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Everyday inventions

Order by the year each was invented or first sold. You place all 50 cards on one timeline, one at a time. You start with three lives, and ten right in a row wins a lost one back.

Everyday inventions
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Order by the year each was invented or first sold. Drag or tap it onto the line
Invention
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Invention
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50
Cards
3
Lives per run
release years and dates
Ordered by
Cards only
Card reveal

How to play the Everyday Inventions timeline game

Each card is an ordinary object you have probably used this week, from fasteners and tape to kitchen gadgets and things that live under the sink. The inventor or company sits under the name, and the hidden year is when it was first sold, or when it was patented if no sale date is on record. One card starts on the line with its year in view. Slide each new card into a gap. Pick right and the year appears. Pick wrong and the card drops into its true spot, and you lose one of three lives.

The hard part is that these things feel like they have always existed. Some household staples turn out to be surprisingly old, while others that seem timeless only reached shelves within living memory. The early cards are mostly simple patents, and the middle years fill up with plastics, adhesives and postwar kitchen conveniences. Late cards lean toward infomercial hits and things you saw go viral. Trust the materials: what an object is made of often tells you more than how familiar it feels.

Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in release years and dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.

What's in the deck

Here are 28 of the 50 cards you might be dealt, with 22 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.

  • Rubber band Stephen Perry
  • Safety pin Walter Hunt
  • Pencil with attached eraser Hymen Lipman
  • Blue jeans Levi Strauss & Jacob Davis
  • Aspirin Bayer
  • Gillette safety razor King Camp Gillette
  • Paper coffee filter Melitta Bentz
  • Modern bra Mary Phelps Jacob
  • Band-Aid Earle Dickson, Johnson & Johnson
  • Sliced bread Otto Rohwedder
  • Birds Eye frozen food Clarence Birdseye
  • Paper towel roll Scott Paper Company
  • Ballpoint pen László Bíró
  • Tupperware Earl Tupper
  • Kitty Litter Edward Lowe
  • Swanson TV dinner C.A. Swanson & Sons
  • Non-stick frying pan Tefal
  • Super Glue Harry Coover, Eastman Kodak
  • Bubble Wrap Sealed Air
  • Pampers disposable diaper Procter & Gamble
  • Sharpie marker Sanford Ink Company
  • Crock-Pot Rival
  • Bic lighter Bic
  • Scrunchie Rommy Revson
  • George Foreman Grill George Foreman
  • Swiffer Procter & Gamble
  • Crocs Seamans, Hanson & Boedecker
  • Snuggie Allstar Marketing Group

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