Millions,
The lazy susan ranks up there with the umbrella, the fork, and the printing press in the pantheon of unbelievably genius inventions. I just want to know what genius invented it or, at the very least, popularized it.
Susan, of course.
That lazy slacker.
I am getting a bunch of conflicting information. Some say it was Gail Borden, Jr. in the 1850’s.
http://finer.com/Philosophy/2002/10-11-2002.htm
Others say it was Thomas Edison.
http://www.ideasalon.org/weblogue/000384.html
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin are also mentioned as inventors.
Franklin is what they taught us in grade school. So it’s probably not him.
I was taught Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter, which the one link says was really a lazy susan. I’ve been to Monticello but I don’t remember. I thought it had a real dumbwaiter dumbwaiter.
Yes. The term Lazy Susan has only been traced to 1917. They were known as dumb waiters previously (and still are to us Brits).
The Monticello site shows its “dumbwaiters” as actually being multi-leveled tables. It does have a “lazy Susan”, straddling an opening in the wall, so that dirty dishes could be removed inobtrusively. The item in the second photo, resembling what we now call a dumbwaiter, is a wine elevator leading to the cool cellar.
Wait, I thought dumb waiters was a compartment in the wall in which you could put food and other stuff and have it sent up and down floors. And lazy susans are the round turntable things in Chinese restaurants. Am I wrong?
that is what i thought as well.
also that lazy susan’s were a corner cabinet that spun. that the spinning is what susan used to be lazy. instead of getting up or passing food you spin the food to the person at the table. and in the cabinet the items are spun to you instead of having to dive into the deep corner of the cabinet.
I’m with you there.
I wonder if this is a Britain & Oz vs. USA language problem. :smack:
The first term was “dumb waiter” and was used in Britain as early as 1749. So the idea that it was invented by Franklin or Jefferson is right out. Now this dumb waiter was NOT an elevator to take dirty dishes to the basement but rather the thing that most Americans think of when we say “Lazy Susan” today. The revolving series of trays or shelves.
But, the term “dumb waiter” was first used in the US in about the 1840’s to mean the elevator to take things from one floor to the other. So most Americans would only know a dumb waiter as the elevator thing.
“Lazy Susan” which is the ratating thing at your table was first used in print in 1912 in the US. It’s almost certainly a US thing. Why called that? Who knows.
Is this clear?
I had read that the dumb waiter was invented by Jefferson so that wait staff around the home would not overhear the conversations of political guests. They’d be out of the room so the guests could converse without worrying who was listening in.
If so, either the spinning tray or the small elevator would work to keep the staff out of dining room.
What about the idea that Jefferson invented the elevator thing?
you could hide in a dumb waiter and listen in to conversation on various floors. mostly used as a plot devise in mysteries.
wait staff would have a bit of trouble using a lazy susan as a blind.
Hardworking Helen?