That's just one of the questions 91¶¶Òõ academics are asking in a new crowd sourcing game for the web.
The university has been awarded £40,000 to help develop a game that asks anyone with access to the web to provide missing information on cultural artefacts made of plastic.
Internet crowd-sourcing projects in the past have asked the public to help classify galaxies from space photographs and to transcribe weather observations from old ship logs to support climate research.
The new game is in the style of FBI-style posters called the Ten Most Wanted. Objects on the Wanted list are selected by the museum curators and they will be replaced with new challenges once the missing information is found and verified. Players collaborate through the game platform and social channels, where they also can communicate with curators.
Posters ask a variety of questions. One shows a football and asks: "The first plastic football was made in the 1960s. This one has 14 instead of 32 panels, to help keep its shape better. Who made the breakthrough to reduce the number of panels?"
Plastic travel toothbrushes and plastic cameras are other subjects for the game. The toothbrush is considered well suited for crowd-sourcing because many people have owned one and may know something about it such as: the shop where they bought it; the shop may have records of the wholesale trader, the wholesale trader might know who manufactured it, and the manufacturer may know who designed it.
The university is collaborating on the project with the Museum of Design in Plastics at Arts University Bournemouth, and Adaptive Technologies, a Hove-based company which makes websites and web applications for museums, galleries, archives and community groups in the UK and abroad.
The manufacturer, Kneissl, is credited with producing the first plastic skis featuring a wooden core in the 1960s, but who designed them?
Dr Lyn Pemberton, a researcher on the project and a reader from the university's School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, said: "It's this kind of detective work we're trying to engage people in."
Research fellow at the school, Marcus Winter, is working full-time on the project. He said: "In addition to having artefacts explained by experts, this encourages players of the game to draw on personal experience to tell the experts what they know about the artefacts and why they are important. Using the Ten Most Wanted concept makes it more fun."
The project's funding, which totals £120,000, comes from the Digital R & D Fund for the Arts, supported by Nesta, Arts & Humanities Research Council and public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Marcus said: "It was chosen for funding because of its great potential to benefit the wider arts sector: While the developed game involves details of plastic artefacts, the approach and methodology can be easily rolled out to other materials and contexts, such as identifying people and places in paintings and photographs, recording public narratives around historic buildings and monuments, or gathering back stories of poster campaigns."