But in the early ’70s - the Hulseman family is uncertain of the exact date - Leo’s son, Robert Hulseman, who had started working at Solo at 18 years old, flew to Germany to observe a plastic-extruding process that “co-extruded” multiple layers of plastic at once. Loerzel is also a copy editor for the Tribune.)īy the 1950s, Solo was developing cups with wax-coated walls that kept drinks cold at drive-ins and theaters by the ’60s, the company was a leader in disposable cups, best known for its cone-shaped cups and Cozy Cup disposable inserts for coffee.
CONTRAPTION MAKER PACKING UP MOVIE
(On the occasion of Solo’s partnership with the Lucasfilm movie “Solo, ” writer Robert Loerzel reported recently for Chicago Magazine that Hulseman likely adopted the company name from a Czech immigrant who invented a solo-use cup maker that would also provide Hulseman with his early footing. That same year a Vortex salesman named Leo Hulseman -a South Dakota native whose success would later bankroll a side career as a prominent North Shore polo player - left the company to start his own cup business. In 1936, the Individual Drinking Cup Company came to Chicago (at the time a hub for foldable paper products) to merge with Vortex Cup, then a leading manufacturer of conical disposable cups. By the ’30s, the image-savvy company was a household brand, sponsoring NBC radio serials (and later hiring Saul Bass, the legendary graphic designer known for his striking movie posters and credit sequences, to create its logo). For years, the Individual Drinking Cup Company of New York - later renamed Dixie - had been popularizing campaigns against common cups, circulating pamphlets that showed skull-shaped mugs chained to fountains.
“At the same time, the commodification of drinking water - I’d say that starts right about here.”īy 1911, a Tribune campaign against communal “death cups,” as the paper called them, led to a state ban on “common drinking cups” in civic spaces. “Basically, conditions were perfect for disposable cups,” Flinchum said. ” Paradoxically, the public became more aware of how germs were spread about the time temperance advocates were suggesting public troughs of water as an alternative to a stiff whiskey. Said Russell Flinchum, a design historian at North Carolina State University: “You find concerns among Brits about drinking from the contaminated Thames in the 19th century, but in this country, if you’re looking for water in public, it’s a bucket of water and a ladle, and should you drink from the same ladle as a sick person. The trouble with that - a historical and relative lack of cheap, ready-to-use cups for everyone else. So to distinguish a rich man’s cup from a poor man’s, cups of the wealthy and ruling classes needed to be “made with great labor.” Hence, golden chalices, carved rhino horns and glass tankards. The problem with this, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry for drinking vessels, is anyone could afford a coconut. The first were likely natural - hollowed-out ostrich eggs, coconut shells, etc. Though to get there, I need to explain a few things about beverage receptacles. Most likely, the cup was part of a natural evolution, created without any clear innovation. “When we bought (Solo) in 2012, we were really frustrated at how little company history and artifacts they had retained,” said Margo Burrage, communications director for Michigan-based Dart. Such as, well: When exactly was the red Solo cup invented and why.
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The red cup, says Louise Harpman, New York architect and design expert (whose “Coffee Lids,” a new book with architect Scott Specht, is the history of another Solo-related innovation), became a deeply American tradition, “the opposite of wimpy, a firm handshake that always feels right when you grab it.” Conversely, a Disney screenwriter working on a teen movie once told the Los Angeles Times that the cup is so associated with youthful transgression, “a red-Solo-cup conversation” is filmmaker code for uneasy implications.Īnd yet, according to Dart itself, mysteries remain. Since it was created in the early ’70s, the red Solo plastic cup has become synonymous with good times, backyard picnics, frat-house keggers, tailgating.
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