Since I am a seasoned citizen, I enjoyed reading the 2024 book by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg titled Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs. Starting on page 182 there is a section titled Sam and Betsey Farber: A Gripping Story. After Sam sold Copco (which made enameled cast-iron cookware) he and Betsey retired and moved to France. Betsey decided to make an apple tart, but found peeling fruit with an old peeler upset her arthritis.
She and Sam decided to produce hand tools that would be more comfortable. They worked with designer Patricia Moore and wound up using a thermoplastic elastomer called Santoprene to make tools like the green Oxo Good Grips peeler shown above. (Also see the 30 second YouTube video). There is an article about it by Mark Wilson at Fast Company on September 24, 2018 titled The untold story of the vegetable peeler that changed the world.
The book begins with a chapter on Fast-Food Legends that starts with a section titled Chicken: Harland David Sanders began his KFC empire at sixty-six. The fifth chapter, The Writers has a section beginning on page 89 titled Peter Mark Roget: Finding Just the Words about how he published his famous book of synonyms (a thesarus) at an age of seventy-three.
An image of an older peeler design came from Wikimedia Commons
No comments:
Post a Comment