Patent Office casts the deciding vote, then Warrick is the winner. He applied for a patent in , a year before Wright submitted his application. But Silly Putty made neither man rich. Hodgson was determined to bring his toy to the entire world.
In , right in the middle of the Cold War, he traveled to the Soviet Union. The Soviets thought Hodgson was an illusionist until he let people touch the stuff. Still, the toy sold well in the Soviet Union. Silly Putty eventually found more practical uses. According to a New York Times article it has the same density as human flesh, and for a time doctors used it to safely test and align X-ray computed tomography machines.
The toy that proved popular with adults as a stress reliever even joined the space race. The Apollo 8 astronauts carried Silly Putty in sterling-silver eggs on their lunar orbit.
This week Distillations is looking back at some of our favorite episodes: black bile, miracles, and Pop Rocks. How a steam-powered automobile in snuffed out the life of the brilliant naturalist and astronomer Mary Ward. Skip to main content. Podcast Video About Subscribe. As more chains link up, they no longer slip and slide. Instead, they form a large mat that resembles a net or a spider's web. This is what gives the material its puttylike qualities. Of course, nothing beats the original Silly Putty you can buy at the toy store.
Snap up more links to classic toy tidbits next. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. How Silly Putty Works. By: William Harris. Ah, the joy of cracking open that red egg and squeezing a little Silly Putty. See more pictures of classic toys. Silly Putty History " ". Look, if it hadn't been for James Wright, Peter Hodgson and all the other folks who had a hand in Silly Putty's creation, how would we be able to fashion these lovely letters?
We went into the Doubleday bookshop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street the other day, intending, in our innocence, to buy a book, and found all the clerks busy selling Silly Putty, a gooey, pinkish, repellent-looking commodity that comes in plastic containers the size and shape of eggs … we sought out Mr.
Lee Weber, the manager of the bookshop, to ascertain the mysterious link between it and Doubleday. He told us that Silly Putty is the most terrific item the Doubleday shops have been privileged to handle since 'Forever Amber. Not-so-silly Accomplishments. The Science of Silly Putty " ". One of Silly Putty's many talents: copying newsprint. It just makes a regular old photocopy seem so boring. Water: 0.
Homemade Silly Putty " ". In the name of science and Silly Putty, here we are puttering around with the stuff in our lunchroom. Empty an 8-ounce milliliter bottle of glue into the large bowl. Fill the glue bottle with warm water, shake and pour what remains in the bowl. Give everything a gentle stir. Optional: Add a drop or two of food coloring to the glue-water mixture and stir some more. If you don't add food coloring, your finished putty will be white. In the small plastic cup, add a teaspoon 5 milliliters of borax powder to 0.
Stir the solution. While stirring the glue-water mixture, slowly add a little bit of the borax solution. When he dropped boric acid into silicone oil, he got a substance that was stretchier and bouncier than rubber, with a weird added feature: When you flattened it against a newspaper or comic-book page, it picked up a perfect copy of the print it touched. Astronauts on the Apollo 8 moon mission even used the goo to keep their tools secure in zero gravity!
Although Silly Putty is very stretchy, it also breaks cleanly and, strangely enough, even shatters if hit with enough force. In , a graduate student at Alfred University in New York state dropped a pound ball of Silly Putty from the roof of a campus building to see what would happen: Would it bounce, break, or just turn into a giant pancake?
The massive ball dropped, bounced about eight feet into the air, and then shattered when it hit the ground the second time! These playful works sell for thousands of dollars. According to Crayola, more than million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold since Silly Putty eggs used to contain 1-ounce lumps. Now, they hold less than. Modern-day incarnations of Silly Putty range from neon to gold and glow-in-the-dark—a far cry from the peach-colored polymer that first filled eggs in However, scientists have never bothered to tinker with the basic formula, a mixture of silicone oil and boric acid.
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