Rip-Off? You do have to wonder when the builder has to put on a plaque trumpeting "World's First" on it.

I don't recall the Wright Brothers putting a similar plaque on their plane, or even Edison, (a gold plated jerk), putting a plaque on his light bulb.

But enough! There's a customer waiting to pay for his Slurpy.

Then so were the Model-T Ford, the Wright Brother's plane, and your tattoos.

It's called marketing, developing buzz, making people want to come to his restaurant instead of the eleventeen others in town. He could do that because it was true, but I'm still not sure that was on there before it was retired and donated to the Smithsonian.

that's it! I'm willing my skin to the museum when I die.

The new thing about the Model T Ford wasn't that it was a new invention - the big thing with it was it was made on an assembly line - mass production - instead of hand made, individually.

That was the first (I believe), large scale assembly line production of a complex machine.

It allowed two things, not previously available:

#1 A car that cost much less

#2 The Ford assembly workers to make a much better pay than was possible previously for assembly workers.

It was a pivotal success for the Industrial Revolution.

Yes, and this machine provided the pivotal success in frozen margaritas, and Tex-Mex restaurants.

I thought it was the pecan pralines at the register...

I'm not really interested in the list.
I'm not really interested in the museum.

I'm liking the Dwellars' opinions though :)

I think the Smithsonian only put it on there to get media attention, because otherwise no one cares about yet another "greatest invention" list.

I'm not really sure what smithsonian.com actually is. The Smithsonian Institution, which runs the museums, is si.edu.

Is it "official?"

the links to the individual museums are si.edu, but if you go to smithsonian.com it takes you to the magazine site, smithsonianmag.com, which has on it's banner "smithsonian.com"

confusing, but pretty sure it is official--they've just bought the domain names and redirected people to micro sites

If this guy was the first person smart enough to mix tequila, lime juice and triple sec in a slushy machine, he's Smithsonian caliber in my book.

They had them at every cash register, in every restaurant south of DC, going to Florida way back in the 50's.

Yes, it's the official publication of the Smithsonian.

It's obvious, or at least it should be, looking at the second half of the list, they were having fun. As well as probably trying to stir up interest in actually coming to the museum by pointing out not everything on display is stuffy boring shit. I mean hell, a video game, an electric guitar, a donut machine... c'mon.

today's pop culture is tomorrow's . . . trash

But the Smithsonian records history, and popular culture is a part of our history.

dinna fash y'self, laddie