Who created vertical blinds?

There was the Roman shade, the Venetian, the slat blind…then what? Who was the grand pioneer that ushered us into our current revolution, the new era of shadery? It’s a question I never cared about until today upon playing golf in Maui with the guy who invented vertical blinds. It’s like finding out who invented the paper clip…or the wax things at the end of shoelaces (I read somewhere that the family gets a fraction of a cent for each waxy end; that’s two per shoelace, four per shoe). Or floss…who’s the ballsy guy that first pitched the idea of selling spools of thin minted string to the mass public? I forget that there are people behind these things we use everyday. I guess I just assume big corporations like GE make everything.

Some things seem too big to have such a singular beginning. For my generation, one of the craziest has to be the guy who created the internet. The idea that one guy (I’m sure with a little help from some of his nerdy friends – or maybe he was cool, like Val Kilmer in Weird Science) created the internet is foreign to me. What do you ask a guy like that when you meet him? There I was playing golf with the inventor of vertical blinds, and I felt as though I had a unique opportunity to ask the questions that other people would never be able to. “Were you tired of normal blinds? Did they not block out enough sun? Are you allowed to have anything besides vertical blinds in your house?” Luckily, he loves to talk. That’s probably how he sold so many people on his idea.

There are some questions of invention for which I prefer the illusion. Like pizza. I don’t want to know who invented pizza. To me Dominos invented pizza and I’m fine with that. Does some Italian family get paid a fraction of a cent for each pizza made? Is there a patent on pizza somewhere?

I had an idea once. It was for a pepper shaker with a light on the bottom. You press a button and the light comes on, illuminating the food beneath, resulting in perfect pepper displacement. I was excited…really excited about it for about 3 days until I realized it would require me to be the pepper guy for the next 10-20 years of my life. This guy is the vertical blind guy. I’ll bet he could care less.

I’m sure most inventions or innovations happen by accident, but there are still so many that are the attempted pitch of a hopeful entrepreneur somewhere. I’d love to get a reel of unsuccessful product pitches. I remember when one of the big oral hygiene companies tried to get people to use a finger sock to brush. They had people dancing around the subway pulling out their little socks, scrubbing to the rhythm of the music. Have we become so inconvenienced by the brush and paste so as to line our briefcases with tooth wipes? Who gets laughed at when their idea doesn’t catch on? I now know one guy who didn’t get laughed at. And he’s sent his wife and kids around the globe 8 times because of it.

I beat the guy who created vertical blinds in golf today. I feel good about that. Oh yes…and his cousin is JD Salinger. Seriously.


...beautiful Maui in the morning...



...shots from golfing in Maui...