1892 - Inventor Adam Abbot bursts into the office he shares with his fellow inventors.
Adam: I’ve done it, Gentlemen! I’ve created a new, comfortable type of footwear!
Steve: Oh?
Adam: Yes. You see, the walls of the shoe are composed of stiffened cotton and the soles are made of formed rubber. They are light, flexible and great for athletics.
Steve: Athletics?
Adam: Yes, it’s a new word. It describes physical activities such as bi-cycling or fast-walking.
Martin: Well, why didn’t you just say fast-walking, man?!
Adam: My apologies. Now, gentlemen, what shall we call this new type of footwear?
Martin: Perhaps ‘rubber soled footwearers’?
Adam: Good, good. But I think we can do better. Steve? Anything?
Steve: Perhaps, ‘Adam Abbot’s Fashionable Atletikes Shoes for Upstanding Men of Position’?
Adam: Did you mean, “Athletics?”
Steve: Yes, whatever that newfangled word is.
Adam: Perhaps…
From the shadows, the office recluse, Grimley, speaks up in low, stiffled tones.
Grimley: They appear to be good for sneaking.
Adam: Yes…yes, I suppose they are.
Grimley: If one were so inclined, one could sneak beneath the cover of dark down the slicked cobbles of the quay in absolute silence. Nary a longshoreman would hear his approach. His hook be damned, not a stevedore from here to Southampton could be truly safe on the quay after nightfall.
Adam: Right…
Grimley: Or perhaps, if one were so inclined, one could sneak upon a fair maiden carelessly walking unescorted from an evening at the operahouse. Not a footfall would be heard by said maiden until it was too late.
Adam: Too late for what, exactly?
Grimley: …
Adam: Nevermind. Now, I think we were onto something with “Adam Abbot’s Fashion…
Grimley: Call them ‘Sneakers’ or I will follow you home this eve.
…
Adam: Sneakers, then. Yes, sneakers. Good work, Grimley.
Grimley: Bring me a pie of meat.
