Thursday 6 January 2011

The History of the Yo-Yo

_jeffrey-perren Guest post by Jeff Perren

One of my favorite pastimes is reading about inventions. About.com has a good, short article on the surprisingly long and colorful history of the Yo-Yo.

Enjoy!

yo-yo1_Quote They have been around for over twenty-five hundred years... Around 1800, the yoyo moved into Europe from the Orient...
     It is a Tagalog word, the native language of the Philippines, and means "come back." In the Philippines, the yoyo was used as a weapon for over 400 hundred years. Their version was large with sharp edges and studs and attached to thick twenty-foot ropes for flinging at enemies or prey...
    Modern inventor Donald] Duncan's first contribution to yo-yo technology was the slip string, consisting of a sliding loop around the axle instead of a knot. With this revolutionary improvement, the yo-yo could do a trick called "sleep" for the first time…

2 comments:

Dave Mann said...

"...Their version was large with sharp edges and studs and attached to thick twenty-foot ropes for flinging at enemies or prey..."

Thats crap. It this was true, then the bloody thing would lacerate the shit out of the thrower when it came back at him, wouldn't it?

How about we use our intelligence and stop accepting mindless idiotic bullshit masquerading as historical facts....?

Jeffrey Perren said...

I doubt a yo-yo attached to thick, 20 foot ropes would wind back up to return to the thrower.

Still, nice to see you got into the jovial spirit of the post, Dave. :)