It was a splendid achievement and a dazzling innovation. Today it is an essential part of everyday modern life, and yet has its origins 125 years ago this year.
No, not the Financial Times – though we have marked our anniversary this week – but one of a number of inventions from 1888 that deserves to be celebrated too: the humble drinking straw.
That year Marvin Stone patented the spiral winding process used to make the straws – ideally 8½ inches long and just wide enough to prevent the user swallowing lemon seeds. For John Boyd Dunlop it was the year of the pneumatic tyre, originally invented for his son’s tricycle.
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