Original Vienna Snow Globes is still producing their invention 110 years later
It was in Austria. The year was 1900. Erwin Perzy was a producer who specialized in surgical instruments. He worked in a small home on the countryside outskirts of Vienna and the last thing he set out to make was a toy. Rather, his tinkering was to invent a brighter light source. “My grandfather tried to improve Edison’s lightbulb to make it even better,” Perzy tells us. “He mounted a solid glass lens in front of the lightbulb to get more magnification of the light. A solid glass lens was very expensive these days (around 1900) and therefore, he employed a water-filled glass globe instead of the lens. To get more reflection, he poured glass powder (glitter) into the water, but the powder sank rapidly to the ground.”
He needed to find another material — one that would stay afloat in the liquid.
“One day, he found semolina in the kitchen of his mother,” Perzy says. “He poured this powder in the water and it started ‘snowing’ in the water globe.” Hence, the magical semblance of snowfall. This coarse, crumbly product otherwise used in pasta and breakfast cereals, inspired a moment of creativity that would bring happiness generations to come.
So his work didn’t bring about a brighter light bulb, but instead, created something that has brought wonderment to generations of children and adults the world over. Mass production started in Vienna in 1905, and the company – Original Vienna Snow Globes – is still going strong today!
