If you ’ve ever had good waffles ( i.e. drenched in maple syrup ) , you have likely noticed a tiny footling handle on the feeding bottle .
Obviously , these handgrip are somewhat Laputan for pouring the sirup by anyone with hand larger than a sister ’s , and are largely ignored during the pouring process . So why are they there ? Onepopular ideais that they are askeuomorph , or a feature or design simulate from another similar object , but which no longer has a practical determination associated with the original pattern or physical object .
For illustration , the Windsor Guildhall in England contains pillars that do n’t quite make it up to the roof . There are hearsay that architect and astronomer Sir Christopher Wren knew pillars were unneeded for keep the building up , but was forced by the council to place them there after they became implicated about building prostration .
According to thelegend , Wren put pillars there but defiantly forget them a little unforesightful of the cap to prove an architectural point , or as a jape . However , they were likely not there in Wren ’s day , and were merely placed there as adecorative feature in 1829 , harkening back to the days when such features were structurally necessary .
Other examples of skeuomorphs let in the floppy disk symbolic representation you use for saving documents , or the shutter noise play on digital and sound cameras when you take a photo , which does not amount from an actual shutter .
The hold on maple sirup have been there since at least the thirties , but they served no virtual purpose then , either . They were likely point there as a marketing whatsis by Great Depression - earned run average maple syrup Mad Men , based on the design of much larger gemstone jug used for hive away liquids in days gone by . These were not loosely used for conduct maple sirup , but for other liquids like John Barleycorn and molasses , before they were supplant by glass .
“ Maple syrup society were n’t so much hold an erstwhile pattern of a jugful as reinvent it and desire to market their product as something nostalgic , ” Jean - François , conservator of the Canada Museum of History explain toReader ’s Digest Canada . “ They were tying in the ikon of maple syrup with their production and the figure that people still had of those crock in the 19th - century . ”
So the tiny , useless handles on pure maple syrup feeding bottle that we associate with the ware are potential only there due to the nostalgia of people in the 1930s for enceinte , disused jugs .
[ H / T : Mental Floss ]
