Swim Trainer
notes: label: Description
content: Plastic swim trainer with tag that reads "Vinylite Plastics / S. Buchsbaum & Co. / Chicago." Samuel Buchsbaum was a Hungarian Jew who arrived in Chicago in the 1880s, set up shop as a jewelry manufacturer, and obtained several patents for decorative and technical devices. S. Buchsbaum & Co. began producing plastic items during World War II. Many of these were sold as Elasti-Glass, a term the firm trademarked in 1939, and that the Federal Trade Commission later found misleading as the material had no glass-like properties.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Illinois, Chicago
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Plastics Institute of America
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1981.0825.3
label: catalog number
content: 1981.0825.3
label: accession number
content: 1981.0825
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Swim Trainer
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: folded: 14 cm x 19 cm; 5 1/2 in x 7 1/2 in
label: Measurements
content: unfolded: 36.5 cm x 40 cm; 14 3/8 in x 15 3/4 in
label: Measurements
content: overall; folded: 3 3/8 in x 17 1/8 in x 9 3/4 in; 8.5725 cm x 43.4975 cm x 24.765 cm