By PHIL PATTON from ID Magazine Like most Americans, I spend a lot of time on the road and drink a lot of coffee while I'm there. In our cars and trucks, more and more these days, we sip thick espresso or our watery truck stop java. But the trend is not new. As early as De Toqueville, foreign observers noted our national obsessions with mobility and caffeine. The tokens of these twinned obsessions are thin white discs--the lids of our coffee cups, carefully designed for sipping on the move. I have long been a heavy consumer of these lids, of which we use about a billion and a half a year. Now I am also a connoisseur of them. It began by chance, thanks to sloppiness. Lids began to pile up on my car floor. Gathering them up one day in an unaccustomed fit of neatness, I noticed how many varieties there were, and how complex the combination of instructions and indications on them, how various and intricate the devices for opening and locking back flaps--in short, how intensely designed they were. Rolled out of polystyrene sheets, carefully crimped for strength, folded and lapped to fit snugly, scored and sculpted to provide flaps that come loose and look so we can sip on the go, these little discs are coinage of our sped up society, airy wheels that are also testimony to the way we American differ from the rest of the world. Consider that Europeans often fail to understand, even mock our demands for cupholders in our cars, and the variety of mechanical inventiveness called into play to make them pop out or up, fold or flip, spring or clinch our cups, lids reflect a variety of innovation that may seem disproportionate to their importance. But by best estimates--and none of the industry groups I queried could give an exact t figure, we use about a billion and half lids each year. Their variety and ingenuity is a classic example of capitalist efflorescence: their makers range from giant corporations that also make cups and plates, to "short liners" whose margins are as thin as the polystyrene and whose economics are as rough as the cruder stamping tools they use. Rippled, folded, beaded, jagged, crenelated, these discs grow fascinating on study. I decided to see how many I could assemble and was surprised when the dozen or so variants I expected turned into two dozen, then three. And as my collection grew I became curious about their sources and designers. And I found myself not only collecting but leaning over people's shoulders to see what kind of lids say the Timothy's or Gloria Jean chain uses. Confiding this secret--almost perverse--interest in coffee lids to friends and acquaintance would often enough elicit strange looks. But a surprising number of those I casually talked to had also noticed these objects that, after all, they are constantly lifting up to their faces. One designer recalled how in the primitive days of lids, before sip tabs, it was a badge of skill to be able to neatly tear out a space for sipping. Another friend still recalls a cup lid he drank from seven or eight years ago, at a donut shop in Massachusetts. It was the best one he'd ever encountered, he says, but he has never come across another like it. Coffee lids show the whole vast machinery of modern culture, material engineering marketing advertising and design carefully swing about and address itself to this most mundane of objects like thousands of other mundane objects. Like so many other products in our society, they are created by organizations and individuals to which we give little thought and about which we know little. They bear company names Solo, Sweetheart, Dart, Dixie, and a few others, less well known. If you look at them without touching or lifting, lids can seem as stately as sculpted plaster or marble--like little medallions, even mock cameos--but pick them up and their weight--no more than a fraction of an ounce--deflates their aspirations to dignity. They are disposable in feel as well as function and some are clearly thinner than the thickness of plastic of others to save on material costs. There are several basic types of lid, I quickly learned: the simple vented--with a n aperture to let steam escape--the lock back, with a sipping aperture and a piece of plastic that can be folded back out of the way, and now the gourmet---for lattes or cappuccinos. They bear the triangulated arrows of recycling marks and the number six. This is the Society of Plastics Industries designation for the polystyrene that can be, but rarely is, recycled, to make other plastic objects). The more I looked the more differences of detail I noted. How on one flap, the words "fold back" are readable only from the bottom (or from the top in reverse, like "ambulance" lettered on the front for the benefit of drivers' scanning their rear view mirrors). Almost all lids are marked with the letter c, c&s, d and so on so the server can indicate cream, cream and sugar or decaf Many lids feature dimples to be pushed down for to indicate cream and sugar or decaf. And more and more these days they are stamped with a warning that the liquid beneath is hot. These messages seem to have been prompted by a number o f suits including most famously one against McDonald's by a patron who claimed to have burned herself on an excessively hot beverage. (McDonald's lids bear such warnings and some of its coffee cups almost petulantly announce "Contents hot" and "HOT!" seven times around their circumference, as if the company were still smarting from the lawsuit) The function of the lid is not just to keep it from spilling or cooling during transportation of the beverage, but to enable drinking from the cup during transportation at the wheel, while on the train or even walking. The lid must fit snugly but not so tightly as to crack or give excessive resistance when being removed. The lid is low on the foodchain of the food packaging industry, but that industry is a vast interconnected web. Ray Kroc got his start as a salesman for Sweetheart paper cups and learned the restaurant business as he moved up from the cups to the mixers that made milkshakes in those cups. Finally he came across a place that had the most mixers and used the most cups-- a hamburger stand run by two brothers named McDonald. But the creators of coffee lids, like those of cups and mixers and French fryers are intentionally anonymous. The companies are largely privately owned and do not report total sales even to their trade organizations, such groups as the Polystyrene Packaging Council or the Flexible Packaging Association. The engineers and designers at the companies themselves are singularly close mouthed. With tones like those of a State Department spokesperson they said such things as " I don't think it would be appropriate for us to discuss our design methods." But all I asked, I told a number of them, was as much cooperation as I had received as a reporter from the White House or from the engineers of the Stealth fighter. They did not laugh. And I was not joking. At last I found a thoughtful and articulate man in Sweetheart's marketing department, named Michael Smith who was willing to give me a capsule history of the coffee lid.. It is not a very long one. In the 1960's the best thing you could get to top your cup was disk of pasteboard, with a small tongue shaped grip, like those still used on cups of ice cream. The plastic lid that fits around the rim of a cup is fairly recent invention, and did not become widespread until the second half of the 1970's. Although no one seems to have appointed himself official historian of this particular artifact, anecdotal evidence and a look at patent records suggests a clear narrative. The first lids were simple discs often reinforced by concentric rings. (They still exist as the most inexpensive sort; I recently picked on up at a Blimpie Base.) During the early Eighties, they gradually acquired perforations allow a bite shaped or guitar pick shaped bit of plastic to be removed for drinking on the move, without removing the lid from the cup. Various means of locking back this tab were devised, using notches and flaps, posts and sockets. There were even design patents filed on certain decorative elements of coffee lids, such as one with decorative discs on its rim. Many of the sipping areas relied on tear through scores that were hard to produce with predictable quality. A "spider" design for Sweetheart, devised by one Thomas Winstead, does away with scoring and claims to let you remove, then replace a piece of the lid for sipping. It sounds good in the patent description, but in practice I found this replaceable half moon is cruel illusion. Try to slip it back over the rim of the cup and it slips off or sinks into the hole. Then came the gourmet revolution. From the epicenter of Seattle, beginning two or three years ago, such chains as Starbuck's, Gloria Jeans, Timothy's and others, began to purvey coffee drinks topped with foamy milk, necessitating a new kind of lid. Solo found itself in the happy position of offering the only dome lid design which served to protect the foam of lattes and cappuccinos. That was not its original purpose, however. The Solo "Traveler" relied on a patent filed by a man from Ada, Oklahoma named Jack Clements and had been sculpted to provide an area for the drinker's lip and nose by raising the level of the lid above the cup. The lid also offered a kind of overflow reservoir. This raised shape served very well to protect foam. The Traveler is one of the few lids that don't just claim patent protection, but print the patent number--4589589--on the lid. Solo soon locked up the business of Starbuck's and found itself in an fortuitous position to challenge market leader Sweetheart. But in the world of coffee lids, however, leadership can be short-lived. Thrown on its heels, Sweetheart put together an effort to match Solo without violating its patents. An engineer named Al Bibeau and other designers at Sweetheart's Owings Mill, Maryland, factory and engineering center responded with the lid trademarked 'Gourmet ", which is only now being rolled out across the country. The most visually elegant of lids, it resembles a small architect's model for a modern civic arena, with gently angled, curving lid. Sweetheart had to beat Solo without violating its patents and add additional features. The opening for sipping is set on a raised ridge. The literature boasts of the "plug type lid seat," and the often overlooked stacking ring for nesting cups--for those occasions when you bring coffee back to the office. And the Gourmet offers something else new: the model for sixteen ounce cups also fits ten and twenty ounce ones, meaning fewer items for companies to stock in their inventory. The Gourmet is the Cadillac of Sweetheart's line of lids, which move upward in cost and sophistication from the simple vented to the sip then to the lock back before reaching Gourmet. Its sales literature boasts of the Gourmet: "Even before the first sip, the elegant domed lid that tops your customer's cup speaks to the freshness and quality of the coffee about to be enjoyed The upscale look and the modern design of this paper hot cup lid is ideally suited for serving gourmet coffee. Customers appreciate the form, the function....and the shop that features it." Almost every lid bears the works "Patented" or "Patent Pending." So, it suddenly occurred to me, where else to look but in the patent records--the place where the secrets the engineers must publish the trade secrets they so zealously guard in order to protect them. There is a dizzying wealth of patents for beverage lids. As crisp and carefully turned as a lid itself, the prose of the patent claims is suffuse with a bright white light of literalness and legality lends them an almost Beckett like tone to some of them.. There is talk of "the prior art" and of tabs and posts and sockets that "frictionally engage." But occasionally more prosaic and human justifications of design features break through. This lid is good for "drinking with one hand," say, that one claims "less harsh lip feel" After running a search on the Commerce Departments World Wide Web patent sections , I learned I could not download the figures--the drawings. To get them, I tromped to the patent department, room 150 of the New York Public library, fighting through potholes and construction diversion that jolted the coffee cup in my hand, filling the reservoir in my cup lid. Here, I found the information infrastructure as decrepit as the transportation one. Ancient computers and microfilm machines barely worked. I searched through drawers for cassettes of micro film corresponding to the numbers of patents I sought and tried to print copies. Copies required dimes, and I had none, so I had to travel two floors to a change machine--which rejected my first bill as too wrinkled before finally accepting as second. But the vital number --4589589---was on a cassette that was not in its place in the drawer. I scrambled through the return cassettes randomly scattered on the top of the filing case. I had used all but thirty cents of my change when I hit gold: the original Solo Traveler patent. Another trip to the change machine, another frayed bill rejected. It occurred to me on the trip back to the Patent Room that what appealed about cup lids with the neat way in which they disposed of a problem, a small problem, to be sure, in life, by while the rest of the culture around them remained ragged and uncertain in its dynamics. A lid that works is a small raft of functional mercy in the stormy sea of computer incompatibility, panty hose runs, dead batteries, construction zones, traffic jams, unprogrammable VCRs, that is modern life. On the way out of the room, something caught my eye with a white flash. In the waste basket beside the librarian's desk, floating atop a pile of crumpled papers, sat a Solo Traveler, lightly stained with remnants of brown coffee, a specimen of Jack Clement's invention, the very device whose Ur Gestalt I had just been looking at on the microfilm reader, the Solo Traveler. Our favorite lids:
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