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