By September of that year, more than 300,000 slides had been sold. According to Walsh, Carrier showed his invention to coworkers, and found out that his boss “knew someone at a toy company up in San Gabriel.” Trading out Naugahyde for a less-expensive vinyl plastic and shortening the length to 25 feet, Wham-O released the “new amazing invention, the Wham-O Slip ‘N Slide Magic Waterslide” at the Toy Fair trade show in New York City in February 1961. Namely, the successful toy manufacturer Wham-O, founded by two University of Southern California graduates in 1948. Others saw beauty in Carrier’s design, too. You attach the hose to one end and then sew the other end shut so that there's pressure, and then you put spaces in between the stitches so that water literally shoots out every inch and lubricates the entire surface of the slide.” “The best inventions are so simple that people are like, ‘Wow, why didn't I think of that?’ But if you look at the patent, I mean it is really genius. Seams stitched across the length of the fabric at regular intervals also carried water laterally, wetting the repellant surface but not making it soggy.
The duct had punctures along the length of it, from which water could be released via pressure from the hose. From his original strip of Naugahyde, Carrier took a ream of the plastic material and sewed a tube into the side, forming an “irrigating duct” to which a hose could attach.
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Carrier's "Aquatic Play Equipment," patented May 2, 1961.Īccording to Carrier’s 1961 patent, the “ aquatic play equipment ” was a portable surface for the “sport” of body planing. The vinyl-coated, waterproof fabric was a vast improvement-slicker and safer-over the perilous concrete. The next day, Carrier, who worked as an upholsterer with a boat-manufacturing company, brought home a 50-foot roll of Naugahyde, which he unraveled on the driveway.
“Mike told me the story of his dad saying, ‘well you guys are going to kill yourself sliding on concrete’,” says Tim Walsh, game inventor and author of Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. To escape the heat, the boys had turned the hose on the painted concrete, creating a cool, slippery surface to play on. It was the summer of 1960, and Robert Carrier had returned home from work to find his 10-year-old son, Mike, and his friends careening down their driveway in Lakewood, California. The invention of the Slip ‘N Slide is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the result of some childhood shenanigans. It is this shared experience-the visceral response to seeing that plastic chute atop the lawn-that makes Slip ‘N Slide one of the most enduring toys of all time. While my fondest memory of the Slip ‘N Slide is messier than most, it nevertheless connects me to generations of kids who have spent their summers skidding through backyards, soaked with delight in their very own water world. The seniors at my high school decided the incoming freshmen needed a bonding experience, and so they laid out at least a dozen bright yellow plastic slides across the soccer fields, dumped Kraft macaroni and cheese on top, and turned on the hoses. It was August 2000, and I’d been picking noodles out of my hair for days.
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