Inventions With Longevity
It made me think, are there other things we have in our lives which seem to have stood still in time? If one looks at musical instruments, they have to notice that at least some of them are the same as they were hundreds of years ago. Take the violin for example, the first violin was said to have been built in 1565 by Andre a Amati. This is at odds with some historians who say paintings containing violins can be dated back to the 1530s. This could mean there was an earlier inventor of the violin, but none of that matters because we are only talking about how we are still using objects which haven’t changed. The violin is by no means the only musical instrument which is practically unchanged and many musical instruments have been the same for hundreds of years. If one looks at a bathroom today and then looks at one from sixty or seventy years ago, the fixtures may look a little different but the plumbing is the same. There have been a few inroads because of the use of types of plastic pipe, but a lot of the old metal pipes are still there. Since we are talking about something in the home and other buildings, we should mention furniture. Dining room chairs are basically the same as they did 100 years ago and much longer. When a chair was pulled out of an Egyptian tomb which was thousands of years old it had an uncanny resemblance to a wooden chair today. Let’s not forget pots and pans. The type we put over a flame haven’t changed that much. Even our eating utensils have been around for hundreds of years. Have you ever filled your tires with air? I am sure if you did, you noticed there are valves which stick out that you attached the air hose to. That little valve has remained unchanged since it was patented in 1893. That means this valve has been in use for 127 years and was designed just at the time the first successful American gasoline automobile came on the scene. One invention which was super successful is toilet paper. It was invented in 1857. You might not have liked it very much back then since it sometimes had slivers of wood embedded in it. Over the years all wood slivers have thankfully been taken out and toilet paper has become a lot smoother. This means we have been using this product for over 160 years. One invention which has extreme longevity, we wear on our face. Eyeglasses have been around since the 13th century. They have been around so long we don’t even know who invented them. The glasses didn’t have the legs on the side so they would have to be held in place or snap held on the nose. It is said they were usually made from wooden all leather frames. We know they came from Italy. This means the glasses people wear today were invented well over 700 Years ago. Sometimes things can be so simple and yet never need to be changed. The paper clip has not changed very much since its invention in 1890. I think the only change has been a few grooves cut into the side on some of them. The device is so useful it has a ready lasted over 130 years in its original form. Sometimes there are even other uses for it besides holding papers together. How many of us have unfolded a paperclip to stick it in a small hole to reset an electrical device? It seems like mirrors have been around forever. We can actually trace them back to about 6000 BC. That is when they appear in Turkey and later in Egypt and other places. They were not made out of glass in the beginning, at least not what we think of as mirrored glass, but were made from volcanic glass created naturally and polished stone. You could see very good in them but I guess they were better than nothing. As time progressed, they began to be made from polished metals. The first glass mirrors appeared in the first century A.D. to provide better reflectivity artisans in Sidon which is now Lebanon, would coat the back of the mirror lead or gold. This means the modern-day mirror is at least 2000 years old and the concept of a mirror is 8000 years old Another invention which has not changed very much is the wheel. We find it being used everywhere. Originally it is believed it was invented in 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and its first usage was as a potter’s wheel. Today many mechanical machines depend on a wheel and even our cars are full of wheels, not just the four that the car rides on. When we talk about wheels, we are talking about an invention from over 5500 years ago and this invention is still going strong. If I had to pick one invention which I think we’ve gotten the most use from over the years, I think I would pick the wheel.
|
