And too bad he didn’t invent it in the last 10 years. If he did, with the royalties he’d be richer than Bill Gates. It’s pretty much our national headwear now, is it as popular in other countries?
Don’t know who invented it…but here’s a short history of it…
For a previous discussion, that doesn’t really answer the question…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=8068
Reeder’s site has more usefull information. There must be some definitive answer somewhere though if there is an exact date for its’ introduction.
When I was a kid in the '60s and '70s, I rarely saw anyone wearing a baseball cap. Unless they were playing baseball, of course. Then, when I was starting high school, we moved to a rural area and I began to see them a little more often. We called them “cat caps” because the most common ones were advertising caps from farm machinery companies – Catapiller being the ubiquitous example. At first, the caps were really only worn by selected groups in town – farmers, of course, and farmer’s kids, as well as the “tech ed” types at my high school. My own dad (who was a millwright at the Masonite factory in town, as well as the owner of a small hobby farm), didn’t wear one – he preferred an engineer’s cap. However, most of his fellow Masonite workers wore a cat cap. Then, sometime between the time I graduated (1978) and my 5th year reunion, the wearing of the cat cap exploded. In 1983, I came home for a visit, and saw a cat cap on practically every male head. And it wasn’t just in Ukiah, either. By the mid '80s, the damn things were everywhere. Just like now. BTW, I never hear them called “cat caps” anymore. Now they’re called “ball caps,” I guess. Though my dad (who always has to be different) calls them “gimme caps” because they’re often given away as advertising. His supply of engineer caps dried up around 1990, and he’s switched over to the ball caps himself and is rarely seen without one.