Hey, Straw-Sippers!

At first glance, one would easily assume that straws are a frill of the modern day—something that likely came around about the same time as 1950s diners and fast food chains. But they go back much further than that! Nowadays, we’ve got straws made from a variety of materials. The most common that you’ll find here at Everything Summer Camp are plastic—but not the disposable sort, utilized within a water bottle. Otherwise, there are metal straws, paper straws, disposable plastic straws, and more.

Still I’m sure none of you have used a straw like the first ones ever made. Older than the invention of paper itself, history tells us straws were first invented 6 to 7000 years ago by the ancient Mesopotamians who crafted them out of wood and sometimes gold! The purpose came in warmer, buggier climates, making it easy to avoid any insects that may have landed in their drinks.

The 1800s brought about new methods and materials for construction as well as an increase in popularity for this ancient drinking method. 

Why Not Rye?
The Industrial Revolution in America saw straws getting made from organic elements. Popular materials were rye and wheat grains. These straws—rye especially—would lend a grass-like taste to a beverage. They’d also get soggy quickly. People were ultimately left unimpressed. While the public appreciated the concept, they saw plenty of room for improvement. At least one American inventor, Marvin Stone, did.

Stone’s Straws
Marvin Stone came up with the paper straw which proved to be far superior to the grain straws, both in sustainability and consumer-friendliness. Marvin’s family was already in the business of tubular products such as pencil sharpeners, giving him an edge on straw manufacturing of a large scale. He determined the perfect straw length and width—8.5 inches by 21.5 centimeters. And he developed his manufacturing process: wrap pencils in paper, glue the paper, remove the pencil.

Drastic Plastic
A sudden boom of fast-food restaurants in the 20^th Century brought a great demand for disposable plastics such as cutlery and straws. Novelty straws only upped the plastic game with patents like Slurpee Straws and Crazy Straws. For whatever reason, plastic straws were pushed and normalized for over 60 years, kicking paper straws aside despite their obvious benefit to the environment over plastic.

The fight against disposable plastic straws is being fought with reusable water bottles as well as reusable straws. Do your part and shop our selection when you click right here. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Folks! Till next time.

- John

Hey, Temperature-Takers!

No matter the season, people are constantly checking the temperature in order to know how to dress as well as what to expect from the weather. A valuable technology for camping, Lewis N. Clark Digital Flashlight Alarm Clock features the calendar day and date and, of course, the temperature!

Checking the temperature is such an everyday habit for us, it might be hard to imagine a time when we couldn’t. But it was just less than 500 years ago that there were no thermometers and no unit of measurement either such as the Fahrenheit or Celsius scales we use today.

Over 400 years ago in the late 1600s, Galileo and a few others rigged up what they called a thermoscope. Thermoscopes worked using tools in water to measure buoyancy and, thus, were able to detect changes in temperature. The degree scale had yet to be developed, which meant that thermoscopes couldn’t actually pinpoint a specific temperature just the rising or falling of heat.

It was 1654 when the Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II, got wise and used alcohol enclosed in a glass tube. The alcohol would expand and contract when heated and cooled—the very phenomenon at work in our modern mercury thermometers. This was essentially the first thermometer, however, there still was no standardized scale for measuring temperature.

It was Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit—a German physicist who developed our standardized Fahrenheit scale and invented the modern mercury thermometer in 1714. Of course, even the mercury thermometer is a bit outdated as we now have digital thermometers like our Lewis N. Clark Digital Flashlight Alarm Clock.

Digital thermometers work a whole different way. Inside them, there is a resistor as well as a tiny computing mechanism. Changes in temperature register a change in the amount of resistance applied by the resistor and the computing piece converts the difference in resistance into temperature and offers a digital readout.

Stay warm through these chilly winter days and check out the Lewis N. Clark Digital Flashlight Clock as well as our entire Lewis N Clark collection right here. As always, thanks for reading, Folks! Till next time.

- John

Hey, Folks!

As you’ve probably already gathered—at least from our name if not a million other things—we’re all about summer camp here at Everything Summer Camp, your one-stop shop for kid’s camping gear and a wonderful assortment of other summer camp supplies! Summer camp is kind of our thing. That’s why more than 300 camps across the country work with us directly. And we love shining our camp spotlight on those camps!

We’re fixing our spotlight westward to the mountains of Prescott, Arizona. Here we find Camp Friendly Pines, situated between Groom Creek and Ponderosa Park, a family-owned and operated, private, and independent residential summer camp. It was Ms. Bebe May who founded this fantastic camp 80 years ago in 1941.

Recently having passed away in the spring of last year, our hearts here at Everything Summer Camp go out to the Brown family as well as Friendly Pines camp community. Let her memory live on among the pines.

An interesting thing about Bebe is that she her grandmother and grandfather were passengers on the famous voyage of the Mayflower in 1620! When they came to America, these pioneers helped found the town called Pine and they kept a cattle ranch. Bebe’s mother then, grew up on this ranch where she learned to rope and ride and shoot with the best of them. She passed her love of cowboy fun on to her daughter Bebe and Bebe passed it on to countless campers!

It’s a very sweet story.

There’s lots of fun stuff you can do at Friendly Pines like Archery, BB Guns, Basketball, Canoeing & Kayaking, Campcraft, Challenge, Dance, Drama, Drawing and Painting, Earth Lore, English Riding, Fencing, Fun in the Forest, Free Swim, Guitar, Handcrafts, Hiking, Improv, Jr. Adventure, Jr. Facilitators, Land Sports, Pet Care, Photography and Journalism, Podcasting, Pony Carts, Ranch Hands, Riflery, Singing, Sewing, Soccer, Tennis, Tomahawks, Ultimate Frisbee, Vaulting, Videography, Volleyball, and, of course, Western Riding!

Check out all the fun you could be having in the next camp season if you choose Camp Friendly Pines for your summer camp stay. You can get a closer look when you check out their website by clicking right here and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Swingers!

When you’re just a dance machine, there’s no stopping you. As long as you’ve got the beat and your disco ball, the night never ends! A symbol to signify the 70’s, disco balls, of course, have transcended the decade and are found in skating rinks, concerts, even weddings. But you probably didn’t imagine it was invented until the arrival of disco: January 1, 1970.

Actually the disco ball goes back much longer ago than that.

Before we get into the history of disco balls, give yourself Night Fever! Night Fever! with the cool Mini Disco Ball Light from iScream. You can party like it's 1979 with this travel-sized sphere that projects a color-shifting spectrum of light onto surfaces to bring movement, excitement, and a dance floor! Simply attach the Disco Ball to your USB power supply. Check out the Mini Disco Ball Light by clicking right here.

Just as it is with any invention, it took time for disco balls to really take off in popularity. They finally made it big in the world of nightclubs as a worldwide staple in the 1920s. Even then, however, that wasn’t the beginning of disco balls—that’s just when they became popular. The disco ball actually goes all the way back to 1859.

An invention of two brothers: Charles and Logan McGrath, co-owners of a bar in Basildon, England. They fashioned the disco ball—just one in a great number of experiments they tried to bring interesting lighting effects to their bar to highlight their dancers and bring in more customers. Of course, they weren’t called disco balls back then as disco music had not yet been developed—they were simply referred to as ‘mirror balls’ or ‘glitter balls’.

So when you start dancing to tunes in the light cast by this great Mini Disco Ball Light from iScream, remember that your great-grandparents also partied underneath those shining spheres on the dance floor. Good times! Get your own Mini Disco Ball Light when you click right here and, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Folks!

- John

Hey, Camp Folks!

Winter months are a great time to break out the markers and add life to coloring books or art projects. As summer approaches you can put markers to good use for your summer camp preparation! After all, a clothing marker is the simplest and sometimes most reliable method of labeling your clothing and other items on your packing list. A blast of bold color, markers are just plain fun. And they’ve been around for well over a hundred years! Check out this colorful look at the history of markers.

Like I said, markers go back more than a hundred years to 1910. It was Lee W. Newman who patented the first marking pen. As it was the first of its kind, the design was a rather basic: a simple cylinder filled with ink that led to a felt tip.

About 15 years later, Benjamin Paskach patented his ‘Fountain Paintbrush’. He gave it a sponge for the tip which was more fun to use and he used different paint colors—the biggest selling point of the sponge-tipped marker. Despite the improvements it made, Paskach’s Fountain Paintbrush never became doable for a wide market and, thus, never actually took off.

It was nearly another 30 years before the first modern marker was created. In 1953, Sidney Rosenthal accidentally invented what he dubbed the Magic Marker when he placed a felt tip on the end of a small bottle of permanent ink to appease his curiosity and it took off big!

In 1964, the Sanford Manufacturing Company introduced the Sharpie—the world’s most popular permanent marker brand. About fifteen years after that in 1978, Crayola was founded and went on to become the world’s most popular washable marker brand. 

Markers continue to be incredibly fun and practical utensils that we can use artistically or for more practical applications such as labeling clothing and other summer camp gear. Visit all of our labeling options when you click right here and, as always, thanks for reading!

 - John