Hammer

We generally use many items in our home gut never actually know the history behind it. So today I am going to take you behind the story of a hammer.

                                      What is a hammer? It is actually a wooden or metallic handle which is joined to a head. Head is the main portion of the hammer with one or more striking surfaces.It is a third class lever with effort at the center and fulcrum at the end of the handle. The most popular hammer among all hammers is the claw hammer, the one pictured above. It generally has the ability to hammer the nail or drive the nail outside.

                                       I am not going to ask you if you have seen a hammer or not. You may have used it quite a few hours ago or you mush have used it just now but have you ever though how was it found or how did it came into being? Think about it when it would have evolved. 1000 BC ? 3000 BC ?

                                      Hammer is the oldest simple machine which was developed. Human kind had started the use of stone as their tools as early as about 2,400,000 BC. They used sticks or bones to hammer other objects to break them. Tools which had stone in  their head and handle made of wood were found as early as 30,000 BC during the middle of the Old stone age. We had heard about the cavemen using stones as their tools but it took quite long for them to fix the stone in a handle.

                                       

                                     The dawn of the Bronze age showed many developments in this tool. Many axes were made with handles that had copper as their head were made around 3,000 BC. The head had a hole where the handle could be inserted. Nails made of the same metals were found during the same period. By 200 BC Roman craftsman used several type of iron headed hammers. A Roman claw hammer which had been made in around 78 AD was found. It had one surface of the head for hammering nails and others for pulling it out. It has an appearance so much like the modern claw hammer that you would get stupefied in finding it in the museum.

                                     

                                       When the commerce and specialized trade started getting pace many different types of hammers evolved which was used by Coach builders, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, Pricklayers, stone masons, cabinetmakers, barrel makers, shoe makers, ship builders and many other with people with their own unique hammers. In 1840, a blacksmith in the United Statesnamed David Maydole introduced a claw hammer with the head tapering downwards around the opening for the handle. This provided additional bearing surface for the handle and prevented it from being wrenched loose when the hammer was used to pull nails. His hammer became so popular that his blacksmith shop grew into a factory to keep up with the demand. Most hammers made today use this same design.

              Having survived for thousands and thousands of years the hammer can disappear anytime from our toolbox. This is the future of hammers. The opponent of the hammer is the gas driven nail gun. It uses a compressed gas to drive the nail into the wood. Nail Gun can drive a nail in a single shot so it makes noise for only once rather than hammer for which you need to hammer at least eight  times to pierce the wood with it. Thus the future of hammer is not secure and it will not take very much time for hammer to leave this world.

 

Scissor

Do you about a scissor? Yes probably you know how to use a scissor but do you know how was it originated. Scissors are cutting instruments consisting of a pair of metal blades connected in such a way that the blades meet and cut materials placed between them when the handles are brought together. The blades of the scissors are generally lass than 15 cm. The have two wholes in which our thumb fits which leads to comfortable cutting of paper, cloth, etc.

                    

                   This was about the modern scissors but have you thought how were they originated? How did they came into being? The earliest known scissors appeared in Mesopotamia 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Some believe that their scissors had only one piece of blade made out of metal. Scissors were also invented around 1500 BC in ancient Egypt.They consist of bronze blades that are joined by a fulcrum at the end like squeezer.  

                     In AD 100 the Romans had made the scissors. It was scissors made up of bronze or iron that were pivoted at a point between the tips and the handles. These were the direct ancestors of our modern scissors. These scissors were also traded as far as China, Japanand Korea. 

          

                       After the Roman period special type of scissors came into being with decorated handles and blades in the Mediterranean countries. As the art of calligraphy spread scissors with curved or concave blade were introduced That time the scissors became a part of everyone's life the  poor, the wealthy the king etc.

                    During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, spring scissors were made by heating a bar of iron or steel, then flattening and shaping its ends into blades on an anvil. The center of the bar was heated, bent to form the spring, then cooled and reheated to make it flexible. Pivoted scissors were not manufactured in large numbers until 1761, when Robert Hinchliffe of Sheffield, England, began using cast steel to make them. Cast steel, recently invented at the time by Benjamin Huntsman, also of Sheffield, was made by melting steel in clay crucibles and pouring it into molds. This resulted in a more uniform steel with fewer impurities.

                    

                    In the early nineteenth century beautiful scissors were made by hand with decorated handles. They were made by hammering steel on indented surfaces known as bosses to form the blades. The rings in the handles, known as bows, were made by punching a hole in the steel and enlarging it with the pointed end of an anvil.                                                                                                                                                                                     By the beginning of the twentieth century, scissors were simplified in design to accommodate mechanized production. No the scissors were made by large machines known as drop hammers which used to give shape to different parts of the scissors. Powered by steam, these large, heavy devices used dies to shape the scissors from bars of steel. Modern versions of drop hammers are still used to manufacture scissors today.

                    Although scissors have remained in a standard form for hundreds of years, recent innovations may change the look of this ordinary household tool. Scissors using round, rolling blades have been designed. Ceramics made from zirconium oxide have been used to manufacture scissors with blades which are extremely strong, rustproof, and which never need sharpening.