Who invented straws

Date not known. Marvin Chester Stone was feeling thirsty. Winding down after a long day's work, he sipped a mint julep at his home off 9th Street in Washington, D. But something was getting in his way. More particularly, something was getting in his drink. It was an unwelcome reedy residue. It was his straw. This was the s, when gentlemen sipped their whiskey through long tubes made of natural rye that lent a grassy flavor to whatever drink they plopped in.

For many centuries, it was not uncommon for a sot to order a gin and tonic and wind up drinking a gin and tonic infused with natural grass flavors. Stone didn't have much patience when it came to non-mint plants floating around in his mint julep, and did something radical that billions of people around the world have appreciated in the years since. He reinvented the straw. In his first try, he wound paper around a pencil to make a thin tube, slid out the pencil from one end, and applied glue between the strips.

Voila: paper straw! Also: glue? This was a halfway solution. Stone refined it by building a machine to wind paper into a tube and coat the outside with a paraffin wax to keep it from melting in bourbon.

He patented the product in Today, Marvin Chester Stone is considered the godfather of the straw. But who drinks soda or water from wax-paper tubes these days? Marvin Stone decided the ideal straw was 8. The product was patented on January 3, By , his factory was producing more straws than cigarette holders.

The company was housed in a large manufacturing establishment at F Street, N. On February 6, , Stone applied for two U. Stone was reported to be a kind and generous employer, looking after the "moral and social condition of his working girls," and supplying them with a library, music room, meeting room for debates, and a dancing floor in the F Street building.

Stone died on May 17, , before his machines were brought into production. The company continued under the leadership of his brothers-in-law L. They fought off a patent infringement case in against William Thomas of the American Straw Company; Thomas was a former employee. In , the first machine was put into production by the Stone Straw Corporation to machine-wind straws, ending the hand-winding process. Later, other kinds of spiral-wound paper and non-paper products were made. In , electrical engineers began to use spiral-wound tubes in the first mass-produced radios.

All were made by the same process invented by Stone. Spiral-wound tubing is now found everywhere—in electric motors, electrical apparatus, electronic devices, electronic components, aerospace, textile, automotive, fuses, batteries , transformers, pyrotechnics, medical packaging, product protection, and packaging applications.

Bendable straws, articulated straws, or bendy straws have a concertina-type hinge near the top for bending the straw into a more favorable angle for sipping. Joseph Friedman invented the bendy straw in Stone died at his Washington, D.

His remains were buried at Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery. Stone took out several patents in his life—in addition to the cigarette holders and straws, he invented a fountain pen and an umbrella, and his last invention was for adding color to fine china—but he was also said to be a philanthropist.

Read more about efforts to reduce plastic straws. While plastic straws are a recent invention, humans have been using hollow, cylindrical tubes to bring liquid to their lips for centuries.

Ancient Sumerians , one of the first societies known to brew beer—5, years ago—submerged long, thin tubes made from precious metals into large jars to reach the liquid sitting below fermentation byproducts. A man named Marvin Stone was the first to file a patent for a drinking straw, in The Smithsonian Institute cites a widely touted legend saying Stone was drinking a mint julep on a hot summer day in when his piece of rye grass, then used as a straw, began to disintegrate.

Stone, a paper cigarette holder manufacturer, decided he could make something better. He wrapped strips of paper around a pencil, glued them together, and soon had an early prototype of paper drinking straws. He patented his design in , and by , his factory Stone Industrial today a part of Precision Products Group was mass producing them.

It wasn't until the s that straws gained the ability to bend. Watching his daughter struggle to easily reach her milkshake through a straight paper straw, inventor Joseph Friedman inserted a screw into the straw, wrapped floss around the screw's grooves, and took out the screw. With indentations, the straw could easily bend without breaking. Friedman patented his invention and created the Flex-Straw Company to churn out his design.

Hospitals were among the first to embrace bendable straws, because they allowed patients to drink while lying in bed. In the decades that followed, the popular paper straw found its way into sodas and milkshakes across America. First invented in by an American named John Wesley Hyatt , the first plastic products were made from a material called celluloid that imitated animal products like ivory. Other plastic compounds took hold in the following decades: Bakelite was used for household items, nylon for stockings, and acrylic in military planes.

Both durable and cheap, plastic was being churned out of factories at unprecedented rates during the second world war. When the conflict ended, American manufacturers needed a new consumer market. In her book Plastic: A Toxic Love Story , science writer Susan Freinkel describes a wartime plastic production infrastructure suddenly devoid of wartime plastic to produce. Manufacturers turned their attention to a growing market for cheap consumer goods.

No longer bogged down by wartime frugality, Americans wanted more and at lower costs. Straws were among the many throw-away products being rapidly manufactured by large corporations. This trend started during s when plastic enabled fast and cheap creation of drinking straws. Even though plastic straws can be reused, this was not practiced much and large quantities of non-biodegradable waste materials today can produce great impact to our environment.

Because of this, many international companies are starting manufacture of biodegradable drinking straws. The History of Drinking Straws Drinking straws represent one of the oldest eating utensils ever made, but its popularity only came with the industrial revolution of s, introduction of rye grass straw, and later industrial produced paper straws.