Ray Nelson(1931-2022)

Science Fiction author and cartoonist Ray Nelson was the inventor of the propeller beanie while still in high school. There are varying versions of the story, but the gist is that, in 1947, at a small science fiction convention in Cadillac, Michigan, Nelson and some friends were cartooning, parodying science-fiction icons of the day, and Nelson found some scraps of plastic and attached them to a hat. Soon they became a proudly worn feature of the science fiction crowd.

Centuries after all my writings have been forgotten, in some far corner of the galaxy, a Beany-Copter will still be spinning.