Innovation: Who Made That Spork?

Jens Mortensen for The New York Times

The last time you picked up a "spork" — whether a plastic one for your fast-food meal or the titanium one you took on your camping trip — you might have had the fleeting thought that the clever spoon/fork feels almost futuristic, or at least from a not-so-distant past. Actually, it has been around for centuries.

According to Bee Wilson, author of "Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat," utensils with the tines of a fork but the cup of a spoon have been used for eating candied fruits since late medieval times. "So it's not a new idea at all." But so-called sucket forks, unlike the typical fast-food sporks, were double-ended, with a spoon at one end of the handle for syrup, and tines at the other for spearing sweets.

By the 1800s, terrapin forks (for eating turtles) and ice cream forks featured the typical spork shape — a spoonlike bowl that extends into tines. (These, of course, were made of silver, not plastic.) A Rhode Island doctor named Samuel W. Francis filed an early patent for a sporklike utensil in 1874. Titled "Combined Knives, Forks and Spoons," it featured a spoon with tines sticking out the front end and a blade tacked onto one side. "The three elements," Francis wrote, "are thus grouped together most compactly, constituting an article which can be very conveniently used for many purposes."

A similar three-in-one combo was branded a "splayd" in the 1940s, when William McArthur, an Australian, introduced it in his wife's Sydney cafe. Mass-produced in the 1960s, it became a popular wedding gift and an essential tool for buffets and barbecues.

Recent innovations include the "spife," a spoon with a serrated handle (marketed for eating Kiwi fruit) and the "knork," a fork with a cutting edge, celebrated on "Top Chef."

"Spork" didn't become a trademark until 1970, 61 years after the word first appeared in a supplement to the Century dictionary. In the decades since, the spork has become widespread: It's cheaper than buying two separate utensils and light to carry. It's also valued for being a hybrid, as the various uses to which the word is put suggest.

SPORK! a nonprofit group, advocates for "individuals who have a physical, mental or invisible difference" — the "beloved sporks of our society." In the 2010 independent film "Spork," the titular character is a hermaphrodite.

"It's neither one thing nor the other," Wilson says of the popular spoon/fork. "It swings both ways."

SPORK-FED

Joachim Nordwall designed a two-ended spork — serrated fork at one end, spoon at the other — for the Swedish company Light My Fire in 2003, which has sold more than 20 million units across 52 countries.

When you designed your spork, did you know the spork had been invented before? No. I was not familiar with it at all.

How did you come up with the design? I got this mission from Light My Fire to design a meal kit for going out in the woods. Most of the competitors had metal cutleries — one spoon, one fork and maybe one knife — which was very cumbersome and difficult to store. I thought, "Can we make it more efficient?" I started out with the spoon, and was thinking, "Where can I put the fork?" So I twisted it around and tried it out, and there it was.

Light My Fire's spork now comes in lefty and different sizes — for kids, for serving. The demand came from consumers. In the beginning we had one size, which came with the meal kit, but it became really, really popular, which we weren't prepared for. We understood that we should sell the spork separately, and accommodate different sizes. Plus, at the time I had small kids, and the original spork was a bit large for them.

Any highlights for you since the spork had its debut? The Swedish king used the spork, and I saw Boy Scouts using it on the morning news. And I saw a Swedish politician, who was celebrating her 50th birthday or something, talking about preparing the dinner table with a spork.