Birthday cocktail straws (03/01)

January 3 is celebrated in the world as an unusual holiday — this date is considered the birthday of the cocktail straw (Drinking Straw Day).

Straw — tube-shaped device designed to draw any drinks into your mouth for the purpose of subsequent ingestion. Initially, the straw for drinking cocktails was made from straw containing hollow cereal stems — rye tubes, which is what gives rise to the name of this « device».

According to legend, the first artificial cocktail straw was invented by American entrepreneur Marvin Stone, owner of a factory for the production of paper cigarette mouthpieces. As the story goes, he once sat sadly thinking about the state of his business as things were going badly at the factory, drinking a cocktail through a rye straw. Some of her fibers split and during the next draw in of fluid, they got stuck on Marvin’s teeth. But I must say that this constantly irritated him.

Then he, taking a strip of paper and spreading glue around its entire length, wound a spiral around a pencil, and then removed the resulting tube. And he got a straw through which drinking a cocktail became much more convenient. True, I had to drink very quickly, since the paper got wet in the first few seconds and stopped holding its shape. Stone decided to refine his invention and a few days later found a solution when he came across a postage stamp (postage stamps in the United States at that time were made of manila paper, the raw material of which included manila hemp, which is why the paper had very high strength). It was from this paper that Stone began making straws. Moreover, he took as a basis such a diameter that while drinking it was impossible to «draw a lemon bone…

On January 3, 1888, Marvin Stone patented his invention — straw — he received documents from the Washington Patent Office for the invention of paper straw for drinking cocktails and other liquids for № 375962. And already in 1890, their production became his main business, and at first cocktail straws were made by hand. It was not until 1906 that the paper straw machine was invented.

The designers also did not ignore the straw (Photo: exopixel, licensed from Shutterstock.com)

The next stage of straw evolution occurred in the mid-1930s, when realtor Joseph B. Friedman) continued the development of the structure by introducing a corrugated section into the straw to allow it to be bent for greater ease of use. For which he received a US patent on September 28, 1937.

Oddly enough, none of the straw producers were interested in his idea. Then, after an unsuccessful attempt to sell his invention, Friedman decided to make them himself. He developed several technologies that made it possible to mass produce this type of straw, and was able to promote the product to the market. In 1939, Friedman founded the Flexible Straw Corporation to make «flexible straws» and began mass production of his invention. 10 years later, this business made Friedman a millionaire.

One of the first, in addition to bars and restaurants, to appreciate the new hospital product and hospitals, — bedridden patients could now be watered without spilling liquid or using glass tubes, which required sterilization and often broke. The flexible straws have remained almost unchanged since then.

Finally, the last stage of straw evolution occurred in the second half of the 20th century, when Otto Dieffenbach, owner of a small sewing machine store in Baltimore, invented the cellophane cocktail straw. And although, as in the situation with Friedman, the inventor himself had to find ways to promote his invention to the market, his works were rewarded. He himself came up with a machine for making such straws, created his own profitable business and achieved prosperity.

Today, although straws have become a fairly common item in our lives, they have not been ignored by designers, thanks to whom they have different sizes, shapes, colors, decorations... Moreover, straws are used not only for drinking various alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks; creative people also love to use them to create various jewelry, crafts and compositions.

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