotating object. Yeah,
to sort of abuse the pun a little more. Basically,
this the toy is a spinoff of immerging technology of
the time. Uh And And also, I think it's the
(08:45):
point that toys are not merely toys. You know, they
don't exist in isolation. They're they're directly connected to advances
in technology, material sciences, and etcetera. So I was looking
a little bit more about about the Chinese Top. I
was looking at a paper title The Chinese Top, publish
in two thousand and eight in the Chinese Journal for
the History of Science and Technology by Yan Ping at All,
(09:08):
and they point that, yes, the likely origin is roughly
five thousand b C or thereabouts during the Mudu civilization,
but actual writings on tops and diabolos don't emerge until
the song in Ming dynasty, so that would have been
the song would have been nine sixty through twelve seventy
nine and the Ming dynasty thirteen sixty eight to sixty four. Now,
(09:31):
what's the deal with this diabolo or diablo? So it
is if you look up the diabolo on on YouTube,
for instance, you'll see plenty of videos of people using
the toy, the technology, and it is a standard. Essentially.
You can think of it as like a Chinese yo yo.
You may have even seen one before, let's say, um,
(09:52):
you know an Asian cultural event like a street festival,
and you might have thought to yourself, oh, it's like
a Chinese yo yo or something. But they're often the
person using the often uses sticks as well. Uh. And
it's it's widely used, often as a kind of a
circus prop for really elaborate tricks. The main difference is
that it's instead of it being two discs joined by
(10:14):
an axis. It's two hour glass shapes bridged by an
axle and then manipulated with you know, with the string
and with sticks to perform a variety of tricks. Uh.
And today you'll find plenty of of diabolo models wherever
you might order a western yo yo, like it's typical,
very yo yo manufacturer of note you probably offer where yeah,
(10:36):
you want to be the master of all like above
ground spinning top like toys. We've cornered the angular momentum market.
But you know, it's I think one of the reasons
that the yo yo is such a successful toy and
has been for so long is because it it fits
that classic trope of being something that is very easy
(10:58):
to use but then difficult to match stair like, there's
a lot of depth that can be added. You can
you can get off at the first stop on the
yo yo train, or you can ride the yo yo
train all the way to the end and become one
of these masters of string and spin. I wonder if
there's a way of studying exactly what it is about
the mechanical action of certain toys bringing such pleasure, like, like,
(11:23):
why is it in particular that say, two spinning discs
on a string or a paddle board ball or something
like that like that, it's just normal physical interactions bring
such visceral pleasure, whereas other random combinations of objects don't
necessarily Like say, a stick with the string on the
end with a rock on it, You don't think that
(11:45):
would be very fun, but why would have? But a
paddle board with a bouncy rubber ball is fun. And
there's some difference there in like how it feels in
your hand and how it bounces, But like what makes
one thing fun and another thing not one? I think
one possibility is is, first of all, it's the toy
doing something or achieving something that feels um slightly unnatural
(12:10):
because with the the yo yo, as opposed to just
a string on the end of a stick, the yo
yo returns to you. And certainly we know the physics
of how this works, but but you can imagine like
the seeming miracle of the thing, you know, so the
boomerang effect of of the object that you created returning
to its master. And then I think it might be
(12:31):
a situation too. And certainly the more um clockwork our
toys become the idea that the toy is doing something
on its own that we've created something that has, if
not you know, actual mind and intent, it at least
has it seems to have a certain amount of life
unto itself. Yeah, I guess so, yeah, I mean, I
guess you could even look at something as simple as
(12:53):
a discus or a frisbee uh in this way because
it is in effect a wing and so like it
sales farther than it seems like it should. Maybe. Yeah,
I like this idea having some kind of hidden mechanism,
even if that mechanism is not clockwork on the inside
or something, but it's just some counterintuitive effect of basic physics.
(13:13):
And actually the next toy I want to talk about
I think fits into this category of doing something that's
just slightly mechanically counterintuitive. And that's where the fund seems
to come in. But before we go there, I think
we need to take a break. Okay, so we all
know how a VPN protects your privacy and security online.
(13:35):
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(14:17):
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(15:01):
watch what you want and protect yourself at express vpn
dot com slash invention. Alright, we're back. Let's move on
to our next toy. Alright, so this next story starts
with an American man named Richard Thompson James, who was
born in Delaware in nineteen fourteen. And it wasn't until
(15:22):
reading up on this guy that I realized how many
mildly famous people there were named Richard James. This is
not Richard D. James, the British electronic musician also known
as a f X twin. This is not Rick James,
the super freaky musician. It is not many of the
other Richard james Is who are various kinds of politicians
and scientists and other stuff. This Richard James grew up
(15:43):
in Delaware, went to Penn State, got a degree in
mechanical engineering there, and in nineteen forty three, Richard James
was working as a mechanical engineer for a ship building
company at Cramps Shipyard in Philadelphia. So this was in
the middle of World War Two, and naval technology, of course,
(16:03):
was not just big business. It was an essential part
of the Allied war effort. According to one story I
read in The Atlantic by Emma Jacob's Cramps shipyard at
this time alone employed up to eighteen thousand workers at
once during the height of the war, and many of
these employees, of course, we're engineers working on design improvements
(16:25):
for ships that would fight in fronts like the the
long running Battle of the Atlantic of you know, that
was going on for many years at the time. Uh So, personally,
Richard James was trying to design mechanisms to quote, support
and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. So
you can kind of think about the challenges to fragile
(16:46):
navigation instruments and scientific detectors that might be present aboard
a battleship pitching around in the waves or submarines climbing
up and down through the water column. And so he's
working on this and his workspace is covered in steel parts,
including tension and torsion springs, and apparently one day in
ninety three, Richard James accidentally knocked over a container of
(17:10):
metal parts that he was storing on a shelf above
his desk. One of these parts was a spring and
instead of just falling with a splat, the spring kind
of walked downhill in arcing steps, down onto a stack
of books, and then onto the floor, where it came
to rest. And according to James, he immediately saw the
(17:31):
potential of a spring like this as a toy, primarily
for the reason that if he were to make the
spring of just the right tension and mass, it would
walk around gracefully and surely bring delight to children everywhere
with a simple demonstration of everyday physics. Now, obviously I
cannot help but picture Richard James here as looking exactly
(17:53):
like the man in the the old Mst. Three k
Rift short a case of spring fever. That was spring. Yes,
a man who in a in a moment of weakness,
wishes that there were no springs upon the earth, and
then Coyly, the the spring grimlin spirit God Uh answers
(18:13):
this wish, grants this wish, and uh and shows him
just how broken the world would be without springs. He
takes it back to his please bring all the springs back.
Coyly just immediately brings springs back into the world, and
then he becomes an ambassador of springs to all his friends,
he becomes a profit of springs. It's a complete rip
(18:33):
off of It's a wonderful life. But replacing George Bailey
with springs. Uh yeah, that is a great short. If
you've never seen it, you should look it up. But anyway,
so Richard's wife, Betty James came up with the name
for this toy by picking a word out of the dictionary,
and that name was, of course you all know it,
the slinky. Now, I think we associate that word more
(18:56):
with the toy than we actually do with the original
meaning of the word. It was a word in the
English language. Miriam Webster now defines it as stealthily quiet
or sleek, insinuous in movement or outline, And I think
it's more that like second definition that Betty James had
in mind. But also I believe she said something about
it making a sound asn't move that kind of sounded
(19:18):
like slink. Okay, that would make it makes sense, because yeah,
the original word is more like you know, more more
like it's describing the serpent or the tiger burning bride
in the darkness of the night, you know, um as
opposed to a coil of metal that makes a weird
noise as it goes down the stairs. But it is
a kind of graceful, almost kind of stealthy little noise.
(19:40):
When you think about what a slinky sounds like, it's
you know, you hear the mass transfer, uh, Like, like
you hear the tone of it rapidly moving as the
mass transfers. Yeah, there is something about the sound of
the slinky alone that is intoxicating, especially to a young child.
But I think two adults too, but a child especially,
(20:02):
we'll get the slinky and begin to do the back
and forth with it, creating that sound effect until adults
tell them to please be quiet with that slinky. Uh.
But yeah, just that sound of the going from hand
to hand. I mean, of course the feel of that
as well, totally. It's it's orally an tactually intoxicating. It's
(20:23):
just one of those things, I mean, kind of like
a yo yo. There's just some kind of basic mechanical
action that we find very appealing and want to keep
paying attention to. The slinky especially feels very organic and
in a way it does its movements do have at
least slight parallels and say that the world of worms
(20:43):
and even human digestion. So it's kind of parastalsis. Yeah,
but the versions we're familiar with are like the later
versions that were that were perfectly calibrated to work like
a worm or an esophagus or however. You know. So,
in the years following the discover the design actually had
to get there, so Richard James tinkered with it, trying
(21:04):
to find the perfect material and design for the spring.
I read that he ended up using a high carbon
steel wire about like one point four six millimeters wide. Uh.
And when he demonstrated the slinky for kids who lived
in the neighborhood, they were enchanted. They really liked it.
So Richard and Betty James they thought, hey, you know,
I think we've we've got a business on our hands.
(21:26):
We could manufacture this toy and and make some money.
So to start a business, they secured a five hundred
dollar loan from a friend, and Richard contracted a machinist
to build four hundred slinkies to his specifications. Apparently, initial
marketing wasn't easy. I was reading about this in an
article in the History of the Slinky written by a
writer named Zachary Crockett, and this makes it clear that
(21:50):
the toy was not an instant hit in the commercial sense.
Like apparently some toy sellers believed the original slinky to
be kind of plain, dull or bore ring and couldn't
be convinced that there would be any demand. And I
remember at this point, even though it was basically the
same toy we have today, it was just dull carbon
seal wire. There was no there were no tided eye
(22:10):
colors or anything like that, which you might find on
some plastic slinkies of the present. It's still the classics slinky,
the classic uh, just gray, dull slinky Like that's I
feel like that's the one that's ultimately the most intoxicating
because it has that metallic sound and it has that
it has a smell. The slinky has a distinctive smell
(22:31):
that is weirdly pleasing. Slinky by Calvin Clin. Yeah, it's
um od to slink like it's you know, it has
kind of like that. It's the metallic taste of of
you know, having bit the inside of your lip, except
without the pain. You know, there's something you know, there's
a taste of blood in the smell with a slinky,
(22:53):
and uh, I feel like that's part of its weird appeal. Yeah,
I see what you're saying. I mean, I I also
think that the original, like the regular dull metal slinky
without all the plastic colors and all that stuff, it
is beautiful. I don't think of it as dull. But
I think maybe it had something just to do with
the packaging at the time. I think they were selling
(23:13):
it just wrapped in sort of unadorned paper, you know,
like they didn't have a colorful box or anything like that.
All right, And also when the slinky is not in motion,
if it's just presented to you as this this weird
cylinder to yeah, it's like what you need is at
least an image of it opening right of it, assuming
(23:34):
it's bipedal form. But after a lot of early disappointment,
Richard and Betty James did have a major success in
nineteen five when Richard decided to give a live demonstration
of the slinky in Gimbal's department store in Philadelphia during
the Christmas shopping season. And this demonstration included James showing
(23:54):
how the slinky would walk down a ramp from top
to bottom. So you know, they set up a plank
and set it at the top up and let it
arc and walk all the way down, and of course
the people there, who were presumably out doing the Christmas shopping,
were so into it. James ended up selling his entire
stock of four hundred slinkies in about ninety minutes. And
(24:14):
then there was a whole crowd of shoppers who wanted
more slinkies, so by Christmas they'd had more manufactured by
the machinist. Uh. They sold thousands of them, and then
all sorts of opportunities opened up. There was interest in
Richard and Betty James pitch at major toymaker's conventions. I
think there was one in nineteen forty six, and Richard
James filed for a patent on his invention in August
(24:38):
nineteen forty six and was granted it in January nineteen
forty seven. H Robert, I've got an illustration of the
patent for you here. I think it looks essentially identical
to the slinky you would buy into toy store today. Yeah,
it's it's undeniably a slinky. Yeah, there's no major design
difference I can tell. And the thing you know might
have changed very slightly in the gauge of the wire
or something, but it's it's a slinky. It's the slink,
(25:00):
you know. And after this it kind of was an
instant hit. So like by seven, the slinky was known
all over the United States. It was clearly a huge
success as a toy. The company, owned by Richard and
Betty James, began to manufacture the slinkies themselves instead of
going contracting with this outside machinist. They massively scaled up
(25:20):
production and in the first couple of years they sold
more than a hundred million slinkies at one dollar apiece.
And then, of course there were tons of derivative toys,
right like you've seen them, the the cattery, the slinky caterpillar,
the slinky doll in toy story, Yeah exactly, you know,
they're all kinds of things like that. Um, it wasn't
(25:40):
just the regular old slinky, but I think the regular
old slinky always remained sort of a centerpiece of the business, right. Yeah,
you know, I'm thinking back now on all the uses
I put a slinky too. So obviously you can do
the back and forth in your hand, you can have
it walked down some stairs. Because of course, parents and
grandparents love it. If you find new ways to play
on a long flight of wooden stairs in a house. Um.
(26:04):
But then there are other things too, like the like
sticking your arm through the slinky, making like a robot
arm um, pretending the slinky is some sort of communications tube,
putting it around figurines and stuff. I wonder if part
of the appeal of the slinky is that it is this.
It is undeniably like a piece of industry, a piece
(26:26):
of industrial technology that then you are free to um
play with with your imagination. Uh yeah, even though it
sold us a toy, it almost feels like a found toy.
And isn't a found toy so much more magical the
way that a cat will love a crumpled up ball
of aluminum foil in a way that it will never
(26:47):
love a toy manufactured to be enjoyed by cats. Right, yeah,
I mean in a way. Really, what James did was
he figured out how to sell springs to children, but
not quite that. Like if I if we were just
to say that, we wouldn't be giving enough credit, because
obviously he took the basic concept of the spring, worked
on it, refined it to create not a true spring,
(27:09):
but like a spring based toy. I mean, it is
still a spring. It's probably not a spring that would
be I don't know, especially useful in all that many
mechanical contexts. But but I think is you know something
that is much like a slinky and about the same tension,
and that is used in a few ways, right, and
it's still in its own way, it is sort of
(27:29):
storing energy, right, absolutely, just maybe not it's not as
pronounced as the spring that's say, shoots a toy across
the room or you know, factors into the suspension of
some sort of a vehicle. Yeah, well, well I think
we know, Yeah, it is working as a spring. You know,
it's storing potential energy in the in the tension or
the tension or the torsion on the wire. So yeah,
(27:52):
I think it absolutely is a spring. Like the enjoyment
we get out of it is the enjoyment of the
action of a spring. But it is at least the
spring made into novelty, yes, And a lot of the
subsequent novelty came from like outside the original family. Like uh,
I don't think it was Richard James who came up
with like the slinky dog. I've seen that attributed that
(28:12):
the slinky dog design was attributed to a woman named
Helen Mall said, who I guess came up with this idea. Um.
But so you might think the story ends there, right,
fame wealth, slinky's a big head. But there is actually
a bizarre twist to the story of the success of
the slinky and the company that Richard and Betty James
(28:32):
founded once they became very successful. I've read about it.
I don't want to go into a lot of detail,
but there was apparently a lot of trouble in the family,
like Richard James apparently showed off some some bizarre and
and not very admirable behavior. Um. One strange quote I
found is Richard and Betty's son Tom at some point
(28:54):
said quote Pop used to say money means nothing to me,
and he would tear it up. I'd find it and
tape it back together. Now, in a way, I have
a lot of admiration for the anti materialist point of view,
but not so much of that just means you end
up tearing up money, which you know you could donate that. Yeah,
there are there are other things you could do with
the money that is not destroying it. Yeah, But then
(29:17):
he did end up donating a lot of money, in fact,
the family's entire fortune, but what he donated it to
was various extreme religious organizations uh and. In nineteen sixty
Richard James abruptly left his family behind and moved to
a rural area of Bolivia to join what his wife,
Betty referred to as an evangelical Christian cult uh and
(29:40):
uh and he stayed there until he died in the
nineteen seventies. But after Richard left, Betty assumed control of
the company that they founded together, and things were really
rough here. Slinky sales were down by nineteen sixty uh
the company was deeply in debt, and Richard James had
had spent all the previous years funneling away all the
profits made by the Slinky into various evangelical religious sects.
(30:05):
And Betty James uh was faced with these problems, but
she actually did manage to turn the company's fortunes around.
Among other moves, I know, she she arranged some kind
of payment schedule with the company's creditors that would help
them get out of debt. She increased sales by introducing
new products and by commissioning a new advertising campaign, which
(30:25):
is where we get those classic Slinky TV commercials with
the song everybody knows everyone loves the slinky. I don't
know if I know that song. Who walks to stay
with advocate and makes the happiest sound that's up being
down just like a cloud. Everyone knows its lanky. The
best President jet to give, I get the favorite all
(30:45):
over town the head of the day. Were you ready
to play? Everyone knows this lanky? It's it's okay, I
have I have heard this? Yes, that jingle is undeniable.
You know, I just realized when we when I was
preparing for this, that the it's log commercial from Bren
and Stimpy is supposed to be the slinky commercial almost
(31:07):
exactly the same. Yes, it's better than bad, it's good.
I love the it's log commercial, especially the way that
it says things that are just obviously untrue, Like it
fits on your back. It's great for a snack. It's
log log log, But there actually is a way in
which the parody runs deeper. The joke being beyond just absurd,
(31:28):
is actually kind of insightful, like the steel spring, Like
the log is something that isn't obviously a toy at
first glance. It's all about how you frame it. To people.
You wouldn't necessarily look at a steel spring and say
that's a toy, the same way you wouldn't assume a
log as a toy. I think the but the joke
is that once you assert that it's a toy, the
steel spring kind of works and the log just doesn't.
(31:51):
I don't know, unless maybe I'm not looking at logs
the right way. No. I mean, the thing is that
like the log is, he is just a log, whereas
the slinky, again, it feels kind of a live it.
It can be manipulated in basic ways that a log cannot,
and then therefore the slinky lends itself to imagination play. Yeah,
I would say that's correct. So anyway, Betty James ran
(32:14):
the company from when she took over in nineteen sixty
until nineteen when she retired, and she passed away in
two thousand eight and h One interesting fact that I
don't know, it's interesting to me is that Slinky has
always remained relatively cheap. The original toys in nineteen forty
five sold at Gimbals for a dollar apiece, but even
as of nineteen ninety six, prices for Slinkies were between
(32:38):
like a dollar eighty nine to sixty nine, and Betty
James once told The New York Times quote, so many
children can't have expensive toys, and I feel a real
obligation to them. I'm appalled when I go Christmas shopping
and sixty to eighty dollars for a toy is nothing.
With sixteen grandchildren, you can go into the national debt.
I wonder if that's a thing a lot of parents
(33:00):
would appreciate that, Like, you can actually have a toy
that people get a lot of enjoyment out of and
it's not like a sixty dollar toy like oh yeah,
I mean that's the best cost next to nothing and
you and you've got so much play out of it,
whereas the worst examples are, of course, the expensive toys
that don't get played with and just uh you know,
just set there. I remember, though, wanting those really expensive
(33:22):
toys when I was a kid, like wanting the I
don't know, the the G I Joe Fortress. They had
some set yeah, they had some like big G I
Joe like cobra um colosseum type structure, and I had
like I had a friend who had one. It was enormous, Like,
I wonder, what how many of those they made and
where they ended up. But do you actually end up
(33:43):
playing with that thing as much as you would play
with the yo yo or a slinky. I don't know. Yeah,
Like take for instance, Castle Gray Skull, the classic the
big item originally for the Masters of the Universe he
Man action figures. UM, Like, I wonder how much I
my main memories are not really playing with it per se,
but of staring in an illustration of it on a
(34:06):
box or something like it. There's something about the the
advertising for the idea of it, and ultimately the you know,
the pining for the thing is more powerful than the product. Um.
Where As the slinky, like the slinky more than delivers
on the promise on the package. I mean, you will
keep playing with the slinky until it gets tangled up
and ruined, right, But even when that happens, you can
(34:28):
get another one for like a buck fifty. Yeah. Some
people swear by the use of of a slinky as
a squirrel prevention device for a bird feeder. Yeah, instead
of you know, of course you can get custom made
devices that prevent a squirrel from climbing up the pole
of a bird feeder. But some say you can just
(34:49):
take a slinky and put it around the pole and
have it hanging there, and then squirrels won't be able
to climb it. I tried it. I found that it
did not work for me. But maybe too crafty, Yeah, squirrels.
Squirrels are crafty. And then they eventually, at least in
my case, they figured out what we were trying to do.
All right, let's take one more break, and then when
we come back, we will discuss another invented toy. All right,
(35:16):
we're back. So I have to admit that I both
love and hate a good jigsaw puzzle. Jigsaw puzzle, you know.
You know what my association with jigsaw puzzles is. For
some reason, we didn't really do them at home, but
I remember the family would always do one on a vacation,
like a beach kind of an environment. Oh you did
that too, Yeah, yeah, my, my, like my uncle and stuff.
(35:38):
I think would like get get a jigsaw puzzle and
do it on the table and uh in like a
beach condo or something. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there are
a lot of jigsaw puzzles out there now, obviously, for
for my money, I think a good jigsaw puzzle has
to be created in line with a piece of art
that I care about, you know, like it's a it's
a puzzle to be solved, even though you know what
(35:59):
the solution is going to be because it's on the
front of the box. But you're you're building this piece
of art, so I have to care about the finished piece.
And I think it also helps that the art needs
to be detailed and varied. For instance, I finally look
back on a jigsaw puzzle that I helped a symbol
on a beach trip of of the Tibetan one depiction
of the Tibetan wheel of sam Sara, which is great
(36:20):
because it's it's perfect as all these little details, these
different scenes, all sorts of intricate little beings. And recently
my family assembled a big Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle featuring an
original work of surreal art. Ravensburger, by the way, a
major German jigsaw puzzle maker. Uh. And they also make
a thousand piece puzzle utilizing the Tower of Babble by
(36:43):
Brugally Elder that i'd I'd love to take a crack
at because you know, again, an intricate piece of art
with a lot of stuff going on. But still, when
I work on a jigsaw puzzle like that, I feel
this weird mixture of pleasure and frustration, you know, tinged
with addiction. Uh As, I just have to keep going,
Like each time I actually find a piece and and
(37:05):
get it in its spot like that, I get this
release of I don't know, dopamine, I guess, and I
have to keep going. And then I'll say I just
one more piece and then I'll go back to whatever
I was working on. But then I keep going until
I just run out of mental energy for the jigsaw puzzle.
We need to talk about your jigsaw puzzle robbers, and
then one more thing about just my experience of them
(37:25):
is of course, the ideal strategy is to assemble the
edges first, and then you work on the more notable
things you can put together, like okay, clearly we've got
a bright color here, or this is clearly there's are
clearly pieces of the same structure or creature. But then
eventually you get to the point where it's just the
most boring pieces left you have to fit into the puzzle. Well,
(37:48):
that's why I think, if if you're going to have
an image for a jigsaw puzzle, it's really good. If
the image is busy, if there's a lot of stuff
going on everywhere and there's not like a lot of
blank space in it, that makes for less fun jigsaw puzzle.
Or for instance, I wouldn't want to do a Jackson
Pollock jigsaw puzzle. Oh yeah, I mean, I love the
work of Jackson Pok. I'm not gonna gonna be one
of those people who, you know, scoffs at it, but
(38:10):
it's one of the last things I would want to
put together on the jigsaw puzzle. I would want. I
want little fairies and demons and figures in medieval peasants representative. Yeah.
So this begs the question where do jigsaw puzzles come from? Well,
they actually have their origins in the eighteenth century creation
of dissected maps. This was a novelty born out of
(38:33):
the world of cartography UH and UH and also with
strong connections to a European imperial zeal for national borders,
as described in Cutting Borders, Dissected Maps and the Origins
of the Jigsaw Puzzle by Martin Norgate, published in a
two thousand seven edition of the Cartographic Journal UH. These
(38:55):
dissected maps were maps that were mounted on wood and
then cut out along national borders, which feels fittingly imperial, right,
the first map the world as it is, then to
divide it artificially with these different human division lines, and
then to physically cut up the map, slice the regions apart,
(39:16):
and then put them back together again for amusement. It
seems like an absolutely perfect outgrowth of like eighteenth century
European culture, like suddenly jazzed up on the idea of
nations with fixed borders and boundaries. You know, this is
something that a lot of people don't realize because we
live in a in a world with uh, you know,
(39:37):
well defined borders today. That is historically not the norm.
You know, in the past, you just had people living
in places and then there might be uh various imperial
powers exerting some kind of pressure on them, and whichever
one was exerting more pressure you might consider your ruler.
But like people were just living in place there there
(39:57):
often wasn't a clearly defined bore or boundary. Yeah, like
some of the early examples here I'm going to discuss
are specifically English, but also French as well, and so
this is a time where to be you know, truly
English was to was to be able to point to
the map and say, behold, there is the there's the
British Empire. And then these are you know, areas of
(40:21):
particular interest to the British Empire. Uh, these are the
enemies of the British Empire. And to you know, to
make a huge put a huge emphasis on these division lines,
and then to h to even teach younger people, uh
you know the importance of all of these abstract divisions.
Oh yeah, I mean that that goes way back in
the British tradition, even Roman Britain. That like the idea
(40:41):
of uh, you know, why was Hadrian's Wall put up?
They're all kinds of things, you know, the ideas about
defending the areas of northern England from the Scots of
the time or whatever, the tribes that were occupying what
is now Scotland. But there's also just an idea that
it was somewhat symbolic. It's symbolizing like, okay, here is
where the conquered the Roman part of Britain begins, and
(41:03):
we're establishing a border by the erection of this wall. Yeah,
that's that's a great point. Uh's in a way, Adrian's
Wall is the the predecessor to the to the proper
jigsaw puzzle. So um, this this article by Inorgate is
is a wonderful overview, um. And he discusses first of all,
(41:25):
the process from making them. And this would have been
rather simple if you had the right tools, and certainly
if you were coming if you were around in the
right time during cartographical history. The basic version is simply
a paper map pasted onto wood, and then the wood
is cut along the boundaries. These pieces, however, could easily warp,
so additional layers tended to be added, such as paper backing.
(41:47):
With the right tools, you could do this as a
craft or even as kind of like a cottage trade.
But then ultimately industrial innovations come along that make stack
cutting possible, so you can cut multiple puzzles, multiple dissected
maps at once. Um. And then of course, today when
we get to actual jigsaw puzzles, they're typically rolled out
(42:08):
via industrial presses and assembly lines, lasers or even used.
Does anybody still use wooden, like actually straight up wooden
jigsaw puzzles or is it pretty much all cardboard these days? Um?
I mean, you'll certainly find wooden very simple wooden puzzles
at times for young children. But the ones that I
(42:29):
tend to see are not like the they're you know,
a shape in a wooden hole. For that shape, I'm
sure somebody is making authentic pieces though. But but originally
this was more of a like a fancy thing that
was created by cartographers and we and we have some,
you know, examples that survived to this day. In terms
of where it comes from, historians often point to a
(42:50):
British cartographer by the name of John Spillsbury who lives
seventeen thirty nine through seventeen sixty nine, and he sometimes
credited as the inventor of the dissected map up and
ultimately the inventor of the jigsaw puzzle. Uh. He was
an apprentice to Thomas Jefferies, royal geographer to King George
the third and surviving Spillsbury puzzles are quite rare, and
(43:12):
they were not cheap even at the time they were Uh,
they were not intended for a mass general audience. But
still he does seem to be the first person to
create them and sell them, and he was certainly doing
so by seventeen sixty three, and then after him others
following in his footsteps, and they advanced the art and
the craft of this new sort of puzzle. However, is
(43:34):
in Orogate points out he was not seemingly the first
person to create a dissected map uh This honor, he argues,
might go to Madame de Beaumont, who lived seventeen eleven
through seventeen eighty, a French author and educator who lived
in England from seventeen forty eight to seven sixty two.
We can't be certain, but she's the earliest figure that
(43:57):
we can really point to on this, apparently, and she
was certainly in the right place to fit into the history.
She was governess to the niece of Lady Charlotte Finch,
and Finch was in turn governess to the children of
George the third and the Beaumont Wooden maps um as
they were referred to in some writings at the time,
were used as educational aids because at the time it
(44:19):
was of course considered important to educate English children about
the pride of their nation, its colonial ventures, and its
place in the world. And at the time educational theory
had come to accept that educational instructions such as in
geography could actually be enjoyable to a child. You could
do something that is fun or fun ish and and
(44:41):
and they could actually learn from it. Well, I think
there are still puzzles like this today. Like I don't
know if we call them jigsaw puzzles, but they are
essentially jigsaw puzzles that are just maps. Like you fill
in the fifty states of the United States with the
with the cutout puzzle pieces. Yeah, you will find dissected maps. Uh,
you can still certainly obtain them. Of course, you can
(45:01):
also find maps as a popular um subject for jigsaw puzzles,
which we'll get to know the distinction here in a minute. Um.
But here's an interesting fact about Madame de Beaumont de Beaumont.
She's actually best known for writing the most popular version
of Beauty and the Beast seventeen fifty six. I think
Beauty and the Beast was oh what's that that that
(45:26):
French folkloreist guy. Well, there was an older version of it,
for sure, but but she uh Abridge did and rewrote it,
and her version apparently was was very well read at
the time. Interesting interesting fact. Also, while in London, she
was also romantically involved with French spy Thomas Pischant. I've
(45:46):
seen her accredited as his wife in some sources, but
it seems that they lived together but never married, and
he continued residing in that home after she returned to France. Now,
how do we get from dissected maps to what we
now think of as jigsaw puzzles. Well, I want to
read a quote from Norgate's article, because I think he
sums it up very nicely. Quote. The idea of interlocking
(46:09):
jigsaw pieces was introduced in the early nineteenth century and
was probably inspired by the shape of dovetail joints in
everyday cabinet making. It was first applied to the surrounding
border of the jigsaw so that the picture would not
slip apart as it was being put together. The distinctive
quote bar Foot interlocking of the period resembles dovetail joints
(46:30):
with rounded corners. Later, still whole puzzles were made of
fully interlocking pieces. So I think that's interesting that we
see we see other innovations emerging for the jigsaw puzzle
out of the carpentry world. Uh. And then at the
same time these new approaches ultimately destroy the geographical educational
(46:51):
aspect of the thing. You know, charting a new course
into pure novel puzzle solving, and yet at the same time,
like we pointed out, you still can find a centrally
dissected maps. You can. Maps are still a popular jigsaw
puzzle subject, but existing and custom artwork have also become
a huge part of the tradition. In a way, it
reminds me of the journey from spring to slinky, you know,
(47:14):
from dissected map to jigsaw puzzle. Taking something that that
an invention that has more of a purpose, and then
finding like the thing that is intoxicating about it and
refining it towards that. Yeah, I agree, and I mean
it's exactly that kind of thing that makes it. I mean,
I I can't prove this is the case, but I
sort of have a gut feeling that among toys you
(47:37):
are more likely to find inventions that are class as
somewhat accidental type inventions. We might talk about more of
those in the future, but the slinky is usually thought
of as something like this because it wasn't something that
was you know, created originally to be a toy. It's
like he saw something, He's like that that's kind of
that looks kind of fun. It could be a toy.
(47:59):
Let me tak her with it, make it even more
toy like. And I guess that's because when you're talking
about toys, you don't necessarily start with function. Instead, you
just witness something that delights you, and and you you
sees on that delight and say, how can I maximize it? Right?
How can we make refined sugar out of this thing
(48:20):
that that is bringing me pleasure? Which is funny because
unlike a lot of unlike a lot of inventions that
solve a specific physical problem, delight is subjective. And yet
there are, for whatever reason, these certain forms that tend
to delight more than slightly altered versions of the same form. Might. Yeah, now,
I will say with jigsaw puzzles, when you're when you're
(48:43):
doing one, you I mean, you do feel like you're
really engaging your brain, so it it perhaps doesn't necessarily
feel like pure novelty, but yet it also is. You're
it's a it's an artificial problem that you have that
you're amusing yourself with. It's not something that would occur
in I mean, I suppose if you were putting back together,
say a broken piece of pottery, But otherwise no one
(49:06):
comes up and says, oh, why is this My My
favorite painting has been has been cut into a variety
of interlocking shapes, and now I must put it back
together so I can observe it again. That's like some
kind of like banks the performance art prank kind of thing. Yeah,
that would that would be a good one. Yeah, like
a self jigsaw puzzling painting. Okay, well does that do
(49:29):
it for today? I believe. So that's all we have
in the toy bag for today. But we're not We're
not entirely certain, but we might just keep going with
toys for the month of December. There are obviously more
toys uh in the history of Invention, and there's some likewise,
there's some more interesting origin stories to consider. In the meantime.
If you want to check out other episodes of Invention,
(49:52):
head on over to invention pod dot com. You'll also
find the show wherever you get your podcasts. And if
you want to support Invention, you want to see Invention
continue you in the new year, The best thing you
can do is make sure you have subscribed and then
rate and review the show, and hey, tell a friend, uh,
spread the word. If you like Invention, share it with
the world huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
(50:14):
producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
just to say hi, you can email us at contact
at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio because
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Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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