RIP Co-Creator of Classic Fad - The Hula Hoop

Last week we lost Richard Knerr (on the right), co-founder of Wham-O, and sometimes credited with co-creating one of the most amazing fads in US history; the Hula Hoop.  In 1958, inspired by Australian bamboo rings used for exercise, Wham-O manufactured their Hula Hoops in new-fangled candy striped plastic - later adding beads to make that trademark swooshing sound.

Knerr & partner's company Wham-O sold over 100 million Hula Hoops from 1958-1960 (25 million of those were sold in just four months).  That means that just about every other US resident's hips were ringed by a hula hoop of their very own.  However there's an even more amazing thing to consider in this "American Dream" success story.

After creating a national craze, and selling millions of hoops, can you guess what Wham-O's profits eventually were?  Less than $10,000 and a massive stock of unsold hoops.  Wham-O had made some bad business deals, and thought that the Hula Hoop fad indicated a permanent market.  Also, the hoops tended to last for years - so in a way the toys were victims of their own plasticky durability.

In his 1985 book American Fads, Richard Johnson writes that the Hula Hoop is “the standard against which all national crazes are measured”.  That's a telling statement, as we can learn a lot both from the meteoric rise of the fad, to the warehouses of unsold heaps of Hula's.  In case you're worried, Wham-O did just fine even after the hoop swooped its last loop.  They went on to invent and market such toys as the Frisbee, Nerf, Superball, and countless other perennial childhood favorites.

One of my favorite movies takes its inspiration from the hula hoop.  It's a Cohen Brothers film called "Hudsucker Proxy", and while it's far from any real facts surrounding the actual invention of what they called the "Extruded Plastic Dingus", it's the kind of story that you wish happens along the way to developing a classic toy.

Wiremate, a wire management system

Tony Pagoto

Wiremate, a wire management system

Pagoto's molded resin boxes organize, protect and conceal the cluttered tangle of wires that accumulate behind desks and home entertainment systems. Of his foray into the world of inventions, Pagoto says, "Dreams and determination aren't only for the young. My partners and I are 'older guys'. I am 64 and my partners Don and John are 64 and 68. We have known each other for over 50 years. They say never to go into business with friends and relatives, but we have done that and have benefited greatly from it."

Nanoengineers Invent New Biomaterial

Nanoengineers Invent New Biomaterial That More Closely Mimics 

Human Tissue

A new biomaterial designed for repairing damaged human tissue doesn't wrinkle up when it is stretched. The invention from nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego marks a significant breakthrough in tissue engineering because it more closely mimics the properties of native human tissue.

Shaochen Chen, professor in the Department of NanoEngineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, hopes future tissue patches, which are used to repair damaged heart walls, blood vessels and skin, for example, will be more compatible with native human tissue than the patches available today. His findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

The new biomaterial was created using a new biofabrication platform that Chen is developing under a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. This biofabrication technique uses light, precisely controlled mirrors and a computer projection system -- shined on a solution of new cells and polymers -- to build three-dimensional scaffolds with well-defined patterns of any shape for tissue engineering.

"We are also exploring other opportunities," said Chen. "It's a new material. I think it's just a matter of time before more people will pick up and find applications for it in defense, energy and communications, for instance."

Although Chen's team is focused on creating biological materials, he said the manufacturing technology could be used to engineer many other kinds of materials including metal parts used in ships and spacecraft, for example.

Shape turned out to be essential to the new material's mechanical property. While most engineered tissue is layered in scaffolds that take the shape of circular or square holes, Chen's team created two new shapes called "reentrant honeycomb" and "cut missing rib." Both shapes exhibit the property of negative Poisson's ratio (i.e. not wrinkling when stretched) and maintain this property whether the tissue patch has one or multiple layers. One layer is double the thickness of a human hair, and the number of layers used in a tissue patch depends on the thickness of the native tissue that doctors are trying to repair. A single layer would not be thick enough to repair a heart wall or skin tissue, for example. The next phase of research will involve working with the Department of Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering to make tissue grafts to repair damaged blood vessels.

The team includes postdoctoral researchers in multiple disciplines: David Fozdar with the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Mechanical Engineering; Li-Hsin Han with the Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Orthopeadic Surgery; and Pranav Soman and Jim Woo Lee at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering Department of NanoEngineering

NICE TO KNOW THESE FACTS

NICE TO KNOW THIS 1. Chewing on gum while cutting onions can help a Person from stop producing tears. Try it next time you chop onions!!!!!! !!!! 2. Until babies are six months old, they can breathe and swallow at the same time. Indeed convenient! 3. Offered a new pen to write with, 97% of all people will write their own name.  4. Male mosquitoes are vegetarians. Only females bite.  5. The average person's field of vision encompasses a 200-degree wide angle.  6. To find out if a watermelon is ripe, knock it, and if it sounds hollow Then it is ripe. 7. Canadians can send letters with personalized postage stamps showing their own photos on each stamp. 8. Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old. 9. It snowed in the Sahara Desert in February of 1979. 10. Plants watered with warm water grow larger and more quickly than plants watered with cold water.  11. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times. 12. Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave. 13. Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.  14. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears Never stop growing. 15. Everyone's tongue print is different, like fingerprints. 16. Contrary to popular belief, a swallowed chewing gum doesn't stay in the gut. It will pass through the system and be excreted.  17. At 40 Centigrade a person loses about 14. 4 calories per hour by Breathing. 18. There is a hotel in Sweden built entirely out of ice; it is rebuilt Every year. 19. Cats, camels and giraffes are the only animals in the world that walk Rightfoot, right foot, left foot, left foot, rather than right foot,left Foot...  20. Onions help reduce cholesterol if eaten after a fatty meal. 21. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting. 22. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch And make it look like it's smiling.  23. The color blue can have a calming affect on people. 24. Depending upon the shade, the brain may send up to 11 tranquilizing Chemicals to calm the body 25. Leonardo DA Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously. Now we know why his pictures were exquisite!! 26. Names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru(Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).  27. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and parrot. 28. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.  29. Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child Reaches 2-6 years of age  30. The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start. 31. Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire. 32. All U.S. Presidents have worn glasses; some of them just didn't like to be seen wearing them in public.  33. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple. 34. Raw cashews are poisonous and must be roasted before.