By PHIL PATTON Mr. Gerson Strassberg of the Angler’s Roslyn Group, a plastics company in Flushing, Queens, believes he is the last pocket protector manufacturer in America. He is dismayed that sales have fallen to a tiny fraction of their peak in the Sixties. He can't understand it. He wouldn’t think of being without a protector himself. Pocket protectors date back to the introduction of the ball-point pen right after World War II. The early ball points were the Palmpilots of their day -- high tech prestige devices for managers on the go. They were also imperfect -- boiling over and leaking into shirt pockets. "You couldn't get it out with anything," Mr. Strassberg says of the stain. "Naptha, whatever." So Mr. Strassberg and other plastic makers did something: they created a liner for the pocket. Mr. Strassberg's particular contribution was devising a special "radio wave welding" system to make them. Its basic principle is easily understood by anyone who has ever overzapped a microwave burrito. But it was advertising that really made pocket protectors go. You could order up a bunch of protectors with flaps printed to read "Nerdware Inc." and hand them out to prospects on sales calls. Some would credit the just this association of the pocket protector with nerdom for its decline, but not Mr. Strassberg. He blames it all on high technology, which in his view has driven old fashioned manufacturing operations to Asia. "I worry," Mr.Strassberg says, "because what built this country was Yankee ingenuity. Now, the computer industry has just about taken things over." That would be the industry run by the guys wearing, um, pocket protectors? Links for further information: The Pocket Protector Preservation Society Nerd culture: Quest for the ultimate pocket protector
Books ·
Recent Stories ·
Euroland ·
Webcams ·
Design |
