Theme Thursday : Candy

The trouble is, I have never been quite sure exactly what candy is. Oh, I know it is one of those American words - like "cookie" - which can be applied to a gamut of things which are pleasant to consume, but what is the "proper" English equivalent of the word "candy"? Is it "sweets", or "chocolates", or "confectionery" or what? Not wanting to pick a fight with my American readers - I will postpone that pleasure until Saturday - I will adopt my usual cautious approach and stick (pun intended) to the type of candy any child raised on the traditional British seaside holiday will be familiar with - candy floss.

Photograph from the LIFE Magazine website

Now I realise that, once again, we are in the difficult sphere of semantics : what we call candy floss, you over there, call cotton candy. But what I am talking about is that wonderfully fluffy, sticky, sweet stuff that gets stuck to your chin (or, trust me, even worse, stuck to your mustache) and tastes absolutely delicious. As a child, I was so attracted to candy floss that I seriously considered saving up my spending money and investing in a candy floss machine. Having seen how such a small amount of sugar could be easily translated into such a large amount of candy floss, the desire for a candy floss machine was stimulated equally by my growing entrepreneurial spirit as my sweet tooth. 

Never having had the time in my youth to acquire such a machine, and stimulated by the theme this week, I have decided to try and bring my plan to fruition now. Not having the necessary financial liquidity to buy a machine, I will make one myself. I discovered the rather wonderful Google Patents site on which you can access over 7 million American patent and trademark applications. Making such a repository of quirky, fascinating and sometimes bizarre information available is something the Internet does so well and Google has been in the forefront of pushing back the boundaries of free information. I discovered that a patent had been granted - back in 1931 - for a candy floss making machine, and therefore detailed, and alas, rather complicated drawings, were available.

A more general Google Books search came up with an even better solution to my problems : an article in the October 1914 edition of Popular Mechanics entitled "How To Make A Candy Floss Machine". As the article says, "The device for making candy floss consists of ordinary things that can be had in any home, and usually a boy has a battery motor of some kind that will furnish the power". But here again, I run into a problem. As most people will know, I am not particularly mechanically gifted. If ever a boy didn't have a battery motor of some kind, it is this boy.

But a solution could be on the horizon. As I said yesterday, next week we will be visiting our good friend Jane and Edwin. Now Edwin is an expert on such things as Bunsen burners and battery motors. I will take a copy of the Popular Mechanics article with us, and whilst I am taking photographs of his wife for yesterdays' project, he can build me a candy floss machine. Edwin, if you are reading this, be warned.