30 August: Slinky

Slinky Day: A Slinky is a toy in the form of a spring, which can appear to “walk” down a flight of stairs. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Slinky toy:

1. The Slinky was invented by an American naval engineer called Richard James. He was trying to make a spring which would keep sensitive instruments balanced in rough seas. He accidentally knocked on of his springs over and watched as it “walked” from the shelf to a pile of books to the floor. He saw its potential as a toy.
2. His wife, Betty, came up with the name after paging through a dictionary to find a word which summed the invention up. Slinky is a Swedish word meaning sleek, sinuous or graceful.
3. Each Slinky is made from 80 feet of wire. The wire is flat, with a high carbon count and a diameter of 1.5 millimeters (0.0575 inches).
4. More than 300 million Slinkies have been sold worldwide since they went into production, using 50,000 tons of wire. If all the Slinkies ever made were joined together, they would circle the Earth over 126 times.
5. The Slinky factory is located in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and till uses the original equipment designed and engineered by Richard James. Slinky is the Official State Toy of Pennsylvania.
6. It's more than just a toy. It is also an educational tool which can be used to demonstrate laws of physics to schoolchildren. The rules which govern the mechanics of a Slinky are Hooke's law and the effects of gravitation.
7. They have even been taken into space to be used in zero gravity experiments. A Slinky doesn't work too well in space. "It won't slink at all," Dr. M. Rhea Seddon said in a video to show how popular toys behave in space. "It sort of droops."
8. During the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers used Slinkys as mobile radio antennas.
9. They can even be used to make Music. In 1959, composer John Cage created an avant garde work called Sounds of Venice. One of the sounds in it is the sound of an amplified Slinky. If you hold a Slinky in the air and strike one end, it makes a metallic tone, like a laser gun sound, which sharply lowers in pitch. The effect can be amplified by attaching a plastic cup to one end of the Slinky.
10. Slinkies entered the Toy Hall of Fame in the year 2000, and in 1999 they where depicted on a US postage stamp.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

Like my author page on Facebook for news on new books and blog posts.

Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest

Check out my Writing blog