who invented the straw & why?

Last night as we are toasting to drinks and all, we were wondering who invented the straw and for hwat purposes.....various hypotheses were formed, but none were closed to this...so presenting....the origins fo straws..

1) The first straws

Straws made it possible to avoid drinking the sediment that was so prevalent in ancient beer and wine. Historians often credit the Egyptians with first using drinking straws to sip beer. Considering that beer has been around for thousands of years -- an Assyrian tablet has Noah stocking his ark with beer in 2,000 B.C. -- we can reasonably guess that the straw has been around for much of that time as well, and there is historical evidence to back this up. A 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet shows ancient Sumerians enjoying a communal drink and sipping through a reed straw. Brewing was recorded in the written history of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and art from that time shows the ancients sipping through straws. There is evidence that the Babylonians used straws to drink beer as well. In the case of Babylonian royalty, beer was sipped through a golden straw that reached from the throne to a nearby container of the kingdom's finest.

For those who weren't Babylonian royalty, and most people in the ancient world weren't, there was a simpler and cheaper straw than gold tubes: reeds, tall grasses, and natural straw. Rye grass was often used. Though it has a narrow opening, this grain is stiff and hollow. These naturally growing straws were far from ideal, however. The grass wasn't always easy to come by, and it has a distinct taste that imposed badly on the drink.

2) The straws we see today
Thousands of years later, straw technology hadn't progressed at all. If Victorian-era drinkers wanted to slurp a cold julep through a narrow tube, they still used rye grass straws. It wasn't until 1890 that these problems were solved.

In 1888, Marvin Stone patented the spiral winding process to manufacture the first paper drinking straws. Stone was already a producer of paper cigarette holders. His idea was to make paper drinking straws.

Stone made his prototype straw by winding strips of paper around a pencil and gluing it together. He then experimented with paraffin-coated manila paper, so the straws would not become soggy while someone was drinking. Marvin Stone decided the ideal straw was 8 1/2-inches long with a diameter just wide enough to prevent things like lemon seeds from being lodged in the tube.

So here's the story of the straw........courtesy of Wikipedia & Daily Lush magazines