Some Information About Lazy Susans

If you play Scrabble or frequent Chinese restaurants, you know how beneficial lazy susans can be. The revolving, tabletop trays used to move food and other items around large tables have been making life easier for people for many years. While you might not give it much thought, the history of the lazy susan might be more interesting than you thought.

While such a useful device seems as though it would have been developed early on in human affairs, but the invention of the lazy susan as we know it is generally traced to the 18th Century. Its invention is actually attributed by many to Thomas Jefferson. Originally it was called a "dumbwaiter", meaning a silent server to be used in place of an actual waiter. Today "dumbwaiter" refers to a type of manual service elevator.

Some speculate that the name "lazy susan" originated from the use of the word "Susan" to refer to maids and other female servants in the early 1800s. The device was a supposedly a replacement for lazy servants. Another theory is that the device was actually named after a particular servant called Susan.

The first appearance of the phrase "lazy susan" in print was in a 1917 advertisement in Vanity Fair. The ad referred to the $8.50 price as "an impossibly low wage for a good servant". It went on to say that "Lazy Susan" was "the cleverest waitress in the world".

These days, many devices incorporate the mechanism of the lazy susan. Microwaves have them built in to ensure even cooking. Also, there are containers, tool mounts, spice racks, and pen holders are constructed with built-in lazy susan mechanisms. There is even a certain type of corner kitchen cabinet that utilizes a lazy susan device to save space.

Lazy susans are pervasive in modern life. Although little is actually known about the origins of the lazy susan, including the origin of its name, what is known and widely believed in intriguing. In any case, the devices are extremely useful in everyday affairs and easily taken for granted.