Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bogelbaum. Here. If your home has
Speaker 1: a corner cabinet, odds are it has a lazy Susan
Speaker 1: tucked away inside. Perhaps there's a lazy susan a top
Speaker 1: the center of your dining room table, or you've spun
Speaker 1: one around to reach a tasty dish well seated at
Speaker 1: a round restaurant table. Whatever its use or location, the
Speaker 1: lazy susan arguably has the most enigmatic moniker of all
Speaker 1: household appliances. We don't call a napkin holder holder helen,
Speaker 1: or a mixing bowl mix and max, or at least
Speaker 1: we haven't until now. So how did the lazy susan
Speaker 1: get its name? First, let's take a closer look at
Speaker 1: how a lazy susan works. A lazy susan refers to
Speaker 1: a round disk that rotates on a set of bearings
Speaker 1: located underneath. This spinning platform can be made of any
Speaker 1: number of materials, ranging from wood or plastic to gloss
Speaker 1: or marble. Commercially crafted sizes come in even number diameters,
Speaker 1: with the most common sizes ranging from twelve to forty
Speaker 1: eight inches, which is about thirty centimes. Even a small
Speaker 1: lazy susan often is used to store condiments in silverware
Speaker 1: on a tabletop, putting them with an easy reach of diners. However,
Speaker 1: in some restaurants and homes, a large lazy susan of
Speaker 1: at least twenty two inches or fifty six centimeters is
Speaker 1: placed in the middle of the table to hold dishes
Speaker 1: of food that can then be rotated to each person.
Speaker 1: It may be a derivative of the European dumb waiter,
Speaker 1: which was a piece of furniture situated near the hostess
Speaker 1: at a dinner table. The dumb waiter had three or
Speaker 1: four round trays that decreased in size from the bottom
Speaker 1: to the top. The trays were used to store desserts, cheeses,
Speaker 1: silver and extra plates, anything the hostess might need to
Speaker 1: quickly access. While the exact origins of the lazy susan
Speaker 1: are lost to history, there is a plausible theory about
Speaker 1: a name. Susan was a generic term popularized in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds by employers referencing their female made servants, and
Speaker 1: at the time it was fairly common for people who
Speaker 1: employed servants to complain that they were lazy According to
Speaker 1: Marcus Kreevsky, a professor of media history at the University
Speaker 1: of Basel, Switzerland, the term lazy Susan was probably common
Speaker 1: at the time. Later, in the two decades leading up
Speaker 1: to World War One, technological advances became substitutes for human power.
Speaker 1: With the advent of the ring or washing machine and
Speaker 1: similar inventions, it became prohibitively expensive for some households to
Speaker 1: continue to hire servants, as rotating wooden trays cropped up
Speaker 1: in kitchens and on dining room tables, replacing the need
Speaker 1: for servants to dish food. The term lazy Susan likely
Speaker 1: became a mashup of a reference to both the lazy
Speaker 1: employee and the substitution of technology for human power. There
Speaker 1: are other theories as well. Although most experts agree that
Speaker 1: this ubiquitous household aid probably didn't have a single inventor
Speaker 1: or a solitary namesake, some believe that Thomas Jefferson may
Speaker 1: have invented the lazy Susan in the eighteenth century, referencing
Speaker 1: a daughter in the naming. As the story goes, his
Speaker 1: daughter Susan wasn't a fan of being served last at
Speaker 1: the dinner table, and thus became his inspiration. The only
Speaker 1: problem with the story is that Thomas Jefferson doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have had a daughter named Susan. Others point to
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison as the inventor, believing that the turntable he
Speaker 1: created first phonograph evolved into the Lazy Susan. Despite the
Speaker 1: murky origins of its name, the Lazy Susan was forever
Speaker 1: cast into the American lexicon in nineteen seventeen when an
Speaker 1: advertisement appeared in Vanity Fair touting a rotating round tray
Speaker 1: called a Lazy Susan. Turns out the name may have
Speaker 1: been invented by an anonymous copywriter tasked with increasing sales
Speaker 1: during the holidays. Today's episode was written by Laurie L.
Speaker 1: Dove and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other rotating topics, visit how Stuff works
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