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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,

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Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,

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Speaker 1: and this is the stuff you should know projecting from

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Speaker 1: Studio one A. Just us. It's not us on stage

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Speaker 1: in front of hundreds of the doring fans. Now I

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Speaker 1: feel all lift with We just got back from our

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Speaker 1: tour and it's just us again. Yeah, there's a paper,

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Speaker 1: I kea lamp with a dimmer that makes it turn

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Speaker 1: into a strobe light even though it's not to post to.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, it's a toolbox over there. That's it. It's

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Speaker 1: a lot more fun to do this on stage in

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Speaker 1: front of people, it turns out. I think we should

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Speaker 1: do it again because the West Coast tour was pretty fun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so keep your eyes peeled. Um, perhaps Philly, d C,

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Speaker 1: New York in Boston, don't literally peel your eyes. Perhaps

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Speaker 1: Chapel Hill. Oh, we can't announce anything yet, but we're

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Speaker 1: just teasing with those cities that will be in in June. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're actually going to Providence. Are we just kidding? They

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Speaker 1: were like ten people in Providence going yeah. Oh man,

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Speaker 1: I got to go to Boston a game. Uh so,

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Speaker 1: how are you doing? You still jet lagged? I have

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Speaker 1: recovered somewhat. Um. I have to say that the city

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Speaker 1: of Seattle, there's a place I could live. It's beautiful

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Speaker 1: except for the weather. Like we had a good and

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Speaker 1: it's easy to fall in love both a place if

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Speaker 1: you're there for like a great weekend, because it was

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Speaker 1: beautiful when it was it was gorgeous. But I told

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Speaker 1: Emily she was all fired up to um, it's like,

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Speaker 1: you know, nine months out of the year, it's pretty

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Speaker 1: depressing with the weather bleak, and I think you're just

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Speaker 1: used to it. To feel about there, I guess you know,

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Speaker 1: you're hearty. Everybody seemed to have their spirits up, though

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Speaker 1: maybe it was the weather. I assumed it was because

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Speaker 1: we were in town, but now that I think about it,

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Speaker 1: it could have definitely been the weather. Well, Portland's fans

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Speaker 1: stood in line in the rain, and I felt all bad,

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Speaker 1: but that I was like, they stand in line for

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Speaker 1: in the rain all the time, for everything, gas, donuts,

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Speaker 1: what have you. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, thanks to everyone

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Speaker 1: who came out. It was so so fun. Yes, l

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Speaker 1: A San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, from both of us, from

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Speaker 1: Jerry to Ye, from everybody, heartfelt, hearty, thank you. Jerry

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Speaker 1: was a regular hot shot, you know with ws so

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Speaker 1: uh chuck. Yes, did you ever have a slinky when

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Speaker 1: you were a kid. Sure, I feel like I played

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Speaker 1: with them. I definitely played with them. I don't remember

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Speaker 1: actually owning a slinky at any point, least yours. It was.

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Speaker 1: It was just kind of one of those things that

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Speaker 1: I was like, always around there was always a slinky.

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Speaker 1: You could get your hands on a slinky. But you

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Speaker 1: don't remember getting a slinky right and saying this is

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Speaker 1: Mike slinky, or going to the toy store and saying like,

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Speaker 1: I want a slinky. But I did love slinkies whenever

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Speaker 1: I played with them. Uh. It turns out I was

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Speaker 1: just one of many many children over the last sixty

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Speaker 1: seventy years that have loved slinky. I was frustrated by

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Speaker 1: my slinky a bit because I never I never had

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Speaker 1: stairs that it worked well on. You know, you gotta

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Speaker 1: thought never had stairs, Like, yeah, I'll bet you're frustrated

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Speaker 1: with slinky. No, I had stairs going up to my room.

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Speaker 1: But it was you know, if you don't have the

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Speaker 1: right height and depth of stair. It just stopped and

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Speaker 1: they still got to do it again. Were they for

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Speaker 1: like really long feet, were they wide stairs or were

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Speaker 1: they really taller? What was the deal? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I felt like I felt like they were standard stairs. Um,

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Speaker 1: and then it just didn't like them. Well, it would

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Speaker 1: get all I had the metal ones, it would get

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Speaker 1: all uh you know how they would tend to get tangled. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was sort of the hallmark of the metal slinky.

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Speaker 1: And again, like people's hair would get caught in. And

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Speaker 1: now that I'm an adult looking back, I'm like, how

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Speaker 1: did anybody's hair get caught in the slinky? What was

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Speaker 1: the deal? But when it happened, it hurt. I've kids

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Speaker 1: would like wrap slinkys around each other. I remember using

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Speaker 1: slinky like as rope like handcuffs. Oh yeah, Like you'd

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Speaker 1: wrap it around your friend and then sort of just

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Speaker 1: latch it and you'd be like a slinky like attaching

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Speaker 1: a knife to one end and like yeah, yeah, just

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Speaker 1: jamming it toward somebody that there's this guy on YouTube.

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Speaker 1: Well there's a YouTube video of a guy called slinky Master.

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Speaker 1: Oh boy, and he is good. He's just like basically

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Speaker 1: like moving it from one hand to another, making it

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Speaker 1: do all this awesome stuff in the middle. And it's

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Speaker 1: a rainbow slinky and I think it might be like

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Speaker 1: Glow in the Dark too. Holy cow, but he is

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Speaker 1: a pretty good I say, go check it out. I

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Speaker 1: gotta definitely want to check that out. Oh and actually,

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Speaker 1: we have a new thing on our website on our

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Speaker 1: podcast pages, so like the page where you can go

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Speaker 1: listen to any podcast on our site, there's now um

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Speaker 1: a like an additional links section where it has stuff

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Speaker 1: that we talk about. It links out to articles that

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Speaker 1: we use for extra research. They'll be on this Slinky

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Speaker 1: episode podcast page a link to that um Slinky Master.

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Speaker 1: You don't even need to google that. You just basically

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Speaker 1: make step You should know your homepage and we can

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Speaker 1: take care of it for you. Yeah, and we're bringing

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Speaker 1: back transcriptions right yep, which we are super happy about

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Speaker 1: because we used to have transcriptions for our friends in

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Speaker 1: the deaf and Heart of Hearing community and then we

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Speaker 1: didn't do it for a while and they were like

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Speaker 1: what gives Yeah, And so we've been working to get

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Speaker 1: those back and I think they're going to be back now.

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Speaker 1: So that's that's slinky good night. Oh wait, we didn't

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Speaker 1: start yet, so um, I had no idea while I

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Speaker 1: was watching people get their hair caught in slink ease

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Speaker 1: or playing with them in general that um, they had

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Speaker 1: a kind of a pretty neat history until I ran

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Speaker 1: across this article from Price in Nomics, written by a

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Speaker 1: dude named Zachary Crockett. Yeah, big, thanks, This is a

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Speaker 1: good article. It is um. It's called the Invention of

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Speaker 1: is Slinky? And in it, uh, Crockett starts at a

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Speaker 1: pretty reasonable place, the birth of the inventors Thanky, Richard Thompson, James,

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Speaker 1: Rick James, and then in this slinky, I don't think

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Speaker 1: he went by Rick. No, he went by Mr James,

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Speaker 1: inventors slinky. Yes. He was born in nineteen fourteen in Delaware,

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Speaker 1: and uh apparently his brother Samuel said that he was

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Speaker 1: always a pretty enterprising, mechanically oriented type of kid, because

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Speaker 1: he had this one story about when he was like

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Speaker 1: a thirteen, he found an old car and literally like

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Speaker 1: fixed the car up well enough to sell it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I had like mice running around living in um and

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Speaker 1: he sold it for twenty five bucks, which I went

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Speaker 1: to West Egg and converted that thirty seven dollars in

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Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. Money not bad for a thirteen year old,

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Speaker 1: that's yeah. But it was a car. Whoever bought it

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Speaker 1: got a good deal, that's what she's saying. But I mean,

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Speaker 1: he probably didn't get rid of the mice. He just

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Speaker 1: got the thing to run again. Plus it wasn't his

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Speaker 1: car anyway, he just took it, licks it up. Um,

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Speaker 1: it was the mice's car. So in the nineteen thirties

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Speaker 1: he went to Penn State and did study mechanical engineering. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was just a tinkerer, so it made a lot

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Speaker 1: of sense. Yeah. Uh. I find that often when people

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Speaker 1: like you've researched the people who invented like a circuit

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Speaker 1: board for an amp or something. It seems like that

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Speaker 1: starts when you're very very young. Just interesting, that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. You don't get into mechanical engineering in your twenties,

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Speaker 1: you know, like you ditch psychology for a mechanical engineering degree. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: My brother went the other way. He was an aerospace

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Speaker 1: engineering major and he switched to psychology. Did he really?

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, he wanted to be an astronaut.

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Speaker 1: That's awesome, but not like a six year old. He

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Speaker 1: was like, I wanted to be an astronaut. He liked

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Speaker 1: to be a cowboy to cowboys, you grew up to

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Speaker 1: actually be cowboys. Um So, anyway, he got a mechanical

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Speaker 1: engineering degree and then uh started work as a naval engineer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because it makes sense. It was World War two, so

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Speaker 1: that's what you did. Yeah, and to go fight Hitler.

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Speaker 1: So he did. He fought it from behind a desk

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Speaker 1: because they're like, you're a mechanical engineer, you just sit

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Speaker 1: here and figure out how you can make our weapons

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Speaker 1: of war better. And he was actually working on something,

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Speaker 1: um that you springs, something that basically kept some sort

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Speaker 1: of electronics on battleships. I think it had to do

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Speaker 1: with the measuring horsepower. Yeah, it was a horsepower meter

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Speaker 1: that I guess if you're in rough waves that would

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Speaker 1: mess with the meter. Yeah, and you didn't want it

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Speaker 1: rocking all over the place, that you would use springs

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Speaker 1: to keep it intact or keep it from moving around

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Speaker 1: too much. Right. Um So, while he was tinkering around

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Speaker 1: with one of this, he quite by accident knocked over

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Speaker 1: some stuff. I don't think it was in a fit

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Speaker 1: of rage. It was accidental and one of the things

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Speaker 1: he knocked over included a spring, and he watched the

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Speaker 1: spring fall off the shelf in a nice graceful arc

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Speaker 1: hit a book go over from the book onto the desk,

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Speaker 1: and then from the desk onto the floor in this

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Speaker 1: nice our arching manner exactly, and he said, let's try

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Speaker 1: that again. Yeah, it's apparently captivated by it. It's pretty neat,

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Speaker 1: Like this is literally one of those toys you can

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Speaker 1: trace back to one of those silly fluke moments, like

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Speaker 1: the microwave. Was that the same thing? He was, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was. Oh man, I can't remember what the actual

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Speaker 1: the actual thing that makes the microwave. The microwave was

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Speaker 1: discovered by accident that it was, Yeah, that it had

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Speaker 1: these properties that um like a guy had a chocolate

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Speaker 1: bar in his shirt because melted melt. He's like, wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, So of course he logically brand and grabbed

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Speaker 1: some popcorn and saw that that happened, and then the

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Speaker 1: microwave is born. Yeah, I think a slinky is actually

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Speaker 1: the only place that's on our website is one of

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Speaker 1: those our top ten accidental inventions or something, And I'll

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Speaker 1: bet microwaves are in there too. I'm sure it is UM.

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Speaker 1: So basically, you're right. The lightbulb went off over his

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Speaker 1: head and he went home and told his lovely wife Betty, Betty, Betty,

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Speaker 1: I think I got something here, and I just need

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Speaker 1: to figure out how to how to make it to

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Speaker 1: where it keeps doing this thing. I'm gonna try, because

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Speaker 1: you can't just get any spring and throw it on

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Speaker 1: a step, No you can. There's all sorts of different

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Speaker 1: kinds of springs that turns out, you know, like there's

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Speaker 1: a tension spring that they use on mouse traps, and

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Speaker 1: then there's the slinky spring. But now the slinky spring

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Speaker 1: is this super refined type of spring that was designed

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Speaker 1: over the course of a year through trial and error

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Speaker 1: to have just the right tension, just the right shape,

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Speaker 1: just the right size of the coils, just the right

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Speaker 1: everything so that it really accentuated that graceful flow, that

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Speaker 1: arcing flow that it it has that makes it the slinky.

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Speaker 1: And it took him like a year of tinkering with

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Speaker 1: all these different tensions and um types of materials before

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Speaker 1: he finally hit upon it. Yeah, and I think he

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Speaker 1: settled on a point zero five seven in diameter high

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Speaker 1: carbon steel UM the original slinkys were black metal, which

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Speaker 1: was kind a cool looking um by the time, like

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Speaker 1: we were kids. I think they just um they had

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Speaker 1: the shiny silver ones, and then of course we'll get

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Speaker 1: to the plastic that came along later too, but the

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Speaker 1: first ones were black um and it demonstrates uh property

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Speaker 1: and physics called So I ran across this like super

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Speaker 1: hardcore physics forum where somebody posted that they were talking

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Speaker 1: about the physics of slinky and somebody's like, it seems

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Speaker 1: like Hook's law is a good place to start, and

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Speaker 1: they got piled off. They said that Hooks law has

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Speaker 1: to do with the amount of force a spring exerts

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Speaker 1: on something it's attached to. So I think with Hook's law,

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Speaker 1: if it does apply, what you're talking about is the

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Speaker 1: force being transferred from one end of the slinky to

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Speaker 1: the other, and that as the as the momentum at

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Speaker 1: the front of the slinky goes downward, that same amount

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Speaker 1: is transferred to the back and it's pulled forward and

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Speaker 1: it just keeps going end over end. So I don't

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Speaker 1: know if Hook's law does apply or not, but if

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Speaker 1: it does, that's my understanding of how it would apply. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the one definition I saw was that. Um. It basically

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Speaker 1: means a spring will return to its original shape once

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Speaker 1: the load is removed. So that makes sense, right, Um.

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Speaker 1: But there's another thing, at least one other thing going

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Speaker 1: on with the slinky, and that is that it goes

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Speaker 1: along a longitudinal wave. So just like a sound wave,

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Speaker 1: basically a slinky is a sound wave slowed down or

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Speaker 1: the same type of wave as a as a sound wave,

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Speaker 1: and it slowed down and as the slinky is moving

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Speaker 1: on a molecular level molecule, the molecule is pushing the

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Speaker 1: ones in front of it forward, and then the whole

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Speaker 1: thing starts over again once it reaches uh equilibrium. That

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Speaker 1: sounds like a great explanation to me. Yes, No, that's

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Speaker 1: all right. It avoids equilibrium. Once it hits equilibrium, it stops.

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Speaker 1: But the whole thing starts with the slinky just sitting

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Speaker 1: there at the top of the step, and what it

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Speaker 1: has there is potential energy. It's story. Yeah, you gotta

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Speaker 1: move it to get that kinetic energy going. When I

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Speaker 1: was a kid, I just remember staring at it. It's

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Speaker 1: like it's not doing nothing. This is where slinky and

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Speaker 1: our ESP episodes collide. How's that you're just staring at slinky,

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Speaker 1: willing it to move. All right, So he comes up

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Speaker 1: with this little slinky. It works like a charm, his

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Speaker 1: little prototype. Uh. He does the smart thing, which is

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Speaker 1: if you want to find out if kids actually will

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Speaker 1: enjoy it. He got the neighborhood together and uk to

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Speaker 1: some kids and they went nuts. They were like, this

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Speaker 1: thing is amazing. Yeah, stop hitting that other kid with

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Speaker 1: those sticks and come over and play with this toy

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Speaker 1: that I came up with. Let me know what you think.

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Speaker 1: And they wrapped up that kid in the spring, got

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Speaker 1: it caught in that kid's hair. So this is perfect.

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Speaker 1: He's like, this is Gangbusters. And I mean like he

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Speaker 1: saw from that very early back of the envelope market

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Speaker 1: research that he did with the neighborhood kids, it made

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Speaker 1: him a believer. Yeah, Like he saw that kids really

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Speaker 1: were into this thing, and I got the impression that

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Speaker 1: it At no point was he like this thing is

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Speaker 1: is amazing, it's supernatural. He's like, this is a it's

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Speaker 1: really cool. It's a spring. It's physics, but it just

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Speaker 1: looks really neat and it is somehow weirdly captivating. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think they say that one in a thousand toys

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Speaker 1: hits it big, yeah, something like that. Yeah. So, I

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Speaker 1: mean there are toy inventors that labor for their entire

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Speaker 1: lives and never hit on something like the slinky. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's one of the top ten toys in history when

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Speaker 1: they go slinky. So Betty, his wife, wasn't super Um. Well,

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Speaker 1: she was a little skeptical at first, which will learn

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Speaker 1: later is pretty ironic, very ironic. Um. And he actually

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Speaker 1: tasted her with naming it though. And she is the

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Speaker 1: one that found the word slinky in the dictionary. Apparently

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Speaker 1: she spent like several weeks looking for just the right word. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, what else was she doing? Kids? Right, exactly?

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Speaker 1: She had a lot of downtime. So um, right after

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Speaker 1: this break, we will talk a little bit about how

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Speaker 1: it went from a just a garage neighborhood idea to

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest selling toys ever. All right, so

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Speaker 1: he's got a slinky, he's got the prototype, he gets

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Speaker 1: a five hundred dollar a loan to start from a

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Speaker 1: friend to start James Spring and Wire Company LC. Yeah,

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00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:32,240
Speaker 1: pretty good name. Yeah. Well, and you got the five

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Speaker 1: bucks apparently pretty easy from the friend by just showing

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Speaker 1: him the slinky. Yeah, and he was like, how much

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Speaker 1: do you need? I didn't look up how much five

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Speaker 1: bucks is, but uh, in but we can guess that

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Speaker 1: it's uh about forty million. No, no, no, because I

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Speaker 1: think it's about let's see, it was about I think

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Speaker 1: bucks probably roughly today, which I mean that's substantial. They

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Speaker 1: give a friend and it was enough to get things going.

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Speaker 1: I think he really, I mean he had the prototype,

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Speaker 1: he just needed an official company banner basically. So he

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Speaker 1: has his machine shop and he has his prototype, and

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Speaker 1: he gets a bunch of wire and he makes a

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Speaker 1: bunch of slinkies. Well, he goes through his local machine

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Speaker 1: shop first, right, So he's at his local machine shop

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Speaker 1: and he and he makes four slinkies. Uh there were

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Speaker 1: two and a half inches tall, contained eighty feet of wire,

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00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:31,680
Speaker 1: which that's pretty impressive. I didn't know it was nearly

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Speaker 1: that much. But it makes sense, I guess because I

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Speaker 1: think every kid's tried to uncoil theirs fully, you know. Yeah,

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00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:41,840
Speaker 1: And apparently slinky starts out as like normal round wire,

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Speaker 1: but then they smush it to make it flat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because it's got to be flat to perform and sit

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Speaker 1: on itself. Yeah. I didn't I didn't realize though that

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it makes sense, but he didn't realize

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Speaker 1: it started out as like a round, like diameter type wire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but what kind of what kind of metal did he

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00:16:59,440 --> 00:17:04,840
Speaker 1: started out? Um, Swedish steel, high grade blue black Swedish steel.

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00:17:05,119 --> 00:17:07,960
Speaker 1: Guess that was the wire of the day. Um. And

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00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:10,760
Speaker 1: it was in ninety eight coils and at first they

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Speaker 1: just wrapped it in parchment paper. Um. Later on I

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Speaker 1: think they packaged it in just a box like it's

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00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:19,159
Speaker 1: in today, right, Actually today, I think it's in that

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00:17:19,320 --> 00:17:23,000
Speaker 1: awful plastic stuff that you can't open. Oh is it now? Well,

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00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:26,120
Speaker 1: they have a throwback you can get yeah that it's

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00:17:26,119 --> 00:17:29,720
Speaker 1: still like modeled after the original box, which is kind

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00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:31,520
Speaker 1: of neat. Yeah, So I don't see why he wouldn't

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Speaker 1: get that one personally. So with the original metal slinky

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Speaker 1: and the whole history from the time he walked into

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Speaker 1: that metal shop the first time, once he had the

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00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:46,200
Speaker 1: prototype figured out h throughout today, there was only one

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00:17:46,359 --> 00:17:48,800
Speaker 1: design change in the whole time, and that was to

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Speaker 1: crimp the ends that after it was produced to keep

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Speaker 1: it from tangling. Is easy and um for safety. So

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Speaker 1: it didn't like cut some kid's eye out right. So

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00:17:58,160 --> 00:18:00,600
Speaker 1: after a bunch of kid's eyes were cut out, they Acrymthian.

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00:18:00,720 --> 00:18:02,480
Speaker 1: I don't know if they had four sight or if

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00:18:02,800 --> 00:18:05,600
Speaker 1: if it wasn't response to eyes being gouged out, but

336
00:18:08,320 --> 00:18:10,040
Speaker 1: and I mean still today I went on Amazon to

337
00:18:10,400 --> 00:18:13,280
Speaker 1: double check and the slinky is still two and a

338
00:18:13,320 --> 00:18:16,439
Speaker 1: half inches tall. It didn't say how many coils it

339
00:18:16,560 --> 00:18:19,800
Speaker 1: was because they didn't get that descriptive, but that it's

340
00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:23,200
Speaker 1: the same thing as it was back in five. Yeah,

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00:18:23,200 --> 00:18:27,360
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they didn't have like, uh, you know the

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00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:33,160
Speaker 1: Mega X streamlink that like um powered by Mountain Dew

343
00:18:33,280 --> 00:18:36,960
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, they probably do have that. Actually,

344
00:18:40,080 --> 00:18:41,960
Speaker 1: I love that though the original slinky is still like

345
00:18:42,040 --> 00:18:46,560
Speaker 1: it exact same Yeah, the original metal ones. Yeah, why

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00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:50,600
Speaker 1: change something that's perfect? Right? Right? And and so the

347
00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:53,840
Speaker 1: the the James has knew that this thing was perfect,

348
00:18:54,080 --> 00:18:57,360
Speaker 1: had a great name, worked really well. The neighborhood kids

349
00:18:57,359 --> 00:18:59,840
Speaker 1: loved it. So of course this thing's gonna become like

350
00:19:00,680 --> 00:19:02,680
Speaker 1: a hit right out of the gate, right. Nope, No,

351
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:07,400
Speaker 1: you're being coy. My friend uh he took it to

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00:19:07,119 --> 00:19:11,520
Speaker 1: uh toy stores and the there was one storekeeper said,

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00:19:11,560 --> 00:19:14,199
Speaker 1: this is the atomic age it's want big, bright, fancy

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00:19:14,200 --> 00:19:16,480
Speaker 1: things with lots of colors and lights. We couldn't give

355
00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:18,520
Speaker 1: the thing away if it played God Bless America and

356
00:19:18,520 --> 00:19:21,240
Speaker 1: picked up the Daily Double as it walked down the steps.

357
00:19:22,080 --> 00:19:25,400
Speaker 1: That's very cynical. It is very cynical. He used exclamation

358
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Speaker 1: points and stuff. Um, but James, Rick James was like,

359
00:19:29,200 --> 00:19:32,240
Speaker 1: I'm Rick James, and you don't tell me what to

360
00:19:32,280 --> 00:19:35,760
Speaker 1: do with my toys. And he got in such a Gimbals,

361
00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:38,760
Speaker 1: who is very famous as the Macy's competitor from le

362
00:19:38,920 --> 00:19:41,199
Speaker 1: thirty fourth Street, the only reason most of us have

363
00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:45,800
Speaker 1: ever heard of Gimbals. Um and Gimbals in Philadelphia apparently

364
00:19:45,840 --> 00:19:48,919
Speaker 1: said do you know what I like you? I like

365
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:51,959
Speaker 1: the way you smell. I'm going to put your toys

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00:19:52,119 --> 00:19:54,560
Speaker 1: in our Christmas display and we'll just see where it

367
00:19:54,600 --> 00:19:57,200
Speaker 1: goes from there. Yeah, he was local at that, living

368
00:19:57,200 --> 00:19:59,200
Speaker 1: outside of Philly, right. I wonder if that so he

369
00:19:59,280 --> 00:20:02,360
Speaker 1: eventually moved outside of Philly, but I'm not sure exactly

370
00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:04,480
Speaker 1: where they were at this point. It would make sense,

371
00:20:04,920 --> 00:20:07,560
Speaker 1: although it's entirely possible he was hustling hard enough that

372
00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:10,840
Speaker 1: he was just hitting department stores all over the Northeast.

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00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:13,159
Speaker 1: Well and Delawares not too far anyway, so yeah, they

374
00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:16,040
Speaker 1: may have still been in Delaware, but they m they

375
00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:19,000
Speaker 1: did talk the Philadelphia Gimbals into putting this on their

376
00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:25,159
Speaker 1: Christmas display. So in Christmas November, the slinky debuts to

377
00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:28,320
Speaker 1: public and it immediately takes off like a rocket. Right.

378
00:20:28,560 --> 00:20:35,199
Speaker 1: No again that was double koy. Uh no it it

379
00:20:35,359 --> 00:20:37,639
Speaker 1: for weeks just sat there because of course it's just

380
00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:41,119
Speaker 1: this thing that kids had never seen before, the spring

381
00:20:41,160 --> 00:20:44,560
Speaker 1: and parchment paper sitting between like really awesome toys. Yeah,

382
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:47,280
Speaker 1: it's just like all it's nothing but potential energy at

383
00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:51,080
Speaker 1: that point, there's like a spring sitting between those atomic

384
00:20:51,119 --> 00:20:54,800
Speaker 1: aged toys that that one shopkeeper was using exclamation points about,

385
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:56,680
Speaker 1: right yeah, I mean if there if there was ever

386
00:20:56,760 --> 00:21:01,560
Speaker 1: a toy that needed a demonstration um to delight in amaze,

387
00:21:01,600 --> 00:21:06,400
Speaker 1: it was the slinky. So very frustrated with this um,

388
00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:09,680
Speaker 1: Richard James apparently said to his wife, like, I'm going

389
00:21:09,720 --> 00:21:12,240
Speaker 1: down to Gimbals and I'm going to deal with this

390
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:16,480
Speaker 1: head on and um. He said, meet me there in

391
00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:19,200
Speaker 1: like ninety minutes or something like that. So he went

392
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:20,920
Speaker 1: down there. He took a couple of slinkies out of

393
00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:24,960
Speaker 1: their parchment paper and started looking dummies. Yeah, you stupid kids,

394
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:28,680
Speaker 1: keep your hair away, but check this out. And um

395
00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:31,280
Speaker 1: he started playing with them, and apparently by the time

396
00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:34,399
Speaker 1: Betty got down there, ninety minutes later, he had sold

397
00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:37,240
Speaker 1: all four hundred slinkies and there was apparently a line

398
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:40,639
Speaker 1: around the block asking for more. Yeah, that sounds like

399
00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:44,080
Speaker 1: such a trumped up story, but you know, I love

400
00:21:44,119 --> 00:21:46,399
Speaker 1: it though. It was like, within ninety minutes, It's great.

401
00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:49,080
Speaker 1: The world was slinky crazy. Yeah, the Santa f a

402
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:51,480
Speaker 1: miracle on thirty fourth Street comes through and does like

403
00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:54,320
Speaker 1: a little twirl and goes out of frame again. But

404
00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:57,000
Speaker 1: he did sell those four hundred units that day, supposedly,

405
00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:00,280
Speaker 1: and by Christmas, uh, they had sold twenty and so

406
00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:03,640
Speaker 1: it really did take off super pass once kids understood

407
00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:05,720
Speaker 1: what the heck it was, and that was that's a

408
00:22:05,760 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 1: significant amount of money, Chuck, I used west Egg this

409
00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:12,119
Speaker 1: time one dollar. They sold him for a dollar a piece.

410
00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:15,280
Speaker 1: So he sold four hundred units and twenty thousand by

411
00:22:15,280 --> 00:22:18,600
Speaker 1: the end of Christmas. That translates to like thirteen dollars

412
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:22,520
Speaker 1: in today's money. So imagine being a parent today and

413
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:24,800
Speaker 1: being like, you want me to pay thirteen dollars for

414
00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:28,520
Speaker 1: a spring. Are you crazy? But they still managed to

415
00:22:28,560 --> 00:22:32,000
Speaker 1: capture the public imagination just right, and the thing just

416
00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:35,719
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire, not just in Christmas of nineteen by

417
00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:38,480
Speaker 1: Christmas of nineteen forty seven, there was a New York

418
00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:41,680
Speaker 1: Times article and like the fashion section talking about how

419
00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:46,160
Speaker 1: the must have adornment of the year was a slinky

420
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:49,120
Speaker 1: dipped in gold with glitter. It sounds like something Edward

421
00:22:49,119 --> 00:22:53,640
Speaker 1: Burne's might have cooked up, right, Yeah, I think so. Um.

422
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:56,040
Speaker 1: I think that Another cool thing is they remained a

423
00:22:56,119 --> 00:23:00,920
Speaker 1: dollar for a lot of their life. And um it

424
00:23:01,040 --> 00:23:03,119
Speaker 1: said in this article here that in the mid nineties

425
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:05,560
Speaker 1: are only a dollar eighty nine. Um, now they're like

426
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:07,919
Speaker 1: four or five bucks. It looks like I saw again

427
00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 1: on Amazon, Amazon, Amazon dot com Amazon, Uh, it was

428
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:15,120
Speaker 1: like two nine. It was the lowest I saw. Hey,

429
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,440
Speaker 1: that's a good deal for a slinky. But even still, Yeah,

430
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:19,199
Speaker 1: if you want a great deal on anything, go to

431
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:23,000
Speaker 1: Amazon dot com. I saw others that, other nameless online

432
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:25,800
Speaker 1: toy store retailers that were supposed to do four or

433
00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:29,920
Speaker 1: five bucks. No Amazon, I could see that though. Four

434
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: or five bucks that makes sense. But the point is is,

435
00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 1: for a very long time, still pretty cheap. Yeah, it

436
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:37,880
Speaker 1: stayed the same even as the cost of living increased,

437
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:41,640
Speaker 1: so it's relative price went down tremendously. And they did

438
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:44,399
Speaker 1: that on purpose. Well, and that was yeah, exactly. That

439
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:46,880
Speaker 1: was one of the things that as we'll see here shortly,

440
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 1: Betty's one of her favorite things. What is it, uh

441
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,200
Speaker 1: that kids could have a cheap toy, and she wanted

442
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:56,440
Speaker 1: even poor kids to be able to buy something. And uh,

443
00:23:56,680 --> 00:24:00,680
Speaker 1: here's my spring, here's the sink. Just give me a dollar.

444
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:04,160
Speaker 1: So the James is and by this time they were

445
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: they were pretty pretty much partnership from what I understand,

446
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,360
Speaker 1: at the very least, um, Betty was playing some sort

447
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:14,160
Speaker 1: of supporting role, at least as an advisor possibly um.

448
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,840
Speaker 1: But again they had like six kids and she was

449
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:20,200
Speaker 1: raising them. Uh so it was really mostly Richard running

450
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 1: the company. But they took the Slinky to the the

451
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:26,360
Speaker 1: Toy Fair, the American Toy Fair in New York, which

452
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:28,680
Speaker 1: is the same one that Barbie debuted at in the fifties.

453
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:32,679
Speaker 1: I think Barbarie registered trademark um and they took Slinky

454
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:37,160
Speaker 1: there and they did it all themselves. They pitched the thing,

455
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 1: and they had people from toy stores and department stores

456
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:44,240
Speaker 1: from around the country just signing up and slinky was

457
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:48,400
Speaker 1: he you. Apparently they made the equivalent of a billion

458
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:50,919
Speaker 1: dollars in the first two years. Yeah, he sold more

459
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:53,600
Speaker 1: than a hundred million in the first two years of production.

460
00:24:54,600 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: That's crazy. A hundred million. A hundred million, and this

461
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 1: is the population of you know, the mid forties. It's

462
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 1: not like you know nowadays, that would be a little

463
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,159
Speaker 1: more believable. I think so well, no, think about it,

464
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:08,400
Speaker 1: I we I wish I would have thought of that. Like,

465
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: there probably weren't too terribly more, much more than a

466
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 1: hundred million people in the US at the time, So

467
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:17,200
Speaker 1: that's like a slinky for every person in the US,

468
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 1: slinky in every pot. Right, So things were going so well,

469
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: he realized that my my machine shop here in uh Delaware, Delaware,

470
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: suburban Pennsylvania, which whichever it was, is not up to snuff,

471
00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:34,920
Speaker 1: and I need to set up my own shop. So

472
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: he did that in Albany, New York. And it was like,

473
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,679
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm an inventor. I'm just gonna make my

474
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 1: own machine that can make our own slinkies at a

475
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 1: rate of uh five seconds a pop. Yeah, the old

476
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: machine shop was making them in a couple of minutes

477
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:53,680
Speaker 1: per slinking, which was fast for back then, I think.

478
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Richard James said, I'm going to make

479
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:00,239
Speaker 1: my own machine. That's that's really cool. Absolutely, I think

480
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. And not only did he make his

481
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: own machine, he made a machine that can do one

482
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,199
Speaker 1: in five seconds. Like you said, so it took it,

483
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 1: took the round wire, smushed it and then coiled it

484
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: in that second crimp the ends. I guess that's crazy. Yeah,

485
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:16,679
Speaker 1: and then bam, you got a slinky. You got a

486
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 1: dollar in your pocket right there. This is when um,

487
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:22,520
Speaker 1: this is when it came in the black box and

488
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 1: they ditched the parchment. It was labeled Slinky Colin, the

489
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: famous walking spring toy, and it was gangbusters, man, it

490
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: was again. They sold a hundred million in the first

491
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:38,040
Speaker 1: two years. To put that in perspective, I did find

492
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 1: out how many people there were in America in nineteen seven.

493
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 1: There was a hundred and forty four million people in

494
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: the US and he sold a hundred million slinky. So

495
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 1: for every one point four people there was, one of

496
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: them had a slinky. So that means adults were buying

497
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: slinky sto. Yeah, you know, yeah. Uh. So in the

498
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties they started to do what all great inventors do.

499
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 1: They started to span the line a bit. They came

500
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 1: up with um, courtesy of a woman named Helen Mall said,

501
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 1: came up with the slinky dog and the slinky train.

502
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:13,439
Speaker 1: Um because she was a fan that they would like

503
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 1: solicit ideas, and she wrote them in and said, Hey,

504
00:27:16,119 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 1: I think it would be pretty neat if you made

505
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 1: like a dog that walked but the middle of him

506
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 1: was a slinky and like in toy story exactly, which

507
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:28,920
Speaker 1: they got some nice kickback money on that. There was

508
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: also the yeah oh yes, so then they didn't steal

509
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: people's ideas either. No, that was waiting for that to

510
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,159
Speaker 1: read that. When I was reading this, I was all

511
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: nervous that and penniless or no. She actually was a

512
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 1: ended up creating twenty six toys and games in her career. Um,

513
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,959
Speaker 1: the slinky Dog and Slinky train were her big biggest successes.

514
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 1: But they basically paid her uh sixty five grand a

515
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: year for seventeen years on that royalty, which is a

516
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: ton of money. Yeah, so, um, hats off to you,

517
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: Helen Moll said, there, did you get the idea of

518
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 1: whether she was already a toy inventor or that this

519
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: kind of gave her the boost she needed to become

520
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 1: a toy inventor for a career. I think she was.

521
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: I read her New York Times oh bit, and I

522
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:17,240
Speaker 1: talked about some other games that she had tried to create.

523
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: I don't think she had like burst onto the scene

524
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: there or anything, but um, that's a pretty comfortable living

525
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 1: back then. Um. So they also had this Susie the

526
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: Slinky worm. Um, then Slinky Crazy guys. Yeah you know those,

527
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: Remember those glasses that have like the slinkies attached to

528
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: the big bloodshot eyeballs. Those are Slinky brand hysterical and Um.

529
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: It turns out that it wasn't just toys. The slinky

530
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: patent that Richard James originally got back in the forties

531
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: was also licensed out for other stuff, Like it was

532
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 1: used in Antenna's. It ended up being used on battleships

533
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: or other kinds of ships. Is a stabilizing thing like

534
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: he was originally after, Um, gutter protectors. I saw that

535
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:03,719
Speaker 1: to light fixtures, total sense. So they also made a

536
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: ton of cash sub licensing this whole um that, like

537
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: the Slinky patent out for other uses besides just the

538
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: toys and the slinky hippo and all that stuff. Yeah,

539
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: and they gave soldiers in Vietnam slinkies. UM didn't license it,

540
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 1: like just straight up gave them slinkys to use in

541
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: the field as UH antennas. So they would throw the

542
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: slinky like over a tree branch and then pull it

543
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: down and connect it to their radio to boost their

544
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 1: antenna signal. That is pretty smart, pretty neat. You know

545
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: it's being used today in space. They're they're using the

546
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: same UM I think, the same patent originally to deploy

547
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: solar sales in space. Yeah, pretty cool. I wonder if

548
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: they're licensing that the actual they I mean, NASA was

549
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: using the slinky name all over the article I was reading.

550
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: And there's another one too. Um there's a paper slinky

551
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:58,719
Speaker 1: that has it's coated with a metal on one side,

552
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: and so the UM when you make a go springy

553
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: to non springy, I think is the physics terms that

554
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: I'm searching for. It creates static electricity, and it creates

555
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:14,880
Speaker 1: enough that that can be captured and used to generate power. Yeah. Way,

556
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: and it's people at Georgia Tech who are doing it well,

557
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Um, all right, So where are we?

558
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: He is um sold a hundred million of these. He's

559
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: expanding the line. And right after this break, we are

560
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: going to talk about a very interesting turn in this story.

561
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: Uh that has to do with well, you'll see. So

562
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,200
Speaker 1: we're back Chuck. Slinky is doing well. It's the fifties.

563
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: There's a ton of just different slinky stuff, slinky eyeballs.

564
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: Everybody's freaking out their teachers and things are going great

565
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: for the James is right. I think teacher's death drawers

566
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:11,240
Speaker 1: are loaded with sleepy products and chattering teeth. Uh, and

567
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: rotten apples. I wonder where that came from. Giving the

568
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: teacher an apple. Yeah, I don't know, but I'll bet

569
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: somebody out there will let us know. Um. All right,

570
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: So it's the mid nineteen fifties. They are loaded at

571
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: this point, loaded making tons of money. At this point

572
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: they had moved to um, a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia

573
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 1: with a thirty one bedroom estate on twelve acres. Rich,

574
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,240
Speaker 1: super rich people. Yes, good for them. They're in Bryn Marr,

575
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 1: which is like the wealthiest suburbs. I bet it still

576
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 1: is Bryn Mar. It doesn't sound like a place that's

577
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: going down the tubes, you know. So that Welsh brin

578
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:56,240
Speaker 1: looks pretty well. V R y n m A w R.

579
00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: It's definitely something uk. I'm gonna say Welsh. All right.

580
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 1: So Betty Um, things were going well with the business,

581
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 1: but within the family things weren't so great because Betty

582
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 1: found out that Rick James was stepping out. He was

583
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: a super freak and he was fooling around on her

584
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: quite a bit from the sounds of it, all right,

585
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: And she was like, okay, let's see, am I gonna

586
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: ditch this zero and go find a hero or what

587
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: am I gonna do? And she said, well, I have

588
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: six kids and I'm gonna stick with this dude for

589
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 1: the benefit of the kids. And she did. But apparently

590
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 1: things were never the same after that, and as a result,

591
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:41,160
Speaker 1: Richard James started going to church a lot more and

592
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 1: it really got to him. He really spoke to him

593
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 1: a lot going to church and became something of a

594
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: I guess I took it, although he didn't say he

595
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 1: became something of a born again. Yeah, that's exactly what

596
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: he became. Yeah. But he started out obviously as a

597
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: Catholic because he used to go to confession all the time,

598
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: which seems like, Okay, well that guy really bad about

599
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: things and he wanted to get stuff off of his chest.

600
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: Not so, says Betty, his ex wife. UM. Betty said

601
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: that he liked the attention that he would get from

602
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: confessing in confession. Yeah, like he he was sort of

603
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: a hot shot, and I think he liked to just,

604
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 1: um be revered maybe I don't know, or just for

605
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: people listen to him or who knows. That's just a

606
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: that's a weird thing. That's a weird little thing to do,

607
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: is go to confession to get attention. I thought it

608
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 1: was very strange. So, um, as he's going to confession,

609
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:36,160
Speaker 1: as he's going to church more and more and more,

610
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 1: he's um also his family, he's even though yeah he's

611
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: still at home and he's living with his family, he's

612
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 1: becoming isolated, not just from society at large, it's becoming

613
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: pretty isolated from his family as well. He got the

614
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: impression that they didn't go down the church path quite

615
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: the same degree he did, and so that was causing

616
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: him to feel more and more isolated, causing him to

617
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:01,479
Speaker 1: withdraw more and more. And um, there was at some

618
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: point a moment where he revealed that they didn't have

619
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: much money anymore, not only that they were in debt

620
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: until like seven figure debt, about a million dollars in debt,

621
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: because he started funneling all their millions to um dogmatic

622
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:26,320
Speaker 1: evangelical religious groups, donating all their money. Not only donating, yeah, exactly,

623
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,719
Speaker 1: he was like not paying creditors for the LLC that

624
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 1: owns slinky. He was diverting that revenue um from the

625
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:38,000
Speaker 1: business to religious groups that he was a member of.

626
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: And this article said straight up like if you bought

627
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: a slinky before nineteen sixty, your money went exactly there.

628
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: So it was kind of a big deal. This is

629
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: a big revelation that was you know, started in the

630
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: mid fifties and really things just got weird in the

631
00:34:55,520 --> 00:35:00,080
Speaker 1: James family from the mid fifties till nineteen sixty. Then

632
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: all of a sudden nineteen sixty, Richard James said, Um,

633
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,399
Speaker 1: have you guys ever heard of Bolivia? No, Well, it's

634
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:09,560
Speaker 1: too bad, because I just bought it one way ticket

635
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:13,319
Speaker 1: there and I'm going now, don't ask me why. I'm

636
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 1: just going to join a religious group in the wilds

637
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 1: of Bolivia. Yeah, And I've seen it characterize as a cult. Um,

638
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:23,879
Speaker 1: that is not quite the deal. Um. They were called

639
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: the Wye Cliffe Bible Translators and they're still around. But

640
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 1: it was basically their mission is to translate the Bible

641
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 1: into as many languages and getting into as many hands

642
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:37,439
Speaker 1: around the world as possible. And he felt that call

643
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 1: and straight up left. His family said smile you later,

644
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: and never got back in touch with him again. That

645
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: was February of nineteen sixty. And I think it was

646
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:51,959
Speaker 1: Betty who called it a cult, an evangelical Christian culture. Yeah,

647
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: which you know, she was upset, you know, and she

648
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 1: read up about him and said, this seems really weird

649
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: to me. But yeah, it wasn't quite a cult. But

650
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:02,200
Speaker 1: I get that she was scorned. So that was February

651
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:07,760
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty that UM, Richard leaves for Bolivia. And before

652
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: he left, he sat Betty down and said, as you know,

653
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: we're a million dollars in debt. I'm leaving. UM. You

654
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: have a choice here. We can either liquidate the company

655
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,120
Speaker 1: or you can take over your choice. I really don't care.

656
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: I'm going to Bolivia and I'm probably never coming back. Yeah.

657
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: I was kind of surprised that she got that opportunity

658
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 1: to decide at least what to do with her future. Yeah, Like,

659
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 1: I was glad to know that it was within her power, right. I.

660
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: It took me a couple of times of reading this

661
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 1: before I finally called onto that. At first I thought

662
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: he just laughed and she slid into that position. But yeah,

663
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: he gave her the choice, like, you can liquid eight

664
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 1: you're raising six kids. You'll probably make some money off

665
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:53,480
Speaker 1: of it after the creditors are paid off. So do

666
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: you want to do that? She said, you know what, No,

667
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try taking over the company. I'm going all

668
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: in on Linky. So she took over this company, Chuck,

669
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: that was in really dire straits. Yeah. I don't think

670
00:37:05,239 --> 00:37:08,879
Speaker 1: we even mentioned that Slinkys had started to wane in popularity,

671
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: so not only were they in debt, but towards the

672
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:13,800
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen fifties, everyone had like the slinky

673
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 1: craze its sort of passed. Yeah, so we said that

674
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: it sold a hundred million units in its first two years.

675
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: Since nineteen forty seven, they've sold three million total, so

676
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:28,680
Speaker 1: a full one third of all the slinky sold were

677
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: sold in the first two years. So yeah, it's star

678
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: crested and then started to fall. And so this lady

679
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: took over a company that was saddled with debt. Uh,

680
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: it's star product was not so much of a star

681
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 1: any longer. And um, she had six kids. She had

682
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: six kids, and she decided, rather than the liquid at

683
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: the company to say, no, I'm gonna see what I

684
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: can do with this. I'm gonna try to bring it back.

685
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 1: And she did. Yeah. I mean, reading this, she's truly

686
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 1: one of like the great women in American history. I

687
00:37:56,880 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: think she's she's definitely the hero of this story too,

688
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:03,360
Speaker 1: and revered by toy enthusiasts. But I don't think a

689
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:05,839
Speaker 1: lot of people even know her name. You know, it's

690
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: Betty James. So her first plan was, I have all

691
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: these creditors at least let me try and get this

692
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: deferred for now, and was somehow able to talk him

693
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: into deferring some of these payments, thank god. And Um.

694
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:25,720
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen sixty two, she hired three dudes from Columbia,

695
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 1: South Carolina. UM Johnny McCullough and Homer Fesperman wrote the

696
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:34,839
Speaker 1: music and Charles Weagley wrote the lyrics to what would

697
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: later become the longest running Dare I say most successful

698
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 1: commercial jingle of all time? Yes, I would say it's

699
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 1: possibly the most well known at least. So let's um,

700
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 1: let's play a little bit of that right now, everyone's

701
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: heard it, and here it is walks to say with

702
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,439
Speaker 1: advocate and makes the happiest that's been down to dawn,

703
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: that's gone to get over time. So I mean that

704
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 1: surely sounds familiar. Apparently there was a survey that was

705
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: conducted that found that eighty nine point eight percent of

706
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:21,400
Speaker 1: Americans either know what a slinky is or are familiar

707
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: with that jingle. So that's definitely it's got to be

708
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:27,799
Speaker 1: the most successful jingle of all time. Like, what else

709
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: is there? I can't think of anything else to put

710
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:34,000
Speaker 1: up against it? Have a cocamout smile whatever. I don't

711
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: even know how that goes. No, I think that was

712
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: just a slogan that wasn't a song. Oh yeah, no,

713
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: you're totally right, um, And you and I of course

714
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: all day have been singing it's log it's And I

715
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:47,839
Speaker 1: was like, that was obviously based on the slinky jingle.

716
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: And I went back and listen to it, was like, no,

717
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:53,320
Speaker 1: it is the slinky jingle. They just replaced the lyrics.

718
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:55,600
Speaker 1: Well I didn't get the joke. Well rend and stimpy

719
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 1: fans obviously, UH know what I just did. But if

720
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: you were like, I don't get it, what is log

721
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: have to do anything? Just look up log I guess

722
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: log jingle maybe. So, Um, this was a huge hit

723
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:08,840
Speaker 1: and it's funny. I was looking on um the internet

724
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:11,320
Speaker 1: to see if I could find anything on these guys

725
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: that wrote this thing, and um, Homer Fesperman has a

726
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 1: Facebook page. It's got to be him. Wow. Yeah, I

727
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: just clicked on it and the first thing I saw

728
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: was South Carolina Game Cox and I was like, well Columbia,

729
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: South Carolina, and it looks like he's making um, like

730
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:34,600
Speaker 1: a video scrapbooks for people. Well that's the Facebook page

731
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 1: was wide opened, and I wanted to get in touch

732
00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: and say are you Are you the Homer? Maybe we

733
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:41,479
Speaker 1: could just get a like a little quick interview or something,

734
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 1: but I didn't know. So look him up. Homer Fesperman,

735
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: he's on that, He's on the internet. Yeah, everybody friend him.

736
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 1: He'll be like, what is going on. I've been stamped

737
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: by the friendliest people on Facebook who are fans. Most

738
00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: of them. So Betty's got this jingle out there. This

739
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: was a master stroke. She also, um did some advertising.

740
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:10,279
Speaker 1: She really put a lot of money into advertising. But

741
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:12,279
Speaker 1: apparently I get the impression that she had like some

742
00:41:12,440 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: she cut some good deals. It wasn't she she went

743
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: hemorrhaging money on advertising. It was all very smart UM

744
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 1: and Slinky's stars started to rise once again. Well, she

745
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: moved the facility closer to Philadelphia to UM. I think

746
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:29,799
Speaker 1: it saved some money and allowed her to be with

747
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:32,759
Speaker 1: her kids more. UM. Although she did, you know, she

748
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:35,359
Speaker 1: had a caretaker. So the kids, I think they said,

749
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: like Sunday through Thursday, they had a lot of like

750
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 1: attention from nanny's and things. But I get the idea

751
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 1: she was a good mom. She was trying to do

752
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:45,280
Speaker 1: right by her family, you know right, and not only

753
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 1: her family this uh. This article on Priceonomics points out

754
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 1: that she was also helping out the families of I

755
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: think the hundred and twenty person team that she put together,

756
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:57,880
Speaker 1: and it says they were a close knit UM, which

757
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: definitely kind of jibes with the impression that I've gotten

758
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:05,839
Speaker 1: of her. UM. So she's she's got this jingle down

759
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:09,240
Speaker 1: Slinky starting to come back a little bit. And also

760
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: I think the tech that she's taking is it's a

761
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: it's an inexpensive toy that everybody can enjoy. Um, but

762
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: it's still I mean this, I don't know if all

763
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: of it would have been quite so possible had a

764
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: bit of serendipity not happened in the mid nineteen seventies.

765
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: Plastic plastic is that the thing. Yeah, there was a

766
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:31,320
Speaker 1: dude in Minnesota who was a plastic worker who figured

767
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 1: out basically a way to make a plastic slinky and

768
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:39,760
Speaker 1: went directly to Betty James and the um her company

769
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 1: and said, what do you think about this? She said,

770
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't steal ideas. I paid for

771
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: him him. How much do you want me to make

772
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,839
Speaker 1: the checkout for? Yeah, his name was Donald James Room,

773
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: and he was um of master Mark Plastics, and he

774
00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: was trying to make a garden hose that coiled like

775
00:42:56,600 --> 00:42:59,720
Speaker 1: they have now, like a plastic garden hose self coiled,

776
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: and um he failed. And his kids apparently were like,

777
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,919
Speaker 1: that looks like a slinky and he was like, oh well,

778
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: let me kids, I'm trying to concentrate trying to make

779
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:14,920
Speaker 1: a garden hose. So um, like you said, they they

780
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:17,360
Speaker 1: made a great deal and uh he he ended up

781
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: with tons of money too, and it made slinky super

782
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 1: popular again and it became the Slinky Rainbow, the Rainbow Slinky,

783
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:27,400
Speaker 1: And yeah, all of a sudden, not just original slinky.

784
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:29,839
Speaker 1: Now you had this what they call the a less

785
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:33,439
Speaker 1: tangle prone alternative to slinky, which is pretty bold because

786
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:37,280
Speaker 1: you're saying your original product is tangle prone. Still worked.

787
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: I think maybe they just knew that everybody knew that

788
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,799
Speaker 1: the slinky is tangle prone. And um, now they had

789
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,839
Speaker 1: a couple of products again that were really salable, and

790
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,319
Speaker 1: the the slinky star rose once more. Yeah, and like

791
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:52,319
Speaker 1: I said, the Toy Story, they did make a great

792
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: deal with Um, I guess it was Pixar. Yeah, and

793
00:43:56,280 --> 00:44:00,120
Speaker 1: sold a ton more Slinkies when Toy Story came out

794
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:03,280
Speaker 1: because of the dog right exactly. Uh. In in nineteen

795
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:07,759
Speaker 1: seventy four, Betty heard received news that her husband Rick

796
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 1: James had passed away. Who she hadn't he lived within

797
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: a few months of going to Bolivia, Like she hadn't

798
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: heard anything from him. That's just unbelievable. Um. But she

799
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: was doing fine and so she was probably like, thanks

800
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: for letting me know who cares who. It might have

801
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 1: been a little sad, I'm not gonna say that, but um.

802
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: She then sold to poof Products in for what she

803
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 1: called a quote boatload of money and good for her. Yeah,

804
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 1: and she lived on for another ten years, to the

805
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: right old age of ninety and I think before then

806
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:46,160
Speaker 1: she was recognized by the Toy Industry Association's Hall of Fame.

807
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:49,800
Speaker 1: I think Slinky was inducted in two thousand, so she

808
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: would have been alive for that. Pretty neat. Yeah, so

809
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 1: that's slinky. Yeah, you know what. The only other thing

810
00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:00,800
Speaker 1: I had was you can make the Star Wars blaster

811
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 1: sound with a slinky? Yeah you Um, well you can

812
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:06,760
Speaker 1: do with the microphone, or you can you put a cup,

813
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: a paper cup and the end of the slinky and

814
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 1: you hold that in the air just like the height

815
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: of your head, and the rest of the slinky falls

816
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:19,360
Speaker 1: to the ground and um then you just start. Uh. Basically,

817
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of noises you can make. But if

818
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 1: you want to make that sound, you can pick up

819
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:25,160
Speaker 1: the bottom off the floor and then just let it

820
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: drop on the floor and catch it real quick, and

821
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 1: it does that nice makes a neat sound. That's a

822
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: chuck tip right there. Yeah, you go to YouTube and

823
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:36,320
Speaker 1: look up Star Wars slinky sound and there's a couple

824
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: of dudes. Of course it'll show you just how to

825
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 1: do it. Well, that's one of the reasons too, why

826
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: Betty James chose the word slinky. It's not only because

827
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:47,719
Speaker 1: it was sleek and attractive, but also she thinks she

828
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:50,120
Speaker 1: thought that that was a good description of what the

829
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: sound it made as it went downstairs. She would have

830
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,799
Speaker 1: called it the blaster um. And there's one last thing

831
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: about slinky physics that are pretty amy easing. Let's hear it.

832
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 1: So if you if you dangle a slinky out to

833
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 1: where it's um completely stretched out as much as it's

834
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: going to without putting any pressure on, just letting the

835
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 1: force of gravity stretch out the slinky until it reaches

836
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 1: equally okay, um, but without this bottom touching the ground

837
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: out a fourth story window. Awesome. And you actually, if

838
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,320
Speaker 1: it's like eighty something feeding and have to be higher

839
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:24,000
Speaker 1: than that because it's slinky, would go right down to

840
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:26,399
Speaker 1: the ground. Man, Well, I mean you have to wait

841
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,240
Speaker 1: the bottom of it. Okay, So let's say four stories

842
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:32,879
Speaker 1: you're right then, um, and if you have it, you're

843
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:35,400
Speaker 1: holding it's steady, it's not moving. And then you release

844
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:38,359
Speaker 1: the top, the top will start to fall, but if

845
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 1: you pay close attention, the bottom stays where it is.

846
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:47,239
Speaker 1: Slinky's actually have this amazing property of managing to levitate

847
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 1: momentarily when the top is released, and some very smart

848
00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:56,320
Speaker 1: scientists studied this and they measured it and they found yes, indeed,

849
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: the top is moving and the bottom is remaining. It's

850
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: floating in air. And they figured out that the reason

851
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 1: why is because the tension is still acting against the

852
00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:09,440
Speaker 1: force of gravity, which has reached the equilibrium on the

853
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: lower part of the coil. And basically, the information that

854
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:15,320
Speaker 1: gravity is, that tension is released in gravity is about

855
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 1: to win hasn't reached that bottom part yet. Each coil

856
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: stacks upon the next one, and the next one and

857
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 1: the next one. So as that's happening up top down below,

858
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:27,760
Speaker 1: it's all hunky dory. Still it's like you're still holding

859
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:33,440
Speaker 1: onto me. It's literally floating in mid air. Wow. This

860
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:37,560
Speaker 1: it's it's ceaselessly amazing. Basically, the slinky well, those are

861
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:42,120
Speaker 1: two pretty boss slinky tricks, and what a great way

862
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:44,840
Speaker 1: to finish, I think. So if you want to know

863
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: more about slink Eyes, you can go to the podcast

864
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,520
Speaker 1: page on how Stuff you Should Know dot com and

865
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: check out our slinky episode and there should be links

866
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:57,759
Speaker 1: to this Prisonomics article and the YouTube Slinky Master all

867
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:01,279
Speaker 1: that jam. Just go check that out. And I didn't

868
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: say search bar, but you can imagine that I would

869
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: have under normal circumstances, which means it's time for a

870
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh sage from Portland's

871
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:14,319
Speaker 1: Remember Sage. Yeah, we do a little Q and A

872
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:16,320
Speaker 1: at the end of these live shows and where people

873
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 1: can get up and ask us questions and sages was great,

874
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:22,320
Speaker 1: so I told her to send it in. Um hey, guys,

875
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: just got back from your live show in Portland, and

876
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: Chuck said to ride in to my amazing fact. I

877
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:30,719
Speaker 1: was super nervous to go up there. We'll save you

878
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 1: did great. By the way, um my fact is that

879
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: you can actually tell how old a humpback whale is

880
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,760
Speaker 1: by looking at their ear wax because it forms rings

881
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,920
Speaker 1: like a tree. Oh yeah, I remember that humpback whales

882
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 1: migrate from Alaska to Yi each year for mating. The

883
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:48,240
Speaker 1: temperature shift of the ocean water causes the rings to form.

884
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:52,040
Speaker 1: Researchers will examine the ear wax of deceased whales there

885
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: were beach to find out their age and a lot

886
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 1: of other facts about them. Gross and fascinating, just like

887
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 1: the actual ear wax podcast. Guys, I found doubt this

888
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 1: while uh snorkeling on a cruise in Hawaii last week

889
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 1: for spring break. Thanks for everything, and thanks for the

890
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:10,879
Speaker 1: live show especially, it was totally awesome. With four exclamation

891
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:14,080
Speaker 1: points four that's pretty good rating, man alive. I had

892
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 1: so much fun, and I think I got my mom

893
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,640
Speaker 1: hooked on your show too, So thanks to Sage and

894
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 1: her mom for bringing her. And it was good to

895
00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 1: meet you. You did a great job. You didn't seem

896
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: nervous at all. No, totally larger in charge like you

897
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: do audience QA stuff every night. That's right. Thanks to everybody,

898
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:33,760
Speaker 1: importantly you guys. I think Chuck. Every single person um

899
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:38,080
Speaker 1: that we met before and after said welcome to Portland's

900
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:40,799
Speaker 1: like we were literally welcomed by every single person. Yeah,

901
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:45,240
Speaker 1: it was really neat that they're proud of their city. Um. Yes,

902
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us about

903
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 1: anything to do with whales or slinkies or live shows

904
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:52,799
Speaker 1: or any of that jazz. You can tweet to us

905
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:55,359
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can join us

906
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You

907
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff podcast asked that

908
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and, as always, join us

909
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 1: at our luxurious home on the web, Stuff you Should

910
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:13,239
Speaker 1: Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of

911
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:23,000
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com