December 2, 2019 • 54 mins
As the holiday season sets in, Robert and Joe open up Santa’s toy bag to consider the invention of various toys -- toys intended to teach, toys intended to puzzle and toys that leverage technology for good old fashioned childhood fun.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Santa Talos is invincible, bronze bodies coursing I Corps and
Christmas cheer. I saw three ships. He is here to
hurl presents and goodies, and you are three ships as
they come sailing on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day, On
Christmas Day in the morning, initiated Defense Vertical Ho Ho Ho.
(00:38):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. Can you know what we were doing right
before we started recording? We were listening to the Smashing
Pumpkins Christmas song. We were yeah, which wasn't bad I did.
I didn't dislike it, No, I actually kind of love it.
(01:01):
It's hilarious though, hearing Billy Corgan gushing breathlessly about how
there are toys for everyone on Christmas Day, Uh, which
is funny because like you can totally believe it, like
you know, he's in I guess I wouldn't normally think
of The Smashing Pumpkins as music for children, but like
the the obsession, Like even as an adult, I can
(01:21):
remember what it felt like to to believe that toys
were incoming. Like how exciting that was that you would
have new objects to play pretend with incoming presence hurtling
towards your ship as they're thrown by the Bronze Age
Automaton tell us, well, you know, I would say that
even as an adult, I still know what it's like
(01:43):
sometimes to want things. But there's nothing as an adult
that I feel that is equivalent to the way that
I wanted toys as a child. Oh yeah, I mean
I've I've spoken on the show before about how you know,
you would want a toy so badly they would dream
about it and see it in your bed with you
when you woke up in the morning. And uh yeah,
(02:04):
it's a it's a different realm of of of wants
and needs when you're that age. But toys are fascinating,
you know, they've they've been with us since very ancient times.
We have evidence of you know, toys dating back to
so you know, have things like the wonderful horse toys
of ancient Egypt. Uh. And they speak to the timeless
nature of play and the use of physical objects in
(02:26):
our play, and not only in our play, also in
our instruction. But they also fit very much into uh,
into the archaeological picture of ancient technology. The earliest physical
evidence of wheels I think in the Western hemisphere, definitely
in the America's is wheeled toys like you know, like
little statuettes of of horses and stuff found in ancient
(02:47):
Mesoamerica and South America. I believe that have wheels for
moving around on yeah, and then you know, also they
have often have dual purposes as well. I was when
I was in Hawaii most recently, I went to a
few different museums that were devoted to you know, you know,
oceanic technology and oceanic culture, and they pointed out that
(03:09):
model ships were essential to ship builders. You know, they
showed in miniature what the larger product would be and
helped you instruct others in how to build it. And
in the reverses, you've also kind of made a wonderful
toy in the process. But also I think toys are
we shouldn't think of them as frivolous as far as
inventions go, because play is not frivolous. The play that
(03:33):
children do shapes the I mean, it's like the most
important part of a child's education, I think, far more
even than the technical subjects they learn as they grow up.
I mean, you've got to be able to explore the
physical world and manipulate things. Uh, And and toys are
an important part of that. Yeah. In some cases toys
are are actually training you know, young bodies and young
(03:55):
minds for the manipulation of important tools. You know. Other times,
especially in modern age, they can be more specifically educational.
Though generally when you look at the history of toys,
that is is kind of like the history of how
we think about children, right. The idea that this is
a time to educate them when toys is more or
less uh, you know, a modern uh discovery if you will.
(04:18):
But but also you know, there are always to think
about toys, such as you know, thinking about them as products.
I was reading an article by Edward a Newmark titled
British Toys, which is just all about British toys. But
he points out that you know, these are unique as
items created for sale. Most toys are aimed at an
individual who will not be a repeat customer, not until
(04:40):
some twenty years later when they perhaps buy the same
toy again for their own children. Most toys have an
active life of a mere you know, a couple of years,
and the test of a great toy is whether it
will still be on the market a decade after its release.
And so many toys pass into history only to to
only possibly be resurrected twenty years light or on an
(05:00):
updraft collective nostalgia. And yet other toys have become true
classics and stand the test of time. They are the
sort of iconic toys that you'll see Santa Claus bringing
to children in um, you know, in cartoons and whatnot.
The kind of toys that even modern Santa Claus fictions
will will show Santa Claus making in his workshop. Yeah,
(05:25):
totally this year, in twenty nineteen, Santa will not be
bringing children POGs mostly, and will not be bringing children
tickle me elmos unless there's some strange revival. But lots
of kids all over the place are probably gonna be
getting toy trucks and dolls and blocks. I mean, there
are certain toy forms that stand the test of time. Yea,
(05:46):
the sort of generic classic toys that that still show
up under under the Christmas tree. There're still part of
our our lives. Um see how we've touched on some
of the roles that toys play, you know, they you know,
we sometimes they educate. Sometimes it's a it's about tool use.
Other times there you just see toys emerged sort of
peeling off from technological advancements of the day, and uh,
(06:08):
you know, and others are examples of specific designs intended
to teach. So history is full of philosophical toys, educational toys,
sports toys, war toys, adult toys, pointless toys, and more. Right,
and for that reason, we thought it might be fun
to do a couple of episodes here where we just
look at a series of different toys throughout history, where
(06:29):
they came from and what made them so popular. Right,
And this will be great because these are inventions. These uh,
these are things that people created and they're part of
our our technico history, but they're not necessarily items that
benefit from an entire episode's treatment. So let's let's throw
open uh Santa Talos's bag and see what kind of
(06:52):
toys we have to discuss here today. All right, First,
it looks like we've got before some kind of strange
lament configuration of box, except it's got a handle you
can crank. Ye, I don't know what what is this year?
It's a delightful little clockwork box. And and if I
open it it has such sights to show me. It is,
of course the Jack in the Box a classic toy. Again,
(07:13):
this is one of those that you see in Santa
Claus cartoons. You see Santa Claus making an old timey
Santa Claus movies, and and indeed it still shows up
under the tree, sometimes with a franchise character jumping out
of it instead of kind of a generic old timey clown. Okay,
so how does the Jack in the Box work for
those those youngsters who have never actually held one. Well,
(07:34):
one winds a crank on the side of the box
to power a music box inside, generally playing something like
pop goes the Weasel, you know something that's do and
it means the faster you crank at, the faster the
song goes. That's still under copyright. Are we gonna get
in trouble? Uh? Actually, that's fair, you see even if
it were. But at any rate, um, eventually it's going
(07:57):
to trigger the box to pop open, generally at the
end of the song. And when it pops open, a
coiled spring is going to launch a clown puppet into action.
And generally it is the equivalent of a small hand puppet,
very much in the style of Punch and Judy, uh,
the the old timey puppets. They have different names in
different languages, but this would be the street puppet show
(08:20):
to amuse children and adults, where Punch and Judy kind
of just beat the crap out of each other and
also encounter of various authority figures they encounter the devil. Um.
It's often been compared like Punch is basically scratching aging
Scratchy and pun. Punch is also kind of Homer Simpson.
It's more violent Homer Simpson. Um, maybe it's more of
(08:41):
a bender. I don't know. But but also in fact,
I've read that Punch in a Box was a predecessor
where you would actually just have Punch himself jump out
of the box once you're done cranking it. This, according
to Antonia Fraser, is a history of toys, but a
history of to is by Fraser also stresses that the
(09:02):
exact origins of the Jack in the box are unknown.
Now I'm trying to think about categorizing this toy, like
does it count as a toy? I mean, I guess it,
I guess it must. But like how does one play
with it? Right, Like, what is the act of playing?
Once the thing is already popped out once and you
(09:23):
know what's going to happen. Yeah, it's a it's a
clockwork amusement, right, It's it's not necessarily something that I
imagine factors into a lot of children's imagination play. It
is kind of a spectacle that is unleashed, that is surprising,
and it's also kind of a trick. Another toy item
that that is very similar is, of course the canister
(09:44):
of peanuts. That's what I was going to bring up. Yeah,
the spring snakes again, to go back to the Simpsons,
the can of beer nuts, all beer nuts. But then
of course you lift the lid and the snakes pop out,
and it's still hilarious. I just watched an episode of
Stephen Colbert where he goes to New Zealand and he
gives this to I think he gives it to Lord
the Musician, telling her that it is an American tradition
(10:06):
and she opens it and the snake scares her and
it's delightful. Part of the joke being that there are
no snakes in New Zealand. Oh, in New Zealand, Okay,
well I've been thinking Australia and I was like, what's
gonna happen The funnel web spider comes out. Now we'll
get a little into possible origins here, but basically this
is this has been with this for quite a while.
Um and improve materials and technology made the toy a
(10:27):
more widespread success in the eighteenth century, meaning that you know,
it wasn't just going to be the uh, you know,
something that would m please very wealthy children. It wasn't
like this, this clockwork philosophical toy that the children would
get to look at occasionally. But it does seem to
emerge from this world of of of clockwork ingenuity. Yes,
(10:47):
so we talked about this in our episode on the
Canard de Gierra Tour The Pooping Duck um or the
digesting Duck. I guess we put a lot of emphasis
on the poop for some reason. But yeah, it was
this era where there were people who were becoming increasingly
good at mechanical engineering and creating these clockwork devices that
had complex inner workings and thus could generate complex outward
(11:07):
behaviors based on things that were hidden. You know, you
couldn't see what was going on inside, but it was
doing complex stuff. And this was part of a history
of philosophical debate about whether, in fact living things were
somehow like this, we're living things somehow machines in which
all the individual parts could be identified and stuff, or
(11:29):
were there sort of indivisible and ineffable elements that made
actual life forms in nature different from the machines built
by the clockmakers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and part of
this whole effort, this whole movement was was the the
emergence of music boxes, which were tremendous uh success and
uh and still are are very popular. Also self playing instruments,
(11:50):
which we got into a little bit in our saxophone episode.
There are part of this this whole world as well.
But essentially you can also think of the jack in
the box as a is a music box that packs
some punch, sometimes literally. Uh. Now, in terms of where
it this actual technology that like, like where the first
(12:10):
jack in the box arises from, I've seen some i
would say shaky sources attributing the invention to a German
clockmaker of the sixteenth century named Klaus, just Klaus Klaus
or Clause perhaps, which of course has leaved a little
suspect because of Santa Claus. But I can't I cannot
find a firm source on this. Perhaps it's out there,
perhaps somebody can can bring it to my attention, but
(12:32):
in my research I cannot find a firm source saying yeah,
we think that a sixteenth century German clockmaker made the
first Jack in the box. In fact, as previously mentioned,
some sources state the origin is unknown. And I've noticed
several toy history books that seemingly don't explore the history
of the Jack in the Box at all. But in
looking at Gary Martin's excellent phrase finder website, which which
(12:55):
is is wonderful, I do recommend people check it out.
He has an entry on the back in the Box.
And I also was looking at a at a book
titled Gothic Effigy by Saved Unwin Jones, and uh, and
something becomes increasingly clear. The toy seems to have been
named after some turn of phrase that pre existed it.
(13:16):
So jack in the box you might have what called
somebody a jack in the box before there was a
Jack in the box toy exactly. Martin points to usages
of the phrase jack in the box and sometimes lack
in the box from the sixteenth century. That suggests that
Jack in the box or lack in the box was
sort of like pig in the poke. Now, if you're
(13:36):
not familiar with that, pig in the poke means like
a pig in a bag, and the idea is don't
buy a pig in the bag. You know, don't buy
a pig site unseen, because you don't know what you'll get,
something might be wrong with it. Yeah, this seems to
have negative implications for the Jack in the Box restaurant. Yeah.
I don't know if they really did, you know, like
a full history. They just thought about the pleasant surprise,
(13:59):
I guess the box. But yeah, so the ideas that
Jack in the box would would mean, you know, something
unpleasant that was purchased site unseen, or indeed, it might
mean the swindler who sells boxes they either don't contain
what they're supposed to contain or contain nothing at all.
And that seems to play pretty well with the basic
experience of the Jack in the box, right. The box
(14:19):
contains a fright rather than any kind of material goods.
It's and and again it's not even something you can
play with inside. It's just a puppet that jumps out
at you and startles you, and you know it is
again not unlike its toy, Ken the snake in the
canister of nuts. Now, by asking that question earlier though
about whether it's a toy, I didn't mean to undermine
its role. I guess I was just asking, like, what
(14:41):
actually constitutes a toy. I think it's clear that these
the Jack in the boxes as a toy or whatever
you want to call it, are popular with children, have
been for a long time, and they do even after
they've been surprised once repeat the experience. There's something intellectually
interesting going on there, developmentally interesting that they've already had
it pop out once, they're not going to be surprised,
(15:03):
but they'll still keep playing with it. They'll crank the
handle again and like manipulate the speed of playback and stuff. Yeah.
And let's face it, if you came into work one
day and there was a Jack in the Box closed
on your desk, what would you do. You'd have to
crank it and see what pops out? Right, Yeah, So
it does continue to have liked. Any anybody that's new
(15:24):
to the Jack in the Box will have to invoke
the experience and then they might invoke it again. Now,
there is another potential origin story that sometimes makes the
rounds um and that is the tale of a thirteenth
century Norfolk Christian saint like figure, not an actual saint,
but an individual by the name of Sir John Shorn,
(15:45):
who is said to have captured the devil in a
boot um and he was also said to be blessed
in the healing of gout. And of course this is
where it gets kind of complicated, right, because the um gout,
of course, is an inflammatory arthritis that might well be
described as a devil in the boot and has been illustrated,
you know, various times through history as a monster or
(16:06):
devil that choose on a person's foot. The idea that
the gout can affect multiple parts of the body, but
it often manifests in like somebody's big toe, right, yeah,
but you could also get it in your elbow or whatever. Right,
And then of course there's like pseudo gout as well,
which is which is different. But but classic gout has
long been been with with humans and uh, and so
(16:27):
that's kind of complicated because on one hand, he this
particular individual was sometimes shown as having a boot with
the devil peeking out of it. And so the argument
is like, this is kind of the basis for the
box that contains uh a what might have actually been
a devil in some cases, but then becomes a clown
or other figures as the you know, as it is
(16:47):
adapted more for children. But I should point out that Martin,
in looking at this, thinks that the historical historical connective
tissue between Shorn and the Jack in the Box is
pretty much non existent, so there's there's not a lot
to actually go on there. But he he does point
to a firework of the seventeen hundreds known as Lack
in the Box. And uh, and this was mentioned in
(17:10):
John Babington's Pyrotechnia, which was published in Sive And and
this this, uh, this might well be be where the
name comes from as well. So would this be a
firework that pops out of a box in some way
or at least is a it is a I get
the the idea that maybe it had some sort of box,
or maybe it was just the idea that it was
(17:30):
a surprise that it it pops at all. And uh
and therefore, you know, this could be something they got
the name for this firework from the pre existing phrase,
and then both of these helped to inform the naming
of this strange box that has a puppet that jumps
out of it, because again it is a shock and
it is also literally a lack in the box, right,
(17:51):
Jack in the box? Is a jack in the box
supposed to be scary? Is it supposed to kind of
startle the child? I think it is supposed to art
all the child now and now is it scary as
well as startling? I think that depends on what jumps out.
Is it a clown which is delightful? Yes, clowns are delightable.
Clowns are for children. It's only adults by and large
(18:13):
who think the clowns are scary. But if it's a devil,
then I think you could definitely make the argument that
isn't it is intended to frighten the child or the
or humorously frightened the adult that opens it. Now and
looking at that book gothic effigy by Jones, Jones, however,
contends that the devil is still present in the Jack
in the box as quote horned jack bursting from his
(18:37):
side of confinement unquote is the key idea toned down
to a clown in the toy, and this would Their
argument here is that this UH would have emerged from
Gothic fascination with devils. Ornamental boxes UH, such as one
that puts out was in Sheridan LeFanu's Wilder's hand In
from eighteen sixty four, and he ties all of this
(18:59):
in with the the ongoing influence of Gothic traditions on
culture and children's costumes, toys, books, and more. Okay, so
some intentional scary elements here or associate or at least yes, yeah,
that's that's the argument. But then again, those scary elements
may have been removed to make it just merely startling
to the child. But it is, I think, without a doubt,
(19:22):
it is meant to be a startling toy. It is
meant to be something you give to a small child
and watch their faces. They are shocked, surprised, and then
hopefully they will laugh because of course it was it
was startling, But then there is no actual threat present.
You know, my thinking has developed over the past few
minutes when asking why is it that you see a
(19:43):
child playing with the jack in the box repeatedly cranking
it over and over and having the thing pop out
even after they've already done it, you know, once or twice,
they know what's going to happen. I wonder if these
are sort of like experiments with object permanence, much the
same way the game of he Kaboo plays a developmental
role with children, like establishing that an object or a
(20:05):
person can be hidden but will emerge again when the
barrier division is removed. That's a good point. Another thing
that I'm thinking about is that the second time you
do it, especially, the child is probably more aware that
they have control over when the startling moment occurs. They
know it's going to occur at the end of that song,
(20:25):
for instance, and there's probably something empowering there and realizing
that they are the master of the fright they're about
to receive exactly, and I would see that. I would
say that really comes through in the way that you
see children manipulate the speed of the crank when they
do it, like they will often either speed way up
or slow way down right towards the end of the song,
(20:45):
as the song lets you know how much more time
is left before the thing emerges, Like rushing towards the
thrill and then maybe backing off a little bit. Uh, yeah,
it's interesting. It makes me kind of want to pick
up a Jack in the box. We don't. I don't
think we have one in an household right now anyway,
but I almost I want to find like a good
one one with one with a devil inside, or a
(21:06):
cramp us that would be nice, or a quartet of cinemabites.
Sure no, surely somebody has made a lament configuration Jack
in the box that would be That's perfect. It's so perfect,
it has to have been done already. Right if you haven't,
If that doesn't exist, whoever's got the right at c
shop out there, you get on it. Yes, yeah, I
know there have been people have adapted Rubik's cubes into
(21:26):
the limit configuration, but Jack in the Box is just
a must have. All right, I think maybe we should
take a quick break and the when we come back
we can discuss the flying disc. All right, we're back.
What is this marvelous flying disc that that it now
emerges from Santa Talos's sack? Well, of course it is
(21:48):
to use the semi branded term the frisbee. Robert, were
you a frisbee kid? When you were a kid, I
mean we always had frisbees. You know, I never got
into like frisbee golf or anything like that, but if
a frisbee as a must have and still do today,
Like we I threw frisbee or on a Robie maybe
some variation on the frisbee design with my son, like
literally just this weekend. So yeah, the I feel like
(22:11):
the family the family tossing cliche is like the father
and the son throwing the baseball right with the baseball gloves.
I don't think that happens all that much except among
like dedicated people who are actually into baseball. Well, I'm
not into baseball, and I've done it because it's such
a cliche. I'm like, you feel that your resistible tug
(22:32):
off it, uh, and you and I and so we
ended up getting the baseball glove the softball and we
threw it back and forth, and I'm like, yes, I
feel like a Norman Rockwell painting. This is great. You know,
we don't. We've only done it, like, you know, two
or three times, but I'm still it was it was
neat to be a part of that Norman Rockwell experience.
Well maybe my impression is mistaken, but I generally think
(22:53):
that that you've got this cliche of people throwing the baseball,
but what what is actually way more common is throwing
the frisbee. The frisbee, in my opinion, is far more fun, yes,
and less likely to break a window, though I remember
from my childhood that somehow I always ended up getting
hit in the mouth with a frisbee. But that's great
that you're throwing a frisbee instead of a baseball. There
because the frisbee is nice and lightweight and its modern
(23:15):
plastic form. So the frisbee is a toy that has
both ancient and uniquely twentieth century origins. As for the
ancient origins, we know that humans have been throwing circular
disc shaped objects for sport for thousands of years, at
least at least as far back as the eighth century BC.
For instance, we know that the discus throw was one
(23:38):
of the five sports of the ancient Greek pentathlon, which
consisted of a foot race, a javelin throw, a discus throw,
a long jump, and finally wrestling. And I think training
for this multi event competition held some association with military training.
You can see how there would be some overlap with
the skills on display there, but the discus competition seemed
(24:00):
to involve athletes throwing a heavy, circular disc, not in
the way we generally throw a frisbee today with a
flick of the arm, but by flinging it through a
whole body twisting or spinning motion where you would spin
the body around or twist the body around, and then
transfer the angular momentum of the spinning body into a
(24:21):
throw when you release the disk, and so physically the
discus throw sort of turns the body into a sling,
you know, like the weapon traditionally associated with shepherds, where
you would generally generate momentum and a rock or something
by spinning it around in a circle. You do this
with your whole body for the discus. There are mentions
of disc throwing events in Homer's Iliad. Sometimes it's used
(24:43):
as a measure of distance, so like you could just
say that something was as far away as a young
man can fling a discus. That's in there, which is
a great unit of measure. Uh. There also appears to
be a reference to some form of discus throwing as
one of the funeral games after the death of Patroclus.
It's a Patroclus burns on the funeral Pyre, and then
they have games in his honor. Uh, And so I
(25:06):
wanted to read this section. This is in the Samuel
Butler translation, though in the translation I'm about to read
from the thing being thrown is not called a frisbee
or a discus. It's called a quoit, which can mean
like a disc, but can also I think mean a
ring rather than a solid disc. But anyway, the account
goes like this. Then uprose the two mighty men, Polypoides
and Leontius, with Ajax, son of Telemon, and noble Epius.
(25:30):
They stood up one after another, and Epius took the quoit,
whirled it, and flung it from him, which set all
the Achaeans laughing after him, through Leontius of the race
of mars A jax son of Teleman through third, and
sent the quite beyond any mark that had been made yet.
But when mighty Polypodies took the quoit, he hurled it
as though it had been a stockman stick, which he
(25:52):
sends flying among his cattle when he's driving them. So
far did his throwout distance those of the others. Again,
with point of comparison that it's not very helpful to me.
I don't know what you do with the stockman stick,
but apparently that means you could throw it really far.
And then of course it shows up again in the
works of Homer, like in the Odyssey, there's a section
where Odysseus embarrasses some dudes, I think the Phaeacians, by
(26:14):
throwing a huge discus farther than any of them can.
Uh so. The discus throw is also depicted in a
famous bronze sculpture from classical Grease, the disco Bolus, which
just means disc thrower by the sculptor my Run of
luther Ae and the The original work is lost, but
there are a ton of copies from the Roman period,
(26:34):
and it's the famous post. You've probably seen it depicted
somewhere where the discus thrower is sort of leaned over
with the body twisted with the arm out, and of
course most people probably know. The discus throw is also
part of the modern Olympic Games, and they use sort
of a lens shaped disc of about two kilograms or
about four point four pounds for the men's competition and
(26:55):
a discus of about one kilogram or two point two
pounds for the women's event. Know, when I was thinking
about the Olympics, I started thinking like, well, what is
it that makes the discus special as a thing to throw?
Like there are other types of throwing competitions, I mean,
just competitions of people seeing how far they could throw
a rock or a javelin or something. Go way back
(27:16):
into history, there's the shot put event where you're just
throwing a heavy ball. What is it that makes the
discus special as a thrown object? And it turns out
that the discus actually does have a lot of very
interesting unique properties that they're based on its shape. So
to get into those from moment, I was reading an
article by the North Carolina State Professor of Mechanical and
(27:36):
Aerospace Engineering Larry Silverberg, talking about the physics of the
Olympic discus throw event, and he mentions that a lot
of the skill in the discus throw is actually controlling
the release of the discus. You know, it's not it's
not all in just like how hard you can whirl
your body, how strong you are. It's very tightly controlling
(27:56):
how the disc is oriented and what what happened is
when it leaves your hand. And I would say the
same thing is actually very true of throwing a frisbee.
I don't know how experienced you are with trying to
like aim a frisbee super carefully or get it to
sail as far as possible, But like I think a
lot of the skill actually comes down to what's happening
right when you release it from your fingers. Yeah, I
(28:19):
feel like, you know, I'm not one that is usually
especially skilled at throwing things, but I feel like there
is there's something about throwing, you know, a frisbee or
frisbee like toy that feels very intuitive. You know. I again,
I haven't played frisbee golf and try like that level
of accuracy, but I find that when I throw a
frisbee to someone, I have a much better ability to
(28:42):
actually get it get it to them. You know what
I'm saying. Well, yeah, I know exactly what you mean
this intuitive property, which is funny because at the same time,
I think, more so than like a javelin or a
baseball or a shot put, the discuss is it's fickle.
It's dependent on air and wind conditions. You know that
they can be the discus or the frisbee can be
(29:05):
unpredictable in how it travels in ways that these other
objects are not, even though in some ways it feels
very gentle and easy and intuitive to throw it somewhere, right,
Like if you're just throwing the shock put or or
a larger rock, you probably don't have to account for
wind all that much. Yeah, I mean maybe a little bit,
but not nearly to the extent that you would with
a flat object like a discus or a frisbee. Uh.
(29:28):
And silver Bird writes that it's really important to control
the angle of release, like you want to get it
at the perfect angle to make it travel the farthest.
He identifies a range between thirty seven and forty two
degrees as optimal. And just think about like trying to
find tune the release of a discus while you're whirling
(29:48):
your whole body around to get it to an like
a slice of the angle that's small. And then of
course you have to, as we were saying, account for wind,
like if the head wind is blowing in your face,
you want throw it probably flatter, which makes sense, right,
because you don't want the headwinds blowing the like catching
under it and blowing it back towards you. You want
to maximize the angle at which it gets lift but
(30:11):
doesn't get blown back in the opposite direction. I was
also reading a good twelve article in re Reuters by
Sharon Begley which summarizes some of the basic aerodynamics uh
and some recent sports biomechanics research about the discus event.
So a few key takeaways. Because of its shape, throwing
a discus is different from throwing a round object like
a baseball or throwing a javelin. A discus is at
(30:33):
its core a wing. It's an aerofoil it as it travels,
it stays aloft by generating lift, similar to how the
wings of an airplane generate lift to keep the plane
in the air. And like with airplane wings, the physical
design of the discus matters. A flatter design with more
surface area generates more lift. But once you've already picked
(30:55):
out your discus, you know you can't like bring a
huge different shape discus to the Olympic event. As you know,
once you've got the physical dimensions of the discus lockdown,
in order to generate maximum lift, you need to mess
with a couple more main variables. One is that you
want to maintain a high speed of the throw, and
this is also the same way that an airplane needs
(31:16):
horizontal speed to maintain lift via its wings. Right. If
an airplane slows down, it will lose altitude, right because
it can't generate as much lift under the wings. A
discus needs to maintain horizontal speed to maintain that lift
under its body as it slows down due to drag.
As it travels through the air, the lift it generates
will decrease and it will fall. But then also again
(31:39):
what's super important is getting just the right angle. You
want the front edge of the discus raised slightly higher
than its back edge to generate the most lift, and
you also want to keep the disc rotating, of course,
to stabilize the angle. The faster the discus is spinning,
the flatter and more stable its angle will stay. And
you might think about why that be, But I bet
(32:01):
a lot of people have done the physics experiment in
like a high school physics class, where you hold a
spinning bicycle wheel by a little handle on its hub,
and then you try to rotate the wheel against its
plane of against the plane on which it's spinning, you know,
trying to twist your wrist or something. There's a huge
amount of resistance it's like really hard to turn it
(32:22):
because rapidly spinning objects resist changes to the plane of
their rotation, like the angular momentum of the spinning wants
to keep it flat. It's interesting to apply that to
some of like the fictional spinning weapons you see sometimes
utilized in films on things specifically One of the Three
Storms and Big Trouble and Little China, as these spinning
(32:44):
gadgets that are like spinning blades, and granted that's a
blender hands. Yeah, granted that's a sorcerer, so you know,
we can we can give them a little credit. But
in reality, like that would be difficult to actually use
a weapon like that, right because it's spinning. Oh yeah, yeah, Jine.
If the spinning very fast, you would get some resistance
to trying to move your hands around. Likewise, I think
(33:05):
other examples here you can see a robot using one
like Maximilian in the Black Hole. But again, high powered robot.
We can cut it some swack, I guess. Yeah. So,
so you want the right angle, you want high speed,
you want rapid spinning to stabilize the angle. And also
in this article, there's a counterintuitive finding that's conveyed by
somebody named Mont Hubbard who's a director of the Sports
(33:28):
Biomechanics Lab at the University of California, Davis. And basically
what this person says is that you can actually get
the farthest possible throw by throwing into a slight headwind.
That seems you wouldn't think that, but this is because
you can maximize the relative wind speed and generate more
lift that way, which means more lift means it stays
(33:48):
higher in the air longer and travels farther. Now it's
clear that the Olympic discus is a competition instrument. It's
made for solo distance throwing and of course made for
humiliating your inferiors in ancient Caspotamia. So it's rather different
from the frisbees or throwing discs that that kids toss
around for fun. The East tendu in in the twentieth
(34:09):
century to be made of plastic. They're much lighter. They're
designed to glide softly and generate tons of lift for
long distance travel with minimal throwing force. You don't have
to be really strong or spin your whole body around
and generate the angular momentum to throw a frisbee right
and then it'll it'll generally bounce off of a window
instead of going through it. That sort of thing. Yeah,
(34:29):
or you know, as often happened hitting me in the mouth.
I mean, if you can imagine getting hit in the
mouth with a four and a half pound discus, that's
not good. So where did the frisbee come from? This
different variation on the model? Uh? For that, we need
to meet a dude named Walter Frederick Morrison, known as Fred,
and I'm gonna use as a few sources here. One,
uh an obituary for for Morrison from twenty in the
(34:52):
l A Times by Dennis McClellan, UM, an article I
found in Time by Jennifer Latson, and also a summary
of his life I found by somebody named Phil Kennedy
who was a co author with Fred Morrison of an
autobiographical account of the creation of the frisbee. But so.
Fred Morrison was born in the town of Richfield, Utah,
on January twenty third, nineteen twenty. At the age of eleven,
(35:14):
his father, who was an optometrist, moved his practice and
thus the whole family, to California. As an adult, Morrison
worked as a carpenter and later as a building inspector
in the l A area. But in nineteen thirty seven,
when Fred Morrison was around the age of seventeen, he
and his girlfriend Lucille, who would later become his wife,
were at a Thanksgiving celebration at the house of Lucille's uncle.
(35:38):
And at this party, guests just started throwing a popcorn
can lid around, uh, tossing it to each other in
the backyard, which somehow sounds like either a very awesome
party or a horrible party, Like how do you end
up that way? You're either having a really good time
or things are going terribly just desperately searching for fun.
Either way, it fits perfectly with the in the spirit
(36:00):
of Thanksgiving. But but I I guess I'm imagining like
one of those big tins of popcorn like we still
have today, and you know, sometimes there's different flavors of popcorn.
You pull the lid off of it, sucker, and yeah,
it's kind of a perfect frisbee. And apparently Fred and
Lucille had so much fun they kept throwing the popcorn
lit around for the following weeks. They played with it
so much that it suffered a lot of wear and
(36:21):
tear and eventually got some kind of sharp edges and
became dangerous, so they retired the popcorn can lid. They
stole a cake pan from Fred's mother's kitchen and started
throwing that around instead, and it looks like this started
a cake pan tossing tradition. About a year later, Fred
and Lucille took the cake pan to the beach in
Santa Monica, where they were just tossing it for fun.
(36:44):
But apparently on this beach trip, somebody else thought that
what they were doing looks like fun and came up
to them and offered to pay a quarter for the
cake pan so they could have it, take it and
toss it with their friends. And Fred Morrison, i think,
speaking to the Virginia Pilot said quote that got the
wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for
five cents, and if people on the beach were willing
(37:06):
to pay a quarter for it, well, there was a
business ding ding dang flipping the cake pans. So first
they just straight up bought cheap cake pans from the
store took him out to the beach to flip for
a profit. So I guess there's really originally no value
add here, right, except perhaps for the insight that it
might be fun to throw a cake pan. Uh and
maybe you know, that might not have occurred to people otherwise,
(37:28):
so maybe there is an added value there. Yeah. I
mean it's kind of like selling overpriced umbrellas on a
rainy day for people who forgot their umbrella. It's it's
very convenient, and yes you get to overcharge them, right
or you know, selling bottles of water on a hot
parking lot or something. You know, people just didn't think
to bring their own. Uh So Fred and his father
(37:49):
apparently considered designing a custom metal disc for throwing, but
this never came to fruition and they kept selling cake
pans at the beach until Fred Morrison went away to
serve in the Army Air Corps or during the during
World War Two in the European Theater, where he flew
bomber missions over Italy. He was ultimately captured and held
as a prisoner of war, and after being freed and
(38:10):
returning home, Morrison came up with a design for a
new kind of throwing disc, which he called the Whirlow Way.
And I think this was named after some kind of
racing horse. He was a fan of horses the whirlow way.
That's what the Freeman used to overturn the rule of
ar harconins the yeah yeah, the wording way. So I
(38:30):
must assume Fred Morrison consumes some spice and saw over
the sands of time. Yeah. But so, Over the next
few years, together with a partner named Warren Franscioni, Morrison
worked on a number of different designs and prototypes for
disks made out of that most wonderful of twentieth century
consumer materials, plastic. So now instead of metal discs, you've
(38:53):
got plastic discs. And because of the sudden UFO craze
that gripped America beginning in nineteen forty seven, they called
their product the Flying Saucer. Apparently Morrison was a great salesman,
and he would attract crowds during flying saucer demonstrations at
fair grounds, like demonstrating how far the disc would glide
with a gentle toss. Apparently they would make jokes about
(39:16):
you know, uh, you know, how could it really travel
so far? Are there hidden wires? Can you see the
hidden wires? And they were able to sell some of
the toys, but not enough to justify the business, and
Morrison and Fransky only parted ways around nineteen fifty. Well,
you know, I'm I'm realizing just how ingenious this product
is now that I think about my own usages of
(39:37):
the frisbee, because there are other products and other toys
that are very much in line with that. Uh, you
know those stats we gave earlier about you know, one
to two years of play life and then it's shelved
and then if you don't sell another one to that
individual until they're grown up. But the frisbee can be
used by children and adults alike. And even though frisbee
is probably pretty durable, you can break a frisbee, and
(39:58):
more to the point, you can land of frisbee in
a place from which you cannot retrieve it. Yes, and
then what do you have to do either way? You
have to buy any frisbee? Right, Well, the the unpredictability
of frisbee is the way they can get caught on
a breeze or sail off into the neighbor's yard. That
sort of makes you, yeah, it makes it more likely
that you'll end up having to buy a new one,
right And then, of course that's not even getting into
(40:18):
the fact that you can print your company's logo on
it and hand it out. So good. I just wonder
how many like Dow Chemical Frisbees and Raytheon Frisbees are
out there. But so around nineteen fifty four, Fred Morrison
wanted to get back into the game. He was interested
in giving the flying saucer another try, So the following
year Morrison had a new model that he renamed the
(40:41):
Pluto Platter, again going with the space theme. I think
he was like, Pluto, that's the most recently discovered planet.
Let's name the name the toy after it. Uh And
you can see a patent for Morrison's model that you
can actually look up from I think filed in nineteen
fifty seven, awarded in nineteen fifty eight. But it looks
a lot like a frisbee you would see today. It's
(41:01):
sort of a plastic disc with a lip that curves under.
But in nineteen fifty seven Morrison struck gold because that
was the year he sold the rights to the Pluto
Platter to a toy company called Wammo. Wammo Inc. And
Wammo from this point on took care of the manufacturing
and sales. I think they also helped him secure his patent,
(41:22):
and then Morrison collected royalties on his design. But of
course we don't call these things pluto platters today, So
so what happened already? In nineteen fifty seven, the toy
had come to be known as a Frisbee, a name
which Morrison apparently originally hated, but he warmed two over
time as he collected his millions. Uh so where did
the name come from? Well, it turns out Fred and
(41:44):
Lucille were not the only kids throwing baking pans at
each other. In eighteen seventy one, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a
guy named William Frisbee spelled f r I s b
i E, not b E open the Frisbee Pie comp Any,
which amazingly sold pies, and apparently it was something of
a local tradition for students at various East Coast universities
(42:08):
like Yale, which is also in Connecticut, to throw Frisbee
pie tins at each other and yell. Frisbee and the
Wammo Company learned about this tradition and named their new
acquisition after it. So that's where the name comes from.
It's a pie company. Uh and uh. And once Frisbee
the frisbee belonged to Wammo, it underwent some more design improvements. Crucially,
(42:30):
in nineteen sixty four, a WAMMO employee named ed Headrick
added a series of ridges or grooves on the surface
that helped the thrower grip the plastic and also increase
the weight of the rim to help the frisbee fly
with greater stability. And this is actually a thing in
the design of of discus or frisbee. If you distribute
more of the weight to the outer edges, that helps
(42:52):
it spin faster, have more angular momentum in spinning, which
again is good for helping it maintain a stable angle.
And that that Time article I mentioned earlier includes an
amazing quote from an earlier Time article, one from nineteen
seventy two about frisbee groupies of the period a k a. Frupies.
(43:12):
And I've got no words for this. It goes quote.
Dr stancl Johnson, a long haired Santa Monica psychiatrist who
serves as Frisbee's official historian, has an apparently sober explanation
for the discs popularity they are. He says, quote the
perfect marriage between man's greatest tool his hand and his
greatest dream to fly. That seems like he's kind of
(43:36):
reaching a bit there. But then again, I don't know
waxing poetic a little bit about the frisbee, but it's
possible we could catch ourselves saying something like that. So,
of course, now we know that frisbee is not just
a toy to toss with your family and your friends.
But there's all this, you know, frisbee sports of a
million different kinds. There's ultimate frisbee. There's frisbee golf, which,
(43:58):
uh that I admit that I've played these sports and
actually kind of enjoyed them. And yeah, I mean I
frisbee golf looks fun. Is there frisbee sports stigma? I
sent stigma? I don't know why. Um, I mean, I
think it's just they're varying individuals who engage in frisbee golf,
and some are undoubtedly going to be um, you know, miscreants, sure,
(44:20):
just but others are going to be you know, fine
frisbee enthusiasts. Well, I confess I've played frisbee golf and
I liked it. All right, We're gonna take another break.
When we come back, we will reach once more into
the gift bag, all right, we're back. I'm gonna reach
(44:40):
into the bag once more and Wammo, here's another one.
This is a hula hoop. You mean the Wammo toy company. Yes, yeah, okay, yeah,
because they're gonna factor into this invention as well. So
this is a really fun toy to discuss. Actually wrote
an entire how stuff Works article about this back in
the day, how hula hoops work. And I'm not going
(45:00):
to blow through all the info in that article because
in that I got to get into a lot of
fun things like performance art with barbed wire hula hoops
and so yeah, flaming hula hoops. The role of who
it was it was it was really cool, and it
was one of those where it was assigned to me
and I kind of groaned a little at first, and
then by the end of it in the but I
was like, oh, yeah, hula hoops are amazing. It also
(45:23):
gets into the physics far more than I'm not really
gonna get into the physics here today, but I'm gonna
touch on the key history. So hoop toys themselves are
quite ancient, uh, just lost in the midst of history.
Because all you need are some dried vines uh, in
the ability to sort of you know, loop them together
and to make a loop. And as such, you know,
(45:44):
the ancient Egyptians had hoop toys. Now I understand that
a lot of the ancient hoop toys were used for
for vertical rolling. Yes, yeah, and then granted we still
do that today. One of my favorite things to do
with the hula hoop is to do the trick. I
don't know if you know that it has a name
where you take it and you fling it out vertically
but in a way so that it will be rolling
(46:05):
back to you. Yeah, you put backspin on it, tossed
it with backspin and it rolls too. I love that too. Yeah,
it's a fabulous trick. I feel like I'm I'm performing
magic every time I do it, and I'm a little
shocked that everyone around me isn't isn't commenting on how
marvelous this trick is. But of course we all know it.
We all we all know the trick. And then of
course they're simply too. You know the act of rolling
(46:25):
a hoop around, usually using a stick to propel it,
which I often think is being kind of the kind
of thing you would see in a film or a
TV show like you would see Opie Taylor or Tom
Sawyer doing this. Yeah, kind of just an old timey,
simple toy, but something that would be fun to do.
And so hoop rolling and hoop games were popular amid
(46:48):
the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans. The hoop is
also a potent as a physical symbol representing cyclical, yawnick
and cosmic concepts. The hero Ganymede is often depicted with
a hoop, and in North America, the Taos Peblo people
of what is now New Mexico used hoops and sacred
(47:08):
dances and rituals to represent, you know, the cilical nature
of life. Various cultures, including the ancient British and the
Cahokia people of the Mississippi River Valley. These are the
mound builders who reached their peak in the thirteenth century
and declined before the coming of Europeans. They engaged in
what we often referred to as kill the hoop games.
(47:32):
This is kind of a combination of two different throwing acts.
Someone will roll a hoop and then someone will throw
a spear or some other object, but often it's a
spear through the hoop. So it's you know, you're gonna
hit an artificial moving target with your weapon or thrown object.
Kind of skei shooting. Yeah, yeah, kind of like an
early version of ski at a skeat shooting. But most
(47:54):
agree that in playing with hoops like this, the discovery
of what we think of as as hula hooping was
sure early experimented with. So if you have children, even
ancient children, uh, in any of these cultures we've discussed
messing around with hoops, killing the afternoon with a hoop,
undoubtedly somebody is going to realize that you can put
it on your arm and spin it around, you can
(48:15):
put it on your neck and spin it around, and
you can put it on your waist and spinning around.
It's just how we we were curious creatures and in
our tool use, we're going to get there. Uh, We're
going to spin that hoop around our body at some point.
And we also know that from just from military history,
the concept of a hoop weapon in the form of
the Chockram weapon of India, which we have an older
(48:37):
episode of stuff to blow your mind about. Uh, you
know this is something that is sometimes spun around a
finger before launching. Kind of like a sharp roby toy,
but used as a shock weapon on the front lines.
And I believe it still remains a a ritual weapon,
like a holy item for the sikhs Uh. You'll sometimes
(48:58):
see it presented as such. But but that in that
we see like the idea of spinning a hoop type
item around your body was already known now. According to
Charles Penalates extraordinary origins of everyday things, there was a
medieval hoop craze, apparently during the fifteen hundreds, an Edwardian
craze that resulted in the reports of dislocated backs and
(49:19):
heart failure, and then hula itself for hula hoop, because
again these were not called hula hoops. Hula enters the
Western world in the seventeen hundreds with the knowledge of
Polynesian cultures. Hoop dancing for fitness became a European craze
in the late eighteen hundreds, in early nineteen hundreds, and
then in nineteen fifty eight Whammo enters. The picture gives
(49:40):
us the hula hoop as created by Richard near an
author Spud that Melon, who were said to have been
inspired by tales of Australian children playing with bamboo hoops.
But this one, of course, the Whamo hoop is a
plastic hoop, and it cost uh I was reading something
like a dollar ninety eight and in and it's sold
(50:01):
something like twenty five million units in two months and
by the end of fifty eight and made forty five
million dollars. So it was a colossal hit for Wammo.
But it was also a craze, so it did not
last as long like the hula hoop. Sometimes the hula
hoop and a human engage in a lifelong relationship. You
know that you really get into it, you're performing hula
(50:23):
hoop dances, etcetera. Other times, the hula hoop is something
you play with a little bit and then it gets
thrown in the garage and forgotten about. And and also,
unlike the frisbee, uh, it's it's harder to destroy a
hula hoop. You've really got to you've really got to
try to destroy who. I don't have you ever destroyed
a hula hoop? Not destroyed one. I'm just not sure.
It's harder. Oh, you're you're much less likely to lose
(50:45):
a hula hoop into a neighbor's yard or something. Yeah,
so I can't help but think that also attributed the
fact that sales of the hula hoop really fell off.
But luckily this was exactly the same time when WAMO
moved on to the Frisbee. Uh so they really had
a one to punch on inventions or reinventions that they
(51:07):
could target towards the uh know, the toy hungry American consumer, right,
making tens of millions off of just basic round objects. Yeah,
recreate it, give it a fancy name, and market it.
That's something we see time and time again. And in fact,
when we do our next episode, which will be another
reach into the toy bag, we'll see this again where
(51:28):
something ancient and well known simply gets a new name
and gets marketed a whole lot and it becomes this
new invention. Um as for the hula hoop. Again, sometimes
we forget about the hula hoop, but it has remained
with us. You can still buy a hula hoop, but
you know, wherever you are, there's a store around you
(51:48):
where you can buy one, probably, and it even is
as far as holidays go. It even factors into our
Christmas songs. There's the which one is that horrible chip
monk monk song? Uh? Me, I want a hula hoop? Yeah,
I want to plan that loops the loop Me, I
want a hula hoop. There you go, Classic toy. I
would think a chipmunk is too small to use a
(52:09):
hula hoop. Yeah, now we'd have We definitely would have
to get into the physics of it, because a small
hoop is going to be far more um energy intensive.
And I'm not sure that a chipmunk. As much as
I love chipmunks and squirrels, and I know our listeners do,
to wait a minute now now that I'm thinking about it,
aren't the chipmunks in the Chipmunks not regular chipmunks size?
(52:31):
They are more the size of human children that they
are the size of human children, which is that's a
grotesque blasphemy against nature. But still that might make them
more able to use an actual hula hoop. All right,
So we're gonna go ahead and call this episode here,
but we will be back next week with more toys,
generally like classic toys, I think, and we'll will explore
(52:54):
their history where they came from. Do they have ancient roots,
they have modern roots? Inevitably do they have both. In
the meantime, we'd obviously love to hear from anyone who
has thoughts on these various toys. And also, are you
a discus thrower? Have you experience with the sport of
throwing a discus? Do you have thoughts on Joe's commentary
on on on the physics of throwing the discus? What's
(53:17):
your experience with those physics? We would love to hear
from you, absolutely please share, all right, If you want
to listen to more episodes of Invention, head on over
to invention pot dot com. That's the uh, that's that's
the I guess the homepage for the show. But of
course you can find this podcast anywhere you get podcasts,
wherever it is. Make sure you've subscribed that way you
will definitely get part two of our toy exploration and
(53:39):
leave us a nice rating if you have the power
to do so, you know, whatever the page is, because
that helps us out in the long run. Also, be
sure to check out Stuff to Blow your Mind. That
is our other podcast and uh and there's you know,
years and years worth of great content there as well.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get into for
(54:00):
us with feedback on this episode, to suggest a topic
for the future, just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is
production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts for my
heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Santa Talos is invincible, bronze bodies coursing I Corps and
Christmas cheer. I saw three ships. He is here to
hurl presents and goodies, and you are three ships as
they come sailing on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day, On
Christmas Day in the morning, initiated Defense Vertical Ho Ho Ho.
(00:38):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. Can you know what we were doing right
before we started recording? We were listening to the Smashing
Pumpkins Christmas song. We were yeah, which wasn't bad I did.
I didn't dislike it, No, I actually kind of love it.
(01:01):
It's hilarious though, hearing Billy Corgan gushing breathlessly about how
there are toys for everyone on Christmas Day, Uh, which
is funny because like you can totally believe it, like
you know, he's in I guess I wouldn't normally think
of The Smashing Pumpkins as music for children, but like
the the obsession, Like even as an adult, I can
(01:21):
remember what it felt like to to believe that toys
were incoming. Like how exciting that was that you would
have new objects to play pretend with incoming presence hurtling
towards your ship as they're thrown by the Bronze Age
Automaton tell us, well, you know, I would say that
even as an adult, I still know what it's like
(01:43):
sometimes to want things. But there's nothing as an adult
that I feel that is equivalent to the way that
I wanted toys as a child. Oh yeah, I mean
I've I've spoken on the show before about how you know,
you would want a toy so badly they would dream
about it and see it in your bed with you
when you woke up in the morning. And uh yeah,
(02:04):
it's a it's a different realm of of of wants
and needs when you're that age. But toys are fascinating,
you know, they've they've been with us since very ancient times.
We have evidence of you know, toys dating back to
so you know, have things like the wonderful horse toys
of ancient Egypt. Uh. And they speak to the timeless
nature of play and the use of physical objects in
(02:26):
our play, and not only in our play, also in
our instruction. But they also fit very much into uh,
into the archaeological picture of ancient technology. The earliest physical
evidence of wheels I think in the Western hemisphere, definitely
in the America's is wheeled toys like you know, like
little statuettes of of horses and stuff found in ancient
(02:47):
Mesoamerica and South America. I believe that have wheels for
moving around on yeah, and then you know, also they
have often have dual purposes as well. I was when
I was in Hawaii most recently, I went to a
few different museums that were devoted to you know, you know,
oceanic technology and oceanic culture, and they pointed out that
(03:09):
model ships were essential to ship builders. You know, they
showed in miniature what the larger product would be and
helped you instruct others in how to build it. And
in the reverses, you've also kind of made a wonderful
toy in the process. But also I think toys are
we shouldn't think of them as frivolous as far as
inventions go, because play is not frivolous. The play that
(03:33):
children do shapes the I mean, it's like the most
important part of a child's education, I think, far more
even than the technical subjects they learn as they grow up.
I mean, you've got to be able to explore the
physical world and manipulate things. Uh, And and toys are
an important part of that. Yeah. In some cases toys
are are actually training you know, young bodies and young
(03:55):
minds for the manipulation of important tools. You know. Other times,
especially in modern age, they can be more specifically educational.
Though generally when you look at the history of toys,
that is is kind of like the history of how
we think about children, right. The idea that this is
a time to educate them when toys is more or
less uh, you know, a modern uh discovery if you will.
(04:18):
But but also you know, there are always to think
about toys, such as you know, thinking about them as products.
I was reading an article by Edward a Newmark titled
British Toys, which is just all about British toys. But
he points out that you know, these are unique as
items created for sale. Most toys are aimed at an
individual who will not be a repeat customer, not until
(04:40):
some twenty years later when they perhaps buy the same
toy again for their own children. Most toys have an
active life of a mere you know, a couple of years,
and the test of a great toy is whether it
will still be on the market a decade after its release.
And so many toys pass into history only to to
only possibly be resurrected twenty years light or on an
(05:00):
updraft collective nostalgia. And yet other toys have become true
classics and stand the test of time. They are the
sort of iconic toys that you'll see Santa Claus bringing
to children in um, you know, in cartoons and whatnot.
The kind of toys that even modern Santa Claus fictions
will will show Santa Claus making in his workshop. Yeah,
(05:25):
totally this year, in twenty nineteen, Santa will not be
bringing children POGs mostly, and will not be bringing children
tickle me elmos unless there's some strange revival. But lots
of kids all over the place are probably gonna be
getting toy trucks and dolls and blocks. I mean, there
are certain toy forms that stand the test of time. Yea,
(05:46):
the sort of generic classic toys that that still show
up under under the Christmas tree. There're still part of
our our lives. Um see how we've touched on some
of the roles that toys play, you know, they you know,
we sometimes they educate. Sometimes it's a it's about tool use.
Other times there you just see toys emerged sort of
peeling off from technological advancements of the day, and uh,
(06:08):
you know, and others are examples of specific designs intended
to teach. So history is full of philosophical toys, educational toys,
sports toys, war toys, adult toys, pointless toys, and more. Right,
and for that reason, we thought it might be fun
to do a couple of episodes here where we just
look at a series of different toys throughout history, where
(06:29):
they came from and what made them so popular. Right,
And this will be great because these are inventions. These uh,
these are things that people created and they're part of
our our technico history, but they're not necessarily items that
benefit from an entire episode's treatment. So let's let's throw
open uh Santa Talos's bag and see what kind of
(06:52):
toys we have to discuss here today. All right, First,
it looks like we've got before some kind of strange
lament configuration of box, except it's got a handle you
can crank. Ye, I don't know what what is this year?
It's a delightful little clockwork box. And and if I
open it it has such sights to show me. It is,
of course the Jack in the Box a classic toy. Again,
(07:13):
this is one of those that you see in Santa
Claus cartoons. You see Santa Claus making an old timey
Santa Claus movies, and and indeed it still shows up
under the tree, sometimes with a franchise character jumping out
of it instead of kind of a generic old timey clown. Okay,
so how does the Jack in the Box work for
those those youngsters who have never actually held one. Well,
(07:34):
one winds a crank on the side of the box
to power a music box inside, generally playing something like
pop goes the Weasel, you know something that's do and
it means the faster you crank at, the faster the
song goes. That's still under copyright. Are we gonna get
in trouble? Uh? Actually, that's fair, you see even if
it were. But at any rate, um, eventually it's going
(07:57):
to trigger the box to pop open, generally at the
end of the song. And when it pops open, a
coiled spring is going to launch a clown puppet into action.
And generally it is the equivalent of a small hand puppet,
very much in the style of Punch and Judy, uh,
the the old timey puppets. They have different names in
different languages, but this would be the street puppet show
(08:20):
to amuse children and adults, where Punch and Judy kind
of just beat the crap out of each other and
also encounter of various authority figures they encounter the devil. Um.
It's often been compared like Punch is basically scratching aging
Scratchy and pun. Punch is also kind of Homer Simpson.
It's more violent Homer Simpson. Um, maybe it's more of
(08:41):
a bender. I don't know. But but also in fact,
I've read that Punch in a Box was a predecessor
where you would actually just have Punch himself jump out
of the box once you're done cranking it. This, according
to Antonia Fraser, is a history of toys, but a
history of to is by Fraser also stresses that the
(09:02):
exact origins of the Jack in the box are unknown.
Now I'm trying to think about categorizing this toy, like
does it count as a toy? I mean, I guess it,
I guess it must. But like how does one play
with it? Right, Like, what is the act of playing?
Once the thing is already popped out once and you
(09:23):
know what's going to happen. Yeah, it's a it's a
clockwork amusement, right, It's it's not necessarily something that I
imagine factors into a lot of children's imagination play. It
is kind of a spectacle that is unleashed, that is surprising,
and it's also kind of a trick. Another toy item
that that is very similar is, of course the canister
(09:44):
of peanuts. That's what I was going to bring up. Yeah,
the spring snakes again, to go back to the Simpsons,
the can of beer nuts, all beer nuts. But then
of course you lift the lid and the snakes pop out,
and it's still hilarious. I just watched an episode of
Stephen Colbert where he goes to New Zealand and he
gives this to I think he gives it to Lord
the Musician, telling her that it is an American tradition
(10:06):
and she opens it and the snake scares her and
it's delightful. Part of the joke being that there are
no snakes in New Zealand. Oh, in New Zealand, Okay,
well I've been thinking Australia and I was like, what's
gonna happen The funnel web spider comes out. Now we'll
get a little into possible origins here, but basically this
is this has been with this for quite a while.
Um and improve materials and technology made the toy a
(10:27):
more widespread success in the eighteenth century, meaning that you know,
it wasn't just going to be the uh, you know,
something that would m please very wealthy children. It wasn't
like this, this clockwork philosophical toy that the children would
get to look at occasionally. But it does seem to
emerge from this world of of of clockwork ingenuity. Yes,
(10:47):
so we talked about this in our episode on the
Canard de Gierra Tour The Pooping Duck um or the
digesting Duck. I guess we put a lot of emphasis
on the poop for some reason. But yeah, it was
this era where there were people who were becoming increasingly
good at mechanical engineering and creating these clockwork devices that
had complex inner workings and thus could generate complex outward
(11:07):
behaviors based on things that were hidden. You know, you
couldn't see what was going on inside, but it was
doing complex stuff. And this was part of a history
of philosophical debate about whether, in fact living things were
somehow like this, we're living things somehow machines in which
all the individual parts could be identified and stuff, or
(11:29):
were there sort of indivisible and ineffable elements that made
actual life forms in nature different from the machines built
by the clockmakers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and part of
this whole effort, this whole movement was was the the
emergence of music boxes, which were tremendous uh success and
uh and still are are very popular. Also self playing instruments,
(11:50):
which we got into a little bit in our saxophone episode.
There are part of this this whole world as well.
But essentially you can also think of the jack in
the box as a is a music box that packs
some punch, sometimes literally. Uh. Now, in terms of where
it this actual technology that like, like where the first
(12:10):
jack in the box arises from, I've seen some i
would say shaky sources attributing the invention to a German
clockmaker of the sixteenth century named Klaus, just Klaus Klaus
or Clause perhaps, which of course has leaved a little
suspect because of Santa Claus. But I can't I cannot
find a firm source on this. Perhaps it's out there,
perhaps somebody can can bring it to my attention, but
(12:32):
in my research I cannot find a firm source saying yeah,
we think that a sixteenth century German clockmaker made the
first Jack in the box. In fact, as previously mentioned,
some sources state the origin is unknown. And I've noticed
several toy history books that seemingly don't explore the history
of the Jack in the Box at all. But in
looking at Gary Martin's excellent phrase finder website, which which
(12:55):
is is wonderful, I do recommend people check it out.
He has an entry on the back in the Box.
And I also was looking at a at a book
titled Gothic Effigy by Saved Unwin Jones, and uh, and
something becomes increasingly clear. The toy seems to have been
named after some turn of phrase that pre existed it.
(13:16):
So jack in the box you might have what called
somebody a jack in the box before there was a
Jack in the box toy exactly. Martin points to usages
of the phrase jack in the box and sometimes lack
in the box from the sixteenth century. That suggests that
Jack in the box or lack in the box was
sort of like pig in the poke. Now, if you're
(13:36):
not familiar with that, pig in the poke means like
a pig in a bag, and the idea is don't
buy a pig in the bag. You know, don't buy
a pig site unseen, because you don't know what you'll get,
something might be wrong with it. Yeah, this seems to
have negative implications for the Jack in the Box restaurant. Yeah.
I don't know if they really did, you know, like
a full history. They just thought about the pleasant surprise,
(13:59):
I guess the box. But yeah, so the ideas that
Jack in the box would would mean, you know, something
unpleasant that was purchased site unseen, or indeed, it might
mean the swindler who sells boxes they either don't contain
what they're supposed to contain or contain nothing at all.
And that seems to play pretty well with the basic
experience of the Jack in the box, right. The box
(14:19):
contains a fright rather than any kind of material goods.
It's and and again it's not even something you can
play with inside. It's just a puppet that jumps out
at you and startles you, and you know it is
again not unlike its toy, Ken the snake in the
canister of nuts. Now, by asking that question earlier though
about whether it's a toy, I didn't mean to undermine
its role. I guess I was just asking, like, what
(14:41):
actually constitutes a toy. I think it's clear that these
the Jack in the boxes as a toy or whatever
you want to call it, are popular with children, have
been for a long time, and they do even after
they've been surprised once repeat the experience. There's something intellectually
interesting going on there, developmentally interesting that they've already had
it pop out once, they're not going to be surprised,
(15:03):
but they'll still keep playing with it. They'll crank the
handle again and like manipulate the speed of playback and stuff. Yeah.
And let's face it, if you came into work one
day and there was a Jack in the Box closed
on your desk, what would you do. You'd have to
crank it and see what pops out? Right, Yeah, So
it does continue to have liked. Any anybody that's new
(15:24):
to the Jack in the Box will have to invoke
the experience and then they might invoke it again. Now,
there is another potential origin story that sometimes makes the
rounds um and that is the tale of a thirteenth
century Norfolk Christian saint like figure, not an actual saint,
but an individual by the name of Sir John Shorn,
(15:45):
who is said to have captured the devil in a
boot um and he was also said to be blessed
in the healing of gout. And of course this is
where it gets kind of complicated, right, because the um gout,
of course, is an inflammatory arthritis that might well be
described as a devil in the boot and has been illustrated,
you know, various times through history as a monster or
(16:06):
devil that choose on a person's foot. The idea that
the gout can affect multiple parts of the body, but
it often manifests in like somebody's big toe, right, yeah,
but you could also get it in your elbow or whatever. Right,
And then of course there's like pseudo gout as well,
which is which is different. But but classic gout has
long been been with with humans and uh, and so
(16:27):
that's kind of complicated because on one hand, he this
particular individual was sometimes shown as having a boot with
the devil peeking out of it. And so the argument
is like, this is kind of the basis for the
box that contains uh a what might have actually been
a devil in some cases, but then becomes a clown
or other figures as the you know, as it is
(16:47):
adapted more for children. But I should point out that Martin,
in looking at this, thinks that the historical historical connective
tissue between Shorn and the Jack in the Box is
pretty much non existent, so there's there's not a lot
to actually go on there. But he he does point
to a firework of the seventeen hundreds known as Lack
in the Box. And uh, and this was mentioned in
(17:10):
John Babington's Pyrotechnia, which was published in Sive And and
this this, uh, this might well be be where the
name comes from as well. So would this be a
firework that pops out of a box in some way
or at least is a it is a I get
the the idea that maybe it had some sort of box,
or maybe it was just the idea that it was
(17:30):
a surprise that it it pops at all. And uh
and therefore, you know, this could be something they got
the name for this firework from the pre existing phrase,
and then both of these helped to inform the naming
of this strange box that has a puppet that jumps
out of it, because again it is a shock and
it is also literally a lack in the box, right,
(17:51):
Jack in the box? Is a jack in the box
supposed to be scary? Is it supposed to kind of
startle the child? I think it is supposed to art
all the child now and now is it scary as
well as startling? I think that depends on what jumps out.
Is it a clown which is delightful? Yes, clowns are delightable.
Clowns are for children. It's only adults by and large
(18:13):
who think the clowns are scary. But if it's a devil,
then I think you could definitely make the argument that
isn't it is intended to frighten the child or the
or humorously frightened the adult that opens it. Now and
looking at that book gothic effigy by Jones, Jones, however,
contends that the devil is still present in the Jack
in the box as quote horned jack bursting from his
(18:37):
side of confinement unquote is the key idea toned down
to a clown in the toy, and this would Their
argument here is that this UH would have emerged from
Gothic fascination with devils. Ornamental boxes UH, such as one
that puts out was in Sheridan LeFanu's Wilder's hand In
from eighteen sixty four, and he ties all of this
(18:59):
in with the the ongoing influence of Gothic traditions on
culture and children's costumes, toys, books, and more. Okay, so
some intentional scary elements here or associate or at least yes, yeah,
that's that's the argument. But then again, those scary elements
may have been removed to make it just merely startling
to the child. But it is, I think, without a doubt,
(19:22):
it is meant to be a startling toy. It is
meant to be something you give to a small child
and watch their faces. They are shocked, surprised, and then
hopefully they will laugh because of course it was it
was startling, But then there is no actual threat present.
You know, my thinking has developed over the past few
minutes when asking why is it that you see a
(19:43):
child playing with the jack in the box repeatedly cranking
it over and over and having the thing pop out
even after they've already done it, you know, once or twice,
they know what's going to happen. I wonder if these
are sort of like experiments with object permanence, much the
same way the game of he Kaboo plays a developmental
role with children, like establishing that an object or a
(20:05):
person can be hidden but will emerge again when the
barrier division is removed. That's a good point. Another thing
that I'm thinking about is that the second time you
do it, especially, the child is probably more aware that
they have control over when the startling moment occurs. They
know it's going to occur at the end of that song,
(20:25):
for instance, and there's probably something empowering there and realizing
that they are the master of the fright they're about
to receive exactly, and I would see that. I would
say that really comes through in the way that you
see children manipulate the speed of the crank when they
do it, like they will often either speed way up
or slow way down right towards the end of the song,
(20:45):
as the song lets you know how much more time
is left before the thing emerges, Like rushing towards the
thrill and then maybe backing off a little bit. Uh, yeah,
it's interesting. It makes me kind of want to pick
up a Jack in the box. We don't. I don't
think we have one in an household right now anyway,
but I almost I want to find like a good
one one with one with a devil inside, or a
(21:06):
cramp us that would be nice, or a quartet of cinemabites.
Sure no, surely somebody has made a lament configuration Jack
in the box that would be That's perfect. It's so perfect,
it has to have been done already. Right if you haven't,
If that doesn't exist, whoever's got the right at c
shop out there, you get on it. Yes, yeah, I
know there have been people have adapted Rubik's cubes into
(21:26):
the limit configuration, but Jack in the Box is just
a must have. All right, I think maybe we should
take a quick break and the when we come back
we can discuss the flying disc. All right, we're back.
What is this marvelous flying disc that that it now
emerges from Santa Talos's sack? Well, of course it is
(21:48):
to use the semi branded term the frisbee. Robert, were
you a frisbee kid? When you were a kid, I
mean we always had frisbees. You know, I never got
into like frisbee golf or anything like that, but if
a frisbee as a must have and still do today,
Like we I threw frisbee or on a Robie maybe
some variation on the frisbee design with my son, like
literally just this weekend. So yeah, the I feel like
(22:11):
the family the family tossing cliche is like the father
and the son throwing the baseball right with the baseball gloves.
I don't think that happens all that much except among
like dedicated people who are actually into baseball. Well, I'm
not into baseball, and I've done it because it's such
a cliche. I'm like, you feel that your resistible tug
(22:32):
off it, uh, and you and I and so we
ended up getting the baseball glove the softball and we
threw it back and forth, and I'm like, yes, I
feel like a Norman Rockwell painting. This is great. You know,
we don't. We've only done it, like, you know, two
or three times, but I'm still it was it was
neat to be a part of that Norman Rockwell experience.
Well maybe my impression is mistaken, but I generally think
(22:53):
that that you've got this cliche of people throwing the baseball,
but what what is actually way more common is throwing
the frisbee. The frisbee, in my opinion, is far more fun, yes,
and less likely to break a window, though I remember
from my childhood that somehow I always ended up getting
hit in the mouth with a frisbee. But that's great
that you're throwing a frisbee instead of a baseball. There
because the frisbee is nice and lightweight and its modern
(23:15):
plastic form. So the frisbee is a toy that has
both ancient and uniquely twentieth century origins. As for the
ancient origins, we know that humans have been throwing circular
disc shaped objects for sport for thousands of years, at
least at least as far back as the eighth century BC.
For instance, we know that the discus throw was one
(23:38):
of the five sports of the ancient Greek pentathlon, which
consisted of a foot race, a javelin throw, a discus throw,
a long jump, and finally wrestling. And I think training
for this multi event competition held some association with military training.
You can see how there would be some overlap with
the skills on display there, but the discus competition seemed
(24:00):
to involve athletes throwing a heavy, circular disc, not in
the way we generally throw a frisbee today with a
flick of the arm, but by flinging it through a
whole body twisting or spinning motion where you would spin
the body around or twist the body around, and then
transfer the angular momentum of the spinning body into a
(24:21):
throw when you release the disk, and so physically the
discus throw sort of turns the body into a sling,
you know, like the weapon traditionally associated with shepherds, where
you would generally generate momentum and a rock or something
by spinning it around in a circle. You do this
with your whole body for the discus. There are mentions
of disc throwing events in Homer's Iliad. Sometimes it's used
(24:43):
as a measure of distance, so like you could just
say that something was as far away as a young
man can fling a discus. That's in there, which is
a great unit of measure. Uh. There also appears to
be a reference to some form of discus throwing as
one of the funeral games after the death of Patroclus.
It's a Patroclus burns on the funeral Pyre, and then
they have games in his honor. Uh, And so I
(25:06):
wanted to read this section. This is in the Samuel
Butler translation, though in the translation I'm about to read
from the thing being thrown is not called a frisbee
or a discus. It's called a quoit, which can mean
like a disc, but can also I think mean a
ring rather than a solid disc. But anyway, the account
goes like this. Then uprose the two mighty men, Polypoides
and Leontius, with Ajax, son of Telemon, and noble Epius.
(25:30):
They stood up one after another, and Epius took the quoit,
whirled it, and flung it from him, which set all
the Achaeans laughing after him, through Leontius of the race
of mars A jax son of Teleman through third, and
sent the quite beyond any mark that had been made yet.
But when mighty Polypodies took the quoit, he hurled it
as though it had been a stockman stick, which he
(25:52):
sends flying among his cattle when he's driving them. So
far did his throwout distance those of the others. Again,
with point of comparison that it's not very helpful to me.
I don't know what you do with the stockman stick,
but apparently that means you could throw it really far.
And then of course it shows up again in the
works of Homer, like in the Odyssey, there's a section
where Odysseus embarrasses some dudes, I think the Phaeacians, by
(26:14):
throwing a huge discus farther than any of them can.
Uh so. The discus throw is also depicted in a
famous bronze sculpture from classical Grease, the disco Bolus, which
just means disc thrower by the sculptor my Run of
luther Ae and the The original work is lost, but
there are a ton of copies from the Roman period,
(26:34):
and it's the famous post. You've probably seen it depicted
somewhere where the discus thrower is sort of leaned over
with the body twisted with the arm out, and of
course most people probably know. The discus throw is also
part of the modern Olympic Games, and they use sort
of a lens shaped disc of about two kilograms or
about four point four pounds for the men's competition and
(26:55):
a discus of about one kilogram or two point two
pounds for the women's event. Know, when I was thinking
about the Olympics, I started thinking like, well, what is
it that makes the discus special as a thing to throw?
Like there are other types of throwing competitions, I mean,
just competitions of people seeing how far they could throw
a rock or a javelin or something. Go way back
(27:16):
into history, there's the shot put event where you're just
throwing a heavy ball. What is it that makes the
discus special as a thrown object? And it turns out
that the discus actually does have a lot of very
interesting unique properties that they're based on its shape. So
to get into those from moment, I was reading an
article by the North Carolina State Professor of Mechanical and
(27:36):
Aerospace Engineering Larry Silverberg, talking about the physics of the
Olympic discus throw event, and he mentions that a lot
of the skill in the discus throw is actually controlling
the release of the discus. You know, it's not it's
not all in just like how hard you can whirl
your body, how strong you are. It's very tightly controlling
(27:56):
how the disc is oriented and what what happened is
when it leaves your hand. And I would say the
same thing is actually very true of throwing a frisbee.
I don't know how experienced you are with trying to
like aim a frisbee super carefully or get it to
sail as far as possible, But like I think a
lot of the skill actually comes down to what's happening
right when you release it from your fingers. Yeah, I
(28:19):
feel like, you know, I'm not one that is usually
especially skilled at throwing things, but I feel like there
is there's something about throwing, you know, a frisbee or
frisbee like toy that feels very intuitive. You know. I again,
I haven't played frisbee golf and try like that level
of accuracy, but I find that when I throw a
frisbee to someone, I have a much better ability to
(28:42):
actually get it get it to them. You know what
I'm saying. Well, yeah, I know exactly what you mean
this intuitive property, which is funny because at the same time,
I think, more so than like a javelin or a
baseball or a shot put, the discuss is it's fickle.
It's dependent on air and wind conditions. You know that
they can be the discus or the frisbee can be
(29:05):
unpredictable in how it travels in ways that these other
objects are not, even though in some ways it feels
very gentle and easy and intuitive to throw it somewhere, right,
Like if you're just throwing the shock put or or
a larger rock, you probably don't have to account for
wind all that much. Yeah, I mean maybe a little bit,
but not nearly to the extent that you would with
a flat object like a discus or a frisbee. Uh.
(29:28):
And silver Bird writes that it's really important to control
the angle of release, like you want to get it
at the perfect angle to make it travel the farthest.
He identifies a range between thirty seven and forty two
degrees as optimal. And just think about like trying to
find tune the release of a discus while you're whirling
(29:48):
your whole body around to get it to an like
a slice of the angle that's small. And then of
course you have to, as we were saying, account for wind,
like if the head wind is blowing in your face,
you want throw it probably flatter, which makes sense, right,
because you don't want the headwinds blowing the like catching
under it and blowing it back towards you. You want
to maximize the angle at which it gets lift but
(30:11):
doesn't get blown back in the opposite direction. I was
also reading a good twelve article in re Reuters by
Sharon Begley which summarizes some of the basic aerodynamics uh
and some recent sports biomechanics research about the discus event.
So a few key takeaways. Because of its shape, throwing
a discus is different from throwing a round object like
a baseball or throwing a javelin. A discus is at
(30:33):
its core a wing. It's an aerofoil it as it travels,
it stays aloft by generating lift, similar to how the
wings of an airplane generate lift to keep the plane
in the air. And like with airplane wings, the physical
design of the discus matters. A flatter design with more
surface area generates more lift. But once you've already picked
(30:55):
out your discus, you know you can't like bring a
huge different shape discus to the Olympic event. As you know,
once you've got the physical dimensions of the discus lockdown,
in order to generate maximum lift, you need to mess
with a couple more main variables. One is that you
want to maintain a high speed of the throw, and
this is also the same way that an airplane needs
(31:16):
horizontal speed to maintain lift via its wings. Right. If
an airplane slows down, it will lose altitude, right because
it can't generate as much lift under the wings. A
discus needs to maintain horizontal speed to maintain that lift
under its body as it slows down due to drag.
As it travels through the air, the lift it generates
will decrease and it will fall. But then also again
(31:39):
what's super important is getting just the right angle. You
want the front edge of the discus raised slightly higher
than its back edge to generate the most lift, and
you also want to keep the disc rotating, of course,
to stabilize the angle. The faster the discus is spinning,
the flatter and more stable its angle will stay. And
you might think about why that be, But I bet
(32:01):
a lot of people have done the physics experiment in
like a high school physics class, where you hold a
spinning bicycle wheel by a little handle on its hub,
and then you try to rotate the wheel against its
plane of against the plane on which it's spinning, you know,
trying to twist your wrist or something. There's a huge
amount of resistance it's like really hard to turn it
(32:22):
because rapidly spinning objects resist changes to the plane of
their rotation, like the angular momentum of the spinning wants
to keep it flat. It's interesting to apply that to
some of like the fictional spinning weapons you see sometimes
utilized in films on things specifically One of the Three
Storms and Big Trouble and Little China, as these spinning
(32:44):
gadgets that are like spinning blades, and granted that's a
blender hands. Yeah, granted that's a sorcerer, so you know,
we can we can give them a little credit. But
in reality, like that would be difficult to actually use
a weapon like that, right because it's spinning. Oh yeah, yeah, Jine.
If the spinning very fast, you would get some resistance
to trying to move your hands around. Likewise, I think
(33:05):
other examples here you can see a robot using one
like Maximilian in the Black Hole. But again, high powered robot.
We can cut it some swack, I guess. Yeah. So,
so you want the right angle, you want high speed,
you want rapid spinning to stabilize the angle. And also
in this article, there's a counterintuitive finding that's conveyed by
somebody named Mont Hubbard who's a director of the Sports
(33:28):
Biomechanics Lab at the University of California, Davis. And basically
what this person says is that you can actually get
the farthest possible throw by throwing into a slight headwind.
That seems you wouldn't think that, but this is because
you can maximize the relative wind speed and generate more
lift that way, which means more lift means it stays
(33:48):
higher in the air longer and travels farther. Now it's
clear that the Olympic discus is a competition instrument. It's
made for solo distance throwing and of course made for
humiliating your inferiors in ancient Caspotamia. So it's rather different
from the frisbees or throwing discs that that kids toss
around for fun. The East tendu in in the twentieth
(34:09):
century to be made of plastic. They're much lighter. They're
designed to glide softly and generate tons of lift for
long distance travel with minimal throwing force. You don't have
to be really strong or spin your whole body around
and generate the angular momentum to throw a frisbee right
and then it'll it'll generally bounce off of a window
instead of going through it. That sort of thing. Yeah,
(34:29):
or you know, as often happened hitting me in the mouth.
I mean, if you can imagine getting hit in the
mouth with a four and a half pound discus, that's
not good. So where did the frisbee come from? This
different variation on the model? Uh? For that, we need
to meet a dude named Walter Frederick Morrison, known as Fred,
and I'm gonna use as a few sources here. One,
uh an obituary for for Morrison from twenty in the
(34:52):
l A Times by Dennis McClellan, UM, an article I
found in Time by Jennifer Latson, and also a summary
of his life I found by somebody named Phil Kennedy
who was a co author with Fred Morrison of an
autobiographical account of the creation of the frisbee. But so.
Fred Morrison was born in the town of Richfield, Utah,
on January twenty third, nineteen twenty. At the age of eleven,
(35:14):
his father, who was an optometrist, moved his practice and
thus the whole family, to California. As an adult, Morrison
worked as a carpenter and later as a building inspector
in the l A area. But in nineteen thirty seven,
when Fred Morrison was around the age of seventeen, he
and his girlfriend Lucille, who would later become his wife,
were at a Thanksgiving celebration at the house of Lucille's uncle.
(35:38):
And at this party, guests just started throwing a popcorn
can lid around, uh, tossing it to each other in
the backyard, which somehow sounds like either a very awesome
party or a horrible party, Like how do you end
up that way? You're either having a really good time
or things are going terribly just desperately searching for fun.
Either way, it fits perfectly with the in the spirit
(36:00):
of Thanksgiving. But but I I guess I'm imagining like
one of those big tins of popcorn like we still
have today, and you know, sometimes there's different flavors of popcorn.
You pull the lid off of it, sucker, and yeah,
it's kind of a perfect frisbee. And apparently Fred and
Lucille had so much fun they kept throwing the popcorn
lit around for the following weeks. They played with it
so much that it suffered a lot of wear and
(36:21):
tear and eventually got some kind of sharp edges and
became dangerous, so they retired the popcorn can lid. They
stole a cake pan from Fred's mother's kitchen and started
throwing that around instead, and it looks like this started
a cake pan tossing tradition. About a year later, Fred
and Lucille took the cake pan to the beach in
Santa Monica, where they were just tossing it for fun.
(36:44):
But apparently on this beach trip, somebody else thought that
what they were doing looks like fun and came up
to them and offered to pay a quarter for the
cake pan so they could have it, take it and
toss it with their friends. And Fred Morrison, i think,
speaking to the Virginia Pilot said quote that got the
wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for
five cents, and if people on the beach were willing
(37:06):
to pay a quarter for it, well, there was a
business ding ding dang flipping the cake pans. So first
they just straight up bought cheap cake pans from the
store took him out to the beach to flip for
a profit. So I guess there's really originally no value
add here, right, except perhaps for the insight that it
might be fun to throw a cake pan. Uh and
maybe you know, that might not have occurred to people otherwise,
(37:28):
so maybe there is an added value there. Yeah. I
mean it's kind of like selling overpriced umbrellas on a
rainy day for people who forgot their umbrella. It's it's
very convenient, and yes you get to overcharge them, right
or you know, selling bottles of water on a hot
parking lot or something. You know, people just didn't think
to bring their own. Uh So Fred and his father
(37:49):
apparently considered designing a custom metal disc for throwing, but
this never came to fruition and they kept selling cake
pans at the beach until Fred Morrison went away to
serve in the Army Air Corps or during the during
World War Two in the European Theater, where he flew
bomber missions over Italy. He was ultimately captured and held
as a prisoner of war, and after being freed and
(38:10):
returning home, Morrison came up with a design for a
new kind of throwing disc, which he called the Whirlow Way.
And I think this was named after some kind of
racing horse. He was a fan of horses the whirlow way.
That's what the Freeman used to overturn the rule of
ar harconins the yeah yeah, the wording way. So I
(38:30):
must assume Fred Morrison consumes some spice and saw over
the sands of time. Yeah. But so, Over the next
few years, together with a partner named Warren Franscioni, Morrison
worked on a number of different designs and prototypes for
disks made out of that most wonderful of twentieth century
consumer materials, plastic. So now instead of metal discs, you've
(38:53):
got plastic discs. And because of the sudden UFO craze
that gripped America beginning in nineteen forty seven, they called
their product the Flying Saucer. Apparently Morrison was a great salesman,
and he would attract crowds during flying saucer demonstrations at
fair grounds, like demonstrating how far the disc would glide
with a gentle toss. Apparently they would make jokes about
(39:16):
you know, uh, you know, how could it really travel
so far? Are there hidden wires? Can you see the
hidden wires? And they were able to sell some of
the toys, but not enough to justify the business, and
Morrison and Fransky only parted ways around nineteen fifty. Well,
you know, I'm I'm realizing just how ingenious this product
is now that I think about my own usages of
(39:37):
the frisbee, because there are other products and other toys
that are very much in line with that. Uh, you
know those stats we gave earlier about you know, one
to two years of play life and then it's shelved
and then if you don't sell another one to that
individual until they're grown up. But the frisbee can be
used by children and adults alike. And even though frisbee
is probably pretty durable, you can break a frisbee, and
(39:58):
more to the point, you can land of frisbee in
a place from which you cannot retrieve it. Yes, and
then what do you have to do either way? You
have to buy any frisbee? Right, Well, the the unpredictability
of frisbee is the way they can get caught on
a breeze or sail off into the neighbor's yard. That
sort of makes you, yeah, it makes it more likely
that you'll end up having to buy a new one,
right And then, of course that's not even getting into
(40:18):
the fact that you can print your company's logo on
it and hand it out. So good. I just wonder
how many like Dow Chemical Frisbees and Raytheon Frisbees are
out there. But so around nineteen fifty four, Fred Morrison
wanted to get back into the game. He was interested
in giving the flying saucer another try, So the following
year Morrison had a new model that he renamed the
(40:41):
Pluto Platter, again going with the space theme. I think
he was like, Pluto, that's the most recently discovered planet.
Let's name the name the toy after it. Uh And
you can see a patent for Morrison's model that you
can actually look up from I think filed in nineteen
fifty seven, awarded in nineteen fifty eight. But it looks
a lot like a frisbee you would see today. It's
(41:01):
sort of a plastic disc with a lip that curves under.
But in nineteen fifty seven Morrison struck gold because that
was the year he sold the rights to the Pluto
Platter to a toy company called Wammo. Wammo Inc. And
Wammo from this point on took care of the manufacturing
and sales. I think they also helped him secure his patent,
(41:22):
and then Morrison collected royalties on his design. But of
course we don't call these things pluto platters today, So
so what happened already? In nineteen fifty seven, the toy
had come to be known as a Frisbee, a name
which Morrison apparently originally hated, but he warmed two over
time as he collected his millions. Uh so where did
the name come from? Well, it turns out Fred and
(41:44):
Lucille were not the only kids throwing baking pans at
each other. In eighteen seventy one, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a
guy named William Frisbee spelled f r I s b
i E, not b E open the Frisbee Pie comp Any,
which amazingly sold pies, and apparently it was something of
a local tradition for students at various East Coast universities
(42:08):
like Yale, which is also in Connecticut, to throw Frisbee
pie tins at each other and yell. Frisbee and the
Wammo Company learned about this tradition and named their new
acquisition after it. So that's where the name comes from.
It's a pie company. Uh and uh. And once Frisbee
the frisbee belonged to Wammo, it underwent some more design improvements. Crucially,
(42:30):
in nineteen sixty four, a WAMMO employee named ed Headrick
added a series of ridges or grooves on the surface
that helped the thrower grip the plastic and also increase
the weight of the rim to help the frisbee fly
with greater stability. And this is actually a thing in
the design of of discus or frisbee. If you distribute
more of the weight to the outer edges, that helps
(42:52):
it spin faster, have more angular momentum in spinning, which
again is good for helping it maintain a stable angle.
And that that Time article I mentioned earlier includes an
amazing quote from an earlier Time article, one from nineteen
seventy two about frisbee groupies of the period a k a. Frupies.
(43:12):
And I've got no words for this. It goes quote.
Dr stancl Johnson, a long haired Santa Monica psychiatrist who
serves as Frisbee's official historian, has an apparently sober explanation
for the discs popularity they are. He says, quote the
perfect marriage between man's greatest tool his hand and his
greatest dream to fly. That seems like he's kind of
(43:36):
reaching a bit there. But then again, I don't know
waxing poetic a little bit about the frisbee, but it's
possible we could catch ourselves saying something like that. So,
of course, now we know that frisbee is not just
a toy to toss with your family and your friends.
But there's all this, you know, frisbee sports of a
million different kinds. There's ultimate frisbee. There's frisbee golf, which,
(43:58):
uh that I admit that I've played these sports and
actually kind of enjoyed them. And yeah, I mean I
frisbee golf looks fun. Is there frisbee sports stigma? I
sent stigma? I don't know why. Um, I mean, I
think it's just they're varying individuals who engage in frisbee golf,
and some are undoubtedly going to be um, you know, miscreants, sure,
(44:20):
just but others are going to be you know, fine
frisbee enthusiasts. Well, I confess I've played frisbee golf and
I liked it. All right, We're gonna take another break.
When we come back, we will reach once more into
the gift bag, all right, we're back. I'm gonna reach
(44:40):
into the bag once more and Wammo, here's another one.
This is a hula hoop. You mean the Wammo toy company. Yes, yeah, okay, yeah,
because they're gonna factor into this invention as well. So
this is a really fun toy to discuss. Actually wrote
an entire how stuff Works article about this back in
the day, how hula hoops work. And I'm not going
(45:00):
to blow through all the info in that article because
in that I got to get into a lot of
fun things like performance art with barbed wire hula hoops
and so yeah, flaming hula hoops. The role of who
it was it was it was really cool, and it
was one of those where it was assigned to me
and I kind of groaned a little at first, and
then by the end of it in the but I
was like, oh, yeah, hula hoops are amazing. It also
(45:23):
gets into the physics far more than I'm not really
gonna get into the physics here today, but I'm gonna
touch on the key history. So hoop toys themselves are
quite ancient, uh, just lost in the midst of history.
Because all you need are some dried vines uh, in
the ability to sort of you know, loop them together
and to make a loop. And as such, you know,
(45:44):
the ancient Egyptians had hoop toys. Now I understand that
a lot of the ancient hoop toys were used for
for vertical rolling. Yes, yeah, and then granted we still
do that today. One of my favorite things to do
with the hula hoop is to do the trick. I
don't know if you know that it has a name
where you take it and you fling it out vertically
but in a way so that it will be rolling
(46:05):
back to you. Yeah, you put backspin on it, tossed
it with backspin and it rolls too. I love that too. Yeah,
it's a fabulous trick. I feel like I'm I'm performing
magic every time I do it, and I'm a little
shocked that everyone around me isn't isn't commenting on how
marvelous this trick is. But of course we all know it.
We all we all know the trick. And then of
course they're simply too. You know the act of rolling
(46:25):
a hoop around, usually using a stick to propel it,
which I often think is being kind of the kind
of thing you would see in a film or a
TV show like you would see Opie Taylor or Tom
Sawyer doing this. Yeah, kind of just an old timey,
simple toy, but something that would be fun to do.
And so hoop rolling and hoop games were popular amid
(46:48):
the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans. The hoop is
also a potent as a physical symbol representing cyclical, yawnick
and cosmic concepts. The hero Ganymede is often depicted with
a hoop, and in North America, the Taos Peblo people
of what is now New Mexico used hoops and sacred
(47:08):
dances and rituals to represent, you know, the cilical nature
of life. Various cultures, including the ancient British and the
Cahokia people of the Mississippi River Valley. These are the
mound builders who reached their peak in the thirteenth century
and declined before the coming of Europeans. They engaged in
what we often referred to as kill the hoop games.
(47:32):
This is kind of a combination of two different throwing acts.
Someone will roll a hoop and then someone will throw
a spear or some other object, but often it's a
spear through the hoop. So it's you know, you're gonna
hit an artificial moving target with your weapon or thrown object.
Kind of skei shooting. Yeah, yeah, kind of like an
early version of ski at a skeat shooting. But most
(47:54):
agree that in playing with hoops like this, the discovery
of what we think of as as hula hooping was
sure early experimented with. So if you have children, even
ancient children, uh, in any of these cultures we've discussed
messing around with hoops, killing the afternoon with a hoop,
undoubtedly somebody is going to realize that you can put
it on your arm and spin it around, you can
(48:15):
put it on your neck and spin it around, and
you can put it on your waist and spinning around.
It's just how we we were curious creatures and in
our tool use, we're going to get there. Uh, We're
going to spin that hoop around our body at some point.
And we also know that from just from military history,
the concept of a hoop weapon in the form of
the Chockram weapon of India, which we have an older
(48:37):
episode of stuff to blow your mind about. Uh, you
know this is something that is sometimes spun around a
finger before launching. Kind of like a sharp roby toy,
but used as a shock weapon on the front lines.
And I believe it still remains a a ritual weapon,
like a holy item for the sikhs Uh. You'll sometimes
(48:58):
see it presented as such. But but that in that
we see like the idea of spinning a hoop type
item around your body was already known now. According to
Charles Penalates extraordinary origins of everyday things, there was a
medieval hoop craze, apparently during the fifteen hundreds, an Edwardian
craze that resulted in the reports of dislocated backs and
(49:19):
heart failure, and then hula itself for hula hoop, because
again these were not called hula hoops. Hula enters the
Western world in the seventeen hundreds with the knowledge of
Polynesian cultures. Hoop dancing for fitness became a European craze
in the late eighteen hundreds, in early nineteen hundreds, and
then in nineteen fifty eight Whammo enters. The picture gives
(49:40):
us the hula hoop as created by Richard near an
author Spud that Melon, who were said to have been
inspired by tales of Australian children playing with bamboo hoops.
But this one, of course, the Whamo hoop is a
plastic hoop, and it cost uh I was reading something
like a dollar ninety eight and in and it's sold
(50:01):
something like twenty five million units in two months and
by the end of fifty eight and made forty five
million dollars. So it was a colossal hit for Wammo.
But it was also a craze, so it did not
last as long like the hula hoop. Sometimes the hula
hoop and a human engage in a lifelong relationship. You
know that you really get into it, you're performing hula
(50:23):
hoop dances, etcetera. Other times, the hula hoop is something
you play with a little bit and then it gets
thrown in the garage and forgotten about. And and also,
unlike the frisbee, uh, it's it's harder to destroy a
hula hoop. You've really got to you've really got to
try to destroy who. I don't have you ever destroyed
a hula hoop? Not destroyed one. I'm just not sure.
It's harder. Oh, you're you're much less likely to lose
(50:45):
a hula hoop into a neighbor's yard or something. Yeah,
so I can't help but think that also attributed the
fact that sales of the hula hoop really fell off.
But luckily this was exactly the same time when WAMO
moved on to the Frisbee. Uh so they really had
a one to punch on inventions or reinventions that they
(51:07):
could target towards the uh know, the toy hungry American consumer, right,
making tens of millions off of just basic round objects. Yeah,
recreate it, give it a fancy name, and market it.
That's something we see time and time again. And in fact,
when we do our next episode, which will be another
reach into the toy bag, we'll see this again where
(51:28):
something ancient and well known simply gets a new name
and gets marketed a whole lot and it becomes this
new invention. Um as for the hula hoop. Again, sometimes
we forget about the hula hoop, but it has remained
with us. You can still buy a hula hoop, but
you know, wherever you are, there's a store around you
(51:48):
where you can buy one, probably, and it even is
as far as holidays go. It even factors into our
Christmas songs. There's the which one is that horrible chip
monk monk song? Uh? Me, I want a hula hoop? Yeah,
I want to plan that loops the loop Me, I
want a hula hoop. There you go, Classic toy. I
would think a chipmunk is too small to use a
(52:09):
hula hoop. Yeah, now we'd have We definitely would have
to get into the physics of it, because a small
hoop is going to be far more um energy intensive.
And I'm not sure that a chipmunk. As much as
I love chipmunks and squirrels, and I know our listeners do,
to wait a minute now now that I'm thinking about it,
aren't the chipmunks in the Chipmunks not regular chipmunks size?
(52:31):
They are more the size of human children that they
are the size of human children, which is that's a
grotesque blasphemy against nature. But still that might make them
more able to use an actual hula hoop. All right,
So we're gonna go ahead and call this episode here,
but we will be back next week with more toys,
generally like classic toys, I think, and we'll will explore
(52:54):
their history where they came from. Do they have ancient roots,
they have modern roots? Inevitably do they have both. In
the meantime, we'd obviously love to hear from anyone who
has thoughts on these various toys. And also, are you
a discus thrower? Have you experience with the sport of
throwing a discus? Do you have thoughts on Joe's commentary
on on on the physics of throwing the discus? What's
(53:17):
your experience with those physics? We would love to hear
from you, absolutely please share, all right, If you want
to listen to more episodes of Invention, head on over
to invention pot dot com. That's the uh, that's that's
the I guess the homepage for the show. But of
course you can find this podcast anywhere you get podcasts,
wherever it is. Make sure you've subscribed that way you
will definitely get part two of our toy exploration and
(53:39):
leave us a nice rating if you have the power
to do so, you know, whatever the page is, because
that helps us out in the long run. Also, be
sure to check out Stuff to Blow your Mind. That
is our other podcast and uh and there's you know,
years and years worth of great content there as well.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get into for
(54:00):
us with feedback on this episode, to suggest a topic
for the future, just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is
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