The evolution of the coffee cup lid

Author A.J. Jacobs shows how the coffee cup lid was perfectly designed to give you a full sensory experience while drinking.

You never give it any thought,

and there are billions of them out there,

but the amount of design
and passion and creativity

that goes into this
little disc is remarkable.

[Small thing.]

[Big idea.]

The coffee cup lid
is a lid for your coffee cup.

It snaps on.

It has an opening.

You've got lids with a little
latch that opens and closes.

You've got ones that
are in creative shapes.

Coffee cup lids have their own vocabulary.

People talk about the "peripheral skirts,"

the "press-in dimples,"
the "fragrance outlets,"

the "slosh factor."

But you need these words,

because so much thought and innovation

goes into these coffee cup lids.

Our society is just more and more mobile.

Everything is on the move.

The good part: it's convenient.

You can drink coffee anywhere,
you don't have the stay in the diner.

It can be in the subway.
You can be walking.

The bad part is, it's
harder to savor a coffee

when you're taking it on the road.

The first patent for a lid on a cup

was in 1934,

but it was for cold beverages.

And in 1950, this guy
named James Reifsnyder

invented the first snap-on lid.

But it didn't have
an opening for drinking.

In the '60s there was
this huge cultural shift,

where people started
drinking coffee on the move.

And 7-Eleven was the first
to sell coffee to go.

And then came this revolution in 1967.

A man named
Alan Frank invented a lid

that you could peel a tab off,

like in the shape of a guitar pick,

and drink it from there.

In 1975, another big advance:

you could peel back a tab
and attach it to the lid itself.

So, more and more people
started drinking coffee on the go.

In 1984, a watershed moment
in the history of coffee cup lids:

the birth of the traveler lid.

And it is iconic --
you've seen it a million times.

And it solved a whole host of problems.

It's designed so that you
don't splash your face,

because it's higher than
any of the other ones.

And it's got this protruding rim,

so it slightly cools the coffee
before it hits your lips.

It's got a small depression
in the center for your nose,

so you can really get in there
and get maximum aroma.

It's got this tiny air hole
that lets the steam out

and stops it from creating a vacuum.

This is one of those objects
where you just don't notice it

until it dribbles on your lap.

So I think the coffee cup lid
will just continue to evolve,

and you're going to see a move
away from single-use plastic lids

to lids that are
a little more sustainable.

We're not going to stop moving.

We're not going to stop drinking coffee.

And I think that's what these coffee
lid engineers are trying to do,

is to make it so that
the experience of taking it on the road

is as good as sitting in a restaurant,
drinking from a ceramic cup.

Because, you know,
coffee is serious business.