By Sean Fallon, 10:00 PM on Fri Aug 28 2009, 4,933 views
Whether you call it a « spork » or a « foon, » we must all ask ourselves where we would be without the genius that brought fork and spoon together as one.
Actually, we owe a debt to several industrious culinary proto-spork pioneers: Samuel W. Francis filed a patent in 1874 for a combination fork, and knife and spoon. Harry L. McCoy invented a cutting spoon in 1908 followed by Frank Emmenegger’s tined edge spoon in 1912. However, the first person to actually file a trademark for the term « Spork » appears to be a man named Hyde W. Ballard (although there is no official record of this). The term eventually passed down to The Van Brode Milling Company in 1970, but they stupidly gave it up to the UK’s, Plastico Limited in 1975.
There are many imitators, like Lifeventure’s laughable « Forkspoon »—but in the end there can be only one true Spork design. And, after over 100 years, we finally experienced its penultimate evolution:
Our lives will never be the same. [Wikipedia T-Shirt via NerdyShirts]
Ingenuity at its best.
Sharpen one side and it becomes a knife also. I have a set of twelve given to me by an Australian wine merchant whose brother manufactures them. Great for cocktail parties where you can hold a glass and a plate in one hand and eat with the other.
I don’t believe I’ve ever had the privilege of using one of these little marvels of modern technology and ingenuity 🙂