The evolution of the coffee cup lid

You never give it any thought,

and there are billions of 'em out there,

but the amount of design
and passion and creativity

that goes into this
little disc is remarkable.

(upbeat percussion music)

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.

I mean, 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
names James Reifsnyder

invented the first snap-on lid,

but it didn't have a 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.

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 gonna see a move

away from single-use plastic lids

to lids that are a
little more sustainable.

We're not gonna stop moving.

We're not gonna 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.