TED Talks · Small thing Big idea

The evolution of the coffee cup lid

You never give it any thought, And there are billions of them out there,

Level: B1 · 64 sentences

Transcript

  1. You never give it any thought,
  2. And there are billions of them out there,
  3. But the amount of design and passion and creativity
  4. That goes into this little disk is remarkable.
  5. Well, a coffee cup lid is a lid.
  6. For your coffee cup.
  7. It snaps on.
  8. It has an opening.
  9. You've got lids with a little latch that opens and closes.
  10. You've got ones that are in creative shapes.
  11. Coffee cup lids have their own vocabulary.
  12. People talk about the peripheral skirts,
  13. The press-in dimples, the fragrance outlets, the slosh factor.
  14. But you need these words because
  15. So much thought and innovation goes into these coffee cup lids.
  16. Our society is just more and more mobile.
  17. Everything is on the move.
  18. I mean, the good part is it's convenient.
  19. You can drink coffee anywhere.
  20. You don't have to stay in the diner.
  21. You can be in the subway.
  22. You can be walking.
  23. The bad part is it's harder to savor
  24. A coffee when you're taking it on the road.
  25. The first patent for a lid on a cup was in 1934,
  26. But it was for cold beverages.
  27. And in 1950, this guy named James Ruff Snyder
  28. Invented the first snap-on lid, but it didn't have an opening for drinking.
  29. In the 60s, there was this huge cultural shift
  30. Where people started drinking coffee on the move.
  31. And 7-Eleven was the first to sell coffee to go.
  32. And then came this revolution in 1967.
  33. A man named Alan Frank invented a lid
  34. That you could peel a tab off,
  35. Like in the shape of a guitar pick, and drink it from there.
  36. In 1975, another big advance.
  37. You could peel back a tab and attach it to the lid itself.
  38. So more and more people started drinking coffee on the go in 1984.
  39. A watershed moment in the history of coffee cup lids.
  40. The birth of the traveler lid.
  41. And it is iconic.
  42. You've seen it a million times.
  43. And it solved a whole host of problems.
  44. It's designed so that you don't splash your face because it's higher.
  45. Than any of the other ones.
  46. It's got this protruding rim so it slightly cools the coffee before it hits your lips.
  47. It's got a small depression in the center for your nose
  48. So you can really get in there and get maximum aroma.
  49. It's got this tiny air hole
  50. That lets the steam out and stops it from creating a vacuum.
  51. This is one of those objects
  52. Where you just don't notice it until it dribbles on your lap.
  53. So I think the coffee cup
  54. Lid will just continue to evolve
  55. And you're going to see a move
  56. Away from single use plastic lids to lids
  57. That are a little more sustainable.
  58. We're not going to stop moving.
  59. We're not going to stop drinking coffee.
  60. And I think that that's what these coffee lid engineers are trying to do,
  61. Is to make it so that the experience of taking
  62. It on the road is as good as sitting in a restaurant
  63. Drinking from a ceramic cup.
  64. Because, you know, coffee is serious business.