Welcome Fixers to another Historical Thursday! This week we will be entering the wonderful world of accidental creations. In 1943 a naval engineer named Richard T. James was attempting to develop a way to monitor horsepower on naval battleships, when he dropped one of the tension springs and it hit the ground and continued to move he was inspired to create the beloved, Slinky! The name being coined by his wife, Betty James, from the Swedish word for sleek and sinuous.
After spending two years figuring out the best materials to use for the toy, it was presented for debut at Gimbel’s Department Store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the 1945 Christmas season. Despite James being nervous about the reception of his product, 400 Slinkies were sold during the 90 minute Gimbel demo.
Following the successful demonstration, the James founded James Spring & Wire Company (later renamed James Industries) with $500 dollars and began production. Today, all Slinkys are made in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania using the original equipment designed and engineered by Richard James. Each one is made from 80 feet of wire and over a quarter billion Slinkys have been sold worldwide.
Information courtesy of: Inventors.com, and WEB.MIT.EDU
Images courtesy of: Inventors.com, and Wikipedia
As always, if YOU have an idea for a future Historical Thursday, please email it to me at thereifixedit@gmail.com.
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Q: What does a Slinky and Kwame Kilpatrick (former mayor of Detroit) have in common?
A: Most of the time, they just sit there doing nothing, but they’re still fun to push down the stairs once in a while.
A lot of people have that quality lol
Where do they differ? The Slinky is more intelligent…
“Whoops I accidentally a whole slinky”?
Whoops, you accidentally can’t English.
It’s a meme
No, I’m fairly certain it’s a Slinky. :p
the meme was stupid when it was fresh and new, now that it’s old and dated it’s completely crap.
I had a rainbow-coloured one. For about two hourse before I broke it xD
And I spelling failed. Hours or horse? There’s the question.
Well, if you gave your slinky to two horses, of course it broke.
It broke to show you that modern American technology sub-contracted to China/Taiwan (read as: “cheap knock-off”) is no substitute for the real thing…If it’s not metal, it’s not a Slinky. You kids have to learn that plastic is never the answer to amusement or finance…
The plastic slinkys suck!
It was a torsion spring, but anyway…
Jim
“Matches” were discovered because someone tried to wipe-off an experimental explosive from a mixing-stick on the floor, and it ignited.
This is how Fail becomes a Win…
Dear Slinky: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/slinky
Slinkys never worked for me either
I was disappoint.
Some people are like slinkys. Not really good for much, but fun to push down stairs.
I heard this quote too: Some people are like slinkys. Not really good for anything, but you can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
Unfortunately, this quote and the nickname “Slinky” followed me all throughout High School…
/lives in Hollidaysburg, PA
I have an old school slinky on my desk for when I need that calming shhhhing shhhhing noise to get focused again. It’s a marvelous meditation tool.
That totaly reminds me of “The Pretender” now
I had an epiphany! Linksys = slinkys? Coincidence? Yeah, probably.
Not really, Both are incredibly hard to use and neither do much once they do work.
I can’t imagine a Slinky as “hard to use”…If you can topple a Jenga-stack, you are far over-qualified to use a Slinky as it is…
If you find a LinkSys router “hard to use”, then maybe you shouldn’t be using a router because a router might be too *technical* for you.
You accidentally WHAT a whole Slinky?!
Ate it?
Sat on it?
Joined it in holy matrimony?
Fired it out of a cannon into the Pentagon?
Used it to break into Fort Knox?
Walked to the moon with it on your head?
Felt it up?
Wrapped it around your–
Okay, that’s enough of that. I’m leaving before I get too guttery. … Popcorn, anyone?
You clearly have only accidentally no more than a partial Slinky. When you accidentally a whole Slinky, you will be the first to know.
Is “IAccidentallyASlinky.com” already taken as a domain-name, or can I haz it?
(by the time anyone has seen this, I’m sure that 20 others have stolen it)
Hum… “the Swedish word for sleek and sinuous”. That’s not how I would translate “slinka”, though it’s a tricky word with several meanings. As a noun it can mean a young woman of dubious character (ranging from wench to whore), but as a verb it’s something like move softly but quickly, slip stealthily, tag along, slip down.
Indeed the same thing I was thinking. Lexin@Nada gives the translation “slip, slink, steal”, which is quite interesting because “slink” might actually have gotten it’s way into the English language by the way of Slinky.
Is this getting too Swedish and language-geeky for y’all yet?
Yeah, agree. I read an article about how he picked the Swedish verb “slinky” from “slinka”, as Carl T put it. Not the whore version
Too bad it hasn’t been translated correctly – always been a bit proud of the name Slinky being of Swedish origin, but seeing this flawed description is somewhat embarrasing.
I am amused by the fact that someone named Rick James invented the Slinky.
The dark side of slinky:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/slinky
.
It rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs,
Runs over your neighbor’s dog.
It’s great for a snack, and fits on your back.
It’s Log™, Log™, Log™!
It’s Log™, it’s Log™,
It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.
It’s Log™, it’s Log™, it’s better than bad, it’s good.”
Everyone wants a Log™
You’re gonna love it, Log™
Come on and get your Log™
Everyone needs a Log™
Log™ Log™ Log™
LOG™ FROM BLAMMO
Stimpy is still a bit bitter about this product, no matter how much Ren likes it…
I always thought the alone or in pairs part in the ad sounded like “and noone repairs”, seeing as once a slinky gets tangled its FUBR.
Used to dumpster dive at the factory as a kid. We’d bring home all kinds of deformed slinkys and other random stuff they made there. Mom loved it…well not really. LOL
I’m confused. Is it Richard T. James (in the description) or Richard P. James (in the newspaper article)?
“The name being coined by his wife, Betty James, from the Swedish word for sleek and sinuous” Uhm, wait, what? There is no word in the Swedish language that even even resembles anything remotely close to “slinky”…
yeah I can remember I had a couple
must have been really skinny as a kid, running up and down the stairs for these things..
this reminds me of the scene from Ace Ventura 2….
Am I the only one who thinks the boy in the bottom right corner of the ad looks like a young Anthony Michael Hall?
How interesting that the subject of “Slinky”, a mere toy intended for amusement, can generate such contentious discussion. There’s a lot of repressed anger in the world, eh?
I really liked these things but I never mannaged to make them go down a staircase even once…
Slinkys were used during the vietnam war by radio operators and many carried them as standard equipment. They would swing them over branches and then attach them to their radios. This would give them an increased range on the radios.