Today in Technology History
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January 3
On January 3, 1888, a wax drinking straw was patented for the first time.
You can see one of Stone's straws at the left, and his spindle for hand-coiling the straws at the right. (Click the picture to see Stone's entire patent.)
As the word "straw" suggests, the earliest such tools were plants -- usually reeds or other grasses. Early man sometimes used dried hollow stems for breathing underwater; later, straws were used for drinking beverages or administering medicines. Those natural straws were unsanitary, they were often fragile, and they were not always easy to come by.
In the late 1880s, artificial straws were first patented in England. They were simple paper tubes. Then along came Marvin C. Stone of Washington, D.C., a manufacturer of paper cigarette holders. Stone improved upon the artificial straw by making a tube out of sturdy manila paper and then coating it with paraffin "whereby it is rendered water-proof and adapted for use in the human mouth without injury."
According to the patent he was granted, Stone's new straw was superior to natural straws, "having the advantages of greater strength and freedom from liability to crack or split." Yet, as is often the case with new technologies, he took great pains to assure that his invention would still "closely resemble" the natural straws it was replacing.
At first, Stone's straws were manufactured by hand; in later years, his company invented a machine to make them. Today, of course, artificial straws are usually made of plastics -- but Stone's patent is still historically important for another reason: his straws were made out paper coiled and wound into a tube. Although that spiral-winding technique is not used for making straws anymore, it is still widely used for making tubes for electric and electronic components, as well as cardboard packaging tubes.
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