New Exhibits - It Sprang from the River! Everyday Objects with Maritime Secrets

It Sprang from the River!
Everyday Objects with Maritime Secrets
March 26, 2010 – Extended through 2011!

It Sprang from the River!
Everyday Objects with Maritime Secrets
March 26, 2010 – Extended through 2011!

Slinky inventor Richard James, (R),
and son Thomas, play with Slinkys
on the stairs of the James family home
in Philadelphia, PA, in 1945.

Original Slinky box from 1947 with a
Cramp Shipyard Corporation brochure
showing the USS Miami built during
the time Richard James worked at Cramp
and Slinky was discovered.

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It Sprang from the River! Everyday Objects with Maritime Secrets, an original, engaging, and interactive exhibit featuring great maritime inventions, discoveries, and ideas that have crossed over into everyday life – including the ever-popular Slinky® toy – opens Friday, March 26, at Independence Seaport Museum.

The exhibit, which illuminates in whimsical and thought-provoking ways the connections between the maritime and landlubbers' worlds, will run through 2011. While the ubiquitous Slinky is an exhibit highlight, visitors will be amazed and amused at the watery beginnings of so many fashion, health, electronic devices, language, transportation, and popular culture items.

The exhibit is designed as a house where visitors will walk from room to room, each populated with everyday objects paired with the "secret" maritime artifacts illustrating their origins. Entertaining interactive opportunities include knot-tying, Morse code, weather folklore trivia, loading cargo (blocks) onto a "container ship," and more.

"The idea is that as people explore this 'house' they will discover just how closely connected their lives are to the sea," says Seaport Curator Craig Bruns.

The many secrets from the sea revealed in It Sprang from the River! include bell bottoms (sailor garb), cell phones and GPS systems (wireless communication at sea), perfume fixative (ambergris aka whale vomit), automobile taillights (Fresnel lens originally used in lighthouses), the toy View-Master (used to train sailors to identify enemy ships), and weather forecasting.

Weather forecasting at sea was not just a matter of whether to bring your umbrella, but rather a matter of life and death. Telling this story on the television in the exhibit's "living room" will be a "weather forecast" by NBC 10 Philadelphia Chief Meteorologist Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz.

"I am delighted to participate in Independence Seaport Museum's exhibit about everyday objects with maritime beginnings and am especially pleased about the emphasis the exhibit places on the importance of weather forecasting on land and on sea," Schwartz says. "I really enjoyed telling the story of forecasting's maritime beginnings in the video weather forecast we made for the exhibit."

The Slinky Story

Slinky was the serendipitous byproduct of naval engineer Richard James' tinkering with tension springs at Philadelphia's Cramp Shipyard in 1943. A wire coil tumbled playfully off his desk, and the rest, as they say, is history. Slinky in still made in the same Hollidaysburg, PA, plant, using the equipment created by James more than 60 years ago.

Slinky has been featured on a U.S. postal stamp, starred on the silver screen, used in experiments aboard the Space Shuttle, is the Official State Toy of Pennsylvania, and inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. More than 300 million Slinkys have been sold worldwide since its creation in 1943 and debut at Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia in 1945.

"The Slinky is a piece of Americana that is popular in countries all around the globe," says Ray Dallavecchia, President of Poof®-Slinky®, Inc., of Plymouth, MI. "Its universal appeal lies in its simplicity. There is no instruction book."

Dallavecchia says people always ask him to tell the story of the toy's discovery.

"That is why this Museum exhibit starring Slinky is so wonderful," Dallavecchia says. "Although Slinky is on permanent display in a number of museums, It Sprang from the River is the first to highlight its beginnings in maritime engineering."

Independence Seaport Museum gratefully acknowledges media partner NBC 10 Philadelphia; as well as Smart Center Cherry Hill; PECO; Virtual Storage, Inc., of Montgomeryville, PA, a franchise of PODS; IKEA South Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission for their support of It Sprang from the River! Everyday Objects with Maritime Secrets.

Slinky is a registered trademark of Poof-Slinky, Inc.

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