Box of Straws
date: label: Date made
content: 1950s
notes: label: Description
content: This is a set of 33 flexible straws and one eight inch paper tube filled with bubble gum, all in a cardboard box. The box has drawings on the front which depict a boy blowing bubbles and a boy and girl using straws. These were manufactured by the Flex Straw company.
label: Description
content: Joseph B. Friedman (1900-1982) was an inventor who held many patents – most notably, the flexible straw (US patents 2094268 and 2550797). In the early 1940s, he had created a prototype of the machinery to manufacture flexible straws and after the Second World War he moved to Los Angeles and founded FlexStraw. A manufacturing plant was established in Santa Monica on Olympic Avenue and the straw was first marketed to hospitals as hygienic – the first order was placed by the American Hospital Supply.
label: Description
content: In 1953 the company was sold to Maryland Cup Corporation, who already made straight straws so they added the flexible straws to its line of products.
place: label: place made
content: United States: California, Santa Monica
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Manufacturing
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Robert A. Friedman, Pamela B. Leeds, Linda A. Reiss, and Judith B. Rosen
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2001.0247.02
label: catalog number
content: 2001.0247.02
label: accession number
content: 2001.0247
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Straws
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 21.5 cm x 13 cm x 1.5 cm; 8 7/16 in x 5 1/8 in x 9/16 in