Marvin Stone is one of those clever American inventors of the 1800s who came up with something so simple and so commonplace that we can’t imagine that anyone had to come up with it at all. Marvin was born in 1842 in Ohio, and his father was also an inventor. The boy grew up working with his father in the workshop, learning how to approach a problem from a mechanical engineering perspective. He began Oberlin College but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

Marvin served in the United States Army with distinction during the war, fighting in such battles as Lookout Mountain in Tennessee (where he was injured) and also served in an administrative position in Washington, D.C. After the war, Marvin was restless, first thinking about pursuing a theology career and also working for a time as a newspaper reporter. But the years growing up at his father’s side in the workshop called to him, and he returned to his roots as an inventor.

He soon made a contract with the Duke Tobacco Company in D.C. He is credited with inventing one of the first machines that rolled cigarettes. The Civil War had seen the decline of pipe smoking and the beginning of soldiers and the public turning to rolling cigarettes. Marvin’s invention made that process consistent and mechanized. Duke paid Marvin’s firm to make the rollers which they took and sold to the public. Soon, he built a factory to handle the demand for the cigarette roller. It made Marvin a comfortable living. He married a woman named Jennie Platt and settled down in the Washington area.

Marvin was generous with his new wealth. He built lodgings for the single female employees of his factory, for example, gave his workers with healthcare, and provided them with access to libraries and education in their off hours at a time when such a thing was unheard of. In addition, after seeing the deplorable living conditions of some minority residents of Washington, Marvin spearheaded efforts to build better housing for those residents at his own expense. For his efforts, his fellow manufacturing tycoons made fun of Marvin. He was one of those soft touches, they said, a real sucker. But Marvin knew that it was the right thing to do.

One hot summer afternoon, Jennie and Marvin were enjoying some drinks on their front porch. The drinks were mint juleps, if you must know. And while the drinks were refreshing on the stifling Washington day, while sipping them, Marvin had an epiphany. He began to do some research on his idea. What Marvin found was that his idea wasn’t new, and that disappointed him. Turns out, both the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians as well as the first civilizations of South America had come up with the idea. However, not all of his research was negative. It seemed that no new technology had been developed since the olden days, and that told Marvin that he could make a new version of what those old civilizations had first developed.

Soon, Marvin developed a prototype. It was 8 1/2 inches (22cm) long, made of paper and coated with wax. And it worked. Marvin patented the product in 1888. Cheap to mass produce, Marvin soon re-tooled a part of his factory to begin to produce the new product. Within a few months, Marvin began making more money from the sale of his new invention than he did from the cigarette rollers. Sadly, Marvin didn’t live to see how popular his creation became, how universal his invention was to be to the modern world of the 20th Century. He died after a long illness in 1899, leaving Jennie with a sizeable inheritance. And he left you and me a legacy that we enjoy today, when you go to a fast food place and get a drink or stop at a Buc-ee’s for a soda. Yes, we should think of that sucker, Marvin Stone, every time we take a sip of our drinks through his most important invention.

The straw.