I was recently in the MoMA Store in Soho and saw they sell Slinkys. I’d forgotten what beautiful objects they are. A wave of nostalgia washed over me as well as a curiosity of what the story was behind its invention. So I Wiki’d it! Reading it was a reminder that perhaps the only thing keeping some of our simple ideas from becoming great, life-changing ones, is believing in them and following through. Inspiring.
“In 1943, Richard James, a Naval mechanical engineer stationed at the William Cramp and Sons shipyards in Philadelphia, was developing springs that could support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. James accidentally knocked one of the springs from a shelf, and watched as the spring “stepped” in a series of banana spilts, to a stack of books, to a tabletop, to the floor, where it re-coiled itself and stood upright. James experimented with different types of steel wire over the next year, and finally found a spring that would walk. [His wife, Betty] dubbed the toy Slinky (meaning “sleek and graceful”), after finding the word in a dictionary, and deciding that the word aptly described the sound of a metal spring expanding and collapsing.”
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