Makers Meet Their Maker

I must admit this little piece of OGR history is the result of my reading the Chicago Tribune’s article Makers Meet Their Makers and how the Egg McMuffin, Pringles, Nachos and more became a part of our lives. So off to some inventors who died in ‘08.

Herb Patterson, 89, invented the Egg McMuffin as his career began in Chicago’s McDonald’s advertising department. So fond of eggs Benedict that in ‘72, in his own Santa Barbara, CA franchisee, he created his hand-held version with a toasted English muffin, grilled Canadian bacon, cheese and an egg cooked in a ring mold.
200,000 million Egg Muffins are sold each year.
Ignore the saturated fat, cholesterol and calories and up that count!

Kurt Eberling, 77 invented Spaghetti-O’s after developing the recipe for Campbell’s Soup. How to get spaghetti and meatballs in a can? Well after dinner one night, he noticed a swirl of spaghetti in the sink in a circle shape. It sparked the “O” shaped pasta product in ‘65 and the famous “Uh-no, SpaghettiO’s” jingle.
Admit it, we all grew up on this stuff and many of us are still growin.

Carmen Rocha, 77, popularized Nachos. She didn’t invent it but BOY DID SHE MAKE it popular. It was a family childhood recipe of tortilla chips topped with cheese, japeleno peppers then baked, that her family enjoyed during Sunday afternoon televised football games. This waitress began making and serving it at the famed Los Angeles El Cholco Mexican Restaurant. Before long, not only the locals but the world was asking for those Rocha’s nachos. So at this year's Super Bowl Half Time, a high-five to Carmen as we gnash on.

Betty James, 90, named the Slinky. Her husband Richard, saw a spring fall off the table and thus "sprang" the idea for a toy. He found a foreign steel manufacturer to make the spring with the right tension and put Betty in charge of naming it. Like the old hat pin and racing form routine, she opened a dictionary to a random page and chose “Slinky”. For us kids, it meant hours of enjoyment and inventiveness counting the number of stairs it could slink.

Frederic Baur, 89, the Pringles can. A chemist by day who sought a way to uniformly package chips for Proctor & Gamble. A vertical can fit the bill for the uniform shape, look and taste of the Pringles Chip and the can were born. In ‘08 when he died he wanted his ashes buried in a “Pringles” can. His son, Larry said: “My siblings and I briefly debated what flavor to use…But I said, ‘Look we need to use the original’.”

Murray Jarvik, 84, nicotine patch. In the ‘50’s, a psychopharmacologist (yeah, look it up) studying d-lysergic acid that led to the hallucinogenic drug, LSD and with his team decades later researched the effects of nicotine absorption with the skin. In 1990, they patented the patch after it proved a successful way to help smokers quit by reducing nicotine cravings. Does Jarvik sound familiar? His nephew, Dr. Robert Jarvik developed the 1st artificial heart transplanted into humans.

So if you have broken a New Year's resolution and dined on Nachos, McMuffins, Spaghetti-O’s or puffed on that cigarette, be grateful for the patch, the “Jarvik” or the Slinky to take the edge off.